Selective Negligence

'Now it seems, after all, there are signs of intelligence; our students have mastered "selective negligence".  They have learned to be discerning when it comes to our benevolence: the pearls of wisdom we dispense.'

'What?'

'O yes. Indeed. The statistics are bleak. It's a fact full-time students study less than 20 hours a week. They only attend class when a grade is at stake. They've no concept of education for education's sake. If the lecture doesn't aid a summative assignment they'd rather be shelf-stacking or auditing a consignment of goods delivered to Aldi or Waitrose. Terrible, but one suspects they're not interested in critical prose.'

'Really?'

'However, I've just been to a conference and, thank God, help is at hand. There are plenty of books to enable us to understand that - for now - formative assessment exorcises the ignorant and bland. It's a loop-hole in the modular system.'

'Right.'

'While I have the floor, let me address the issue of feedback. We're spending too much time on it; it's breaking one's back. But, despite the energy we expend in responding to student work, according to the National Student Survey (NSS), it's something that we shirk. Now, the NSS is a nuisance and a bore; believe me, collating its data is a dispiriting chore. But the mothers and fathers of the children we recruit take note of that information, so we must to boot. If we're going to succeed as a profit-making organisation, we have to respond to this new form of contagion, where the customer decides the quality of the goods s/he wants to buy. If we don't, the institution will implode and die.'

'Well, that's all fine and good and I could wish them well. But I'm sick of this role and they can all go to hell. However, the notion of selective negligence has a certain resonance. Does this also apply to staff: we eternal artists-in-residence? I mean, is this a ploy that we could, and should, employ? Is a limited perspective necessarily qualitatively defective? If we focussed our attention on the things that truly matter, like research and the creative interpretation of data, perhaps we would end up doing our jobs a little bit better. It's just an idea, after all.'