Academic Bloggers on…Eating in Class
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On the AdjunctNation.com Web site, we surveyed faculty visitors and asked them to tell us whether they permitted students to eat during lectures. The survey results show that 77 percent faculty who responded said they did, in fact, allow students to eat during lectures. This comes as a surprise, of course, considering how much has been written about ill-mannered student behavior in the classroom. In a piece published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, such students are referred to as “classroom terrorists.” From the L.A. Times to the New York Times, college students have been chewed up and spit out over snacking in class. Theories about why students are increasingly ill-mannered range from the notion that anti-intellectualism abounds within higher education, to permissive parenting. In the AdjunctNation.com Forums, faculty posters had some interesting perspectives on the subject and shared a variety of opinions! Then, we went online and checked out what students and faculty had to say about the subject in their Weblogs (blogs). Want to read more? Better yet, if you want to comment on a blog or respond to the writer, follow the links given and visit the individual blogs.
From AdjunctNation.com Forums: Eating in Class
https://www.adjunctnation.com/forums/read.php?4,171 Thoughts on Grade Inflation
Posted by: TheProf
Hi Everyone!
It’s not me eating in class, of course. It’s my students. Is anyone else out there dealing with this? Can I make a “no lunch” policy in my 12-1 class? Can I ban snacks from my 4-5 p.m. afternoon class? Is this hard-hearted? I just can’t take the crinkling and crunching much longer….Any advice would be warmly welcomed.
Posted by: Dr. Bob
The crinkling and crunching can be annoying, not just to the professor but to the other students as well. I think you have every right to ban eating in the classroom. If students want to snack, they can do so either before or after class. If they’ve scheduled classes all through their lunch period, that’s their problem, not yours.
Posted by: Dave M
I don’t blame you for being frustrated with eating in class. I teach public speaking and have strict rules about annoyances such as eating in class (especially during speeches). I do allow drinks only because this helps with speaking. You have every right to set down some rules on eating in the classroom.
Posted by: Shari D
I have a policy clearly spelled out in my syllabi–no food or beverages except capped water bottles. When a student whips out his or her full dinner or crunchy snacks, I simply stop the class, look over and say, “Ah, Mr. Brown, I see you’ve brought dinner. Do you have enough for the class?” As the student blushes and blunders, I then say, “Oh, well you’ll want to have that later.” I then turn and go on with the lesson. Not one has ever contradicted me. Unfortunately no student has ever bought us all dinner either. Oh well…
Posted by: gem
I think that kids should be able to eat in the classroom. Eating in the classroom may help kids. It may help the kids through the school day by providing them with the energy they need to function properly. Also to keep them awake during class. The eating of food during class time is proven to increase performance in the classroom.
Posted by: Elizabeth
I let them eat. I teach at a community college and many of my students are barely squeezing in a class or two in between work, family, etc. A night class can be three hours long. Sometimes, if they don’t have a snack in class, they miss a meal. But, this is generally an older student group. Also, I have a lot of group discussion and sometimes it turns into a “who brought the snacks” thing during group projects, which helps with cohesiveness.
I agree with the speech teacher—during speeches in my public speaking class, I don’t allow eating b/c it’s rude. I suppose you could say that it’s rude for them to eat during my class, but I really haven’t seen anything obnoxious (although a friend had a student bring a full KFC meal—that’s probably a bit much).
Posted by: Amy O
I agree—they should be able to eat in class. Don’t you remember YOUR student days? It can be hard to get a few minutes to eat. When the classes are really long, you can get light-headed from hunger.
My only policy is no hot food (too stinky). Other than that, chomp away!
What Academic Bloggers Say…
Silverflame’s Sanctuary:
http://kittenkisses.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!732553266DEC0FE7!900.entry
What ever happened to ‘quality over quantity’ in Canadian universities?
Meanwhile in Canada, post-secondary education is being increasingly seen as a logical extension of secondary education, only with bigger classes and more lax rules about dress code, attendance, and eating during lectures. Instead of being a choice and a privilege, more and more families see it as an obligation, regardless of the student’s inclination. Coupled with governments’ efforts to increase access and enrolment, this generates lower minimum admission requirements and larger classes, both of which, in turn, lead to poorer performance. Are we surprised, then, that more and more students are dropping out and doing poorly? Apparently so. But instead of treating it as a problem, and putting in place more financial aid (which plunges you into long-term debt) and tutoring programs (which help you not fail but don’t do much more), how about worrying more about demanding excellence and appropriate work ethics to begin with? Last time I checked, post-secondary education was not a social welfare program.
Gradschools.com:
http://blog.gradschools.com/jenna/?cat=14
Eating in Class
I had a professor in my Master’s program who told us on the first day of class he would not tolerate students eating during his lectures. It was less of a demand than a revelation of one of what we would discover were just one of his many idiosyncrasies. And it wasn’t because he thought it was rude, it was because the noise made his skin crawl.
I don’t know if his reason makes much sense, but I do think it’s rude to eat in class. You are coming to class to learn and actively participate; you are not a member of an audience that is there to be entertained and can take a passive role. Bringing a crumbly, wrapped-in-wax-paper meal signals to the professor and your classmates that you are merely checking in and plan to immediately check out once you unroll your diagonally-wrapped meal.
It’s also disruptive to your classmates. Smell is one of your keenest senses and it’s difficult to think about the Theory of Planned Behavior when the person sitting next to you is eating a Subway. What’s worse than a Subway meal- since you have to give them credit for attempting to eat healthily, especially if the waxy paper has the “6 under 6” stamp of approval peppered all over it, indicating that they opted for one of the six sandwiches that are 6 grams of fat or less- is one that is contained in a Tupperware, or worse: multiple Tupperware’s.
First off, you are concerned that your classmate- possibly even your friend- has subjected any or all of their pastel-colored containers to the rays of a microwave due to the condition of the containers that indicate pre-microwave era technology and construction. Second, you’ve missed the tenets of the precursor to the Theory of Planned Behavior- which is The Theory of Reasoned Action- because after your concern over your friend possibly ingesting carcinogenic food, you are trying to tease apart the smells and determine exactly what their reheated dinner from last night is.
Once you have identified the Eaters in your classes—and if you were one of them, hopefully you won’t be anymore—you can plan to sit somewhere else. Make sure you eat before class if you think you’re going to get hungry or wait it out and grab something afterwards. This can be tricky if you have a class that spans the hours a normal person would eat lunch or when it takes place during reasonable dinner hours, but with a little foresight or willingness to delay gratification you can plan your meals around your schedule of classes. And you never know if your professor will be as vocal as mine was about his aversion to eating in class- whether it is viewed as being rude or if it will stir the little voices in his head in just the wrong way.
God’s Weigh:
http://godsweigh.wordpress.com/2007/08/21/life-has-interrupted-somewhat/
Life has interrupted, somewhat
All-in-all, things are going pretty well with my depending on God instead of food. I’m learning how to wait, and how to praise Him and lean into Him when I feel temptation. I’m also finding the need to extend a word of praise to Him when I encounter hunger.
I’m actually finding school to be quite conducive to obedience to God. I don’t like to eat during class, mainly because I’m usually too busy taking notes and participating for me to want eating to interrupt. Because of this, I’m usually very hungry by the time I get out of my morning class. I have very long breaks between my classes every day, and since I’m commuting over an hour to get to school nowadays, I don’t go home. Instead, I use the time I would be driving back and forth (and wasting precious gasoline in the process) to just stay at school and do homework.
Care and Feeding of College Professors:
http://drcusack.blogspot.com/
“What are the things students do that professors hate the most, and how can I avoid them?”
I’ve put off answering this question for a while because it’s a bit out of step with the rest of this blog. The idea here was to write about the things professors do that annoy students, not the other way around. But since it’s the end of the academic year and I’m out of questions, I’ll take a crack at this one.
I can think of several things off the top of my head that students can do to immediately irritate me….
1) The Cloak of Invisibility
The Cloak of Invisibility student confidently believes that no one in the room can see or hear her. Thus, she feels free to talk to the people around her, study for other classes, read and send text messages, and wander in and out of the classroom every time her phone vibrates or she fancies a snack.
This student fails to realize two important facts. The first is that the acoustics and lighting in college classrooms generally work both ways, and therefore, if she can see and hear the professor, the professor can see and hear her. The second is that behavior like this, even when done subtly and relatively quietly, can be really disruptive. At best, it’s more than a little rude to openly ignore what’s going on in the class around you, but at worst it will throw off and distract both the professor and the other students. It’s hard to concentrate on what you’re saying when a portion of your audience advertises the fact that they’re not listening to a word of it, and it’s hard to invest much energy into a class where one or more people obviously don’t care about the material. Thus, you end up with a vicious cycle: one or two students tune out of the class and start doing other things, which makes the professor and the rest of the class less engaged, which makes the class boring, which makes more people tune out.
Rate Your Students:
http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/2006/04/with-may-approaching-and-with-bit-of.html
…Someone Is Feeling All Gooey
My students today brought in donuts for everyone and a giant mocha latte for me today. It was just a regular class, 2 weeks to go in the semester, and the 4 or 5 who arranged it said it was “Just because.”
That’s the kind of thing that makes the amount of work I have to do all seem worth it. I have my days like any other university professor, and I think about the private sector, the money to be made, getting out from under my 3 committees, my task forces, my dinners with Trustees, and those sometimes troubling and needy students. But on mornings like this one, with a group of 15 happy and laughing students, white powdered donut mustaches on us all, I couldn’t ever imagine leaving.
You made my day, “kids,” and although I’m pretty sure none of them will see it, I just want someone to know that it meant the world to me.
Rate Your Students:
http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/2006/04/smackdown-on-whole-donut-thing.html
Smackdown On The Whole Donut Thing
A reply to the donut post.
I refuse to think of college students as “kids.” They aren’t kids, though each is someone’s child. They’re young to be sure. But they are also old enough to vote and old enough to die in battle. Some have already been to Iraq and back with National Guard units. Who are you calling “kid”?
I’m impatient too with donuts. And candy, whoever is giving it out. As one of my students, seemingly going mad, said to me, “It’s demeaning!” I’m tired of, “He’s a great teacher, he always lets us out early.” Oh, and pizza. Especially on filling-out-evaluations day. I think that a professor should use class meetings as intended (or replace them with even more-time-consuming stuff like individual conferences). Don’t pander with “treats.” Have students over for a meal, if you’d like to share food and conversation. That’s a genuine learning experience. Let your students see where and how you live. They’ll likely be nervous as hell, but it’ll mean something to them, and they’ll remember it.
And I’m impatient with crayons, and drawing pictures in class. I’m impatient with classroom games: wordsearches, bingo, and the rest of it. And the dreary “group presentations” followed by weak applause. I’m impatient with faculty members who semester-by-semester cheapen the value of an education by turning college into an extension of grade school.
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