Uni Students Face University Discipline: Essay

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Asking for help is discouraged through such a model. So is bringing in personal experience in an unauthorized fashion. By dispensing and withdrawing praise, the new self is shaped. But this sense of independence is 'felt' more than 'reality.'

The attempt at objective judgments seeps through -- IQ tests, grades, all require certain practices. Of course, some professors deviate from this formula, and may require portfolios or independent research in defiance of such conventions. But most methods of assessment suggest a certain kind of intelligence is required to succeed in university, and by implication, succeed in life. Most universities do not reward musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, and even spatial intelligence to the degree they do quantitative ability and verbal ability. Even before entering the university, through secondary school and the admissions process, students likely feel pigeonholed and 'tracked.' Failing to succeed is equated with being a failure in life in general, despite ample evidence that individuals can succeed without college.

Despite the desire of many, perhaps even most students, to be 'good students,' resistance is common. "Because the process of constituting subjects is riddled with conflicts and contradictions, there is always a space for resistance. There is always the possibility that the acting subject, who is both the target and source of power relations, may contest the dominant meanings and oppressive positions constructed by the discursive field in which she or he is located, because there is 'freedom, construed as the potential for autonomous recalcitrance'" (Grant 111). Some of this resistance may be self-defeating, like refusing to pay attention in class, not doing the reading, and flagrantly defying accepted norms and conventions socially. Such resistance can unintentionally bolster the system by these students, if it is observed that such defiant students do not succeed. Even if bad students do manage to eke out good grades, their location within the university system, the need to make an appearance of trying to gain a diploma and to make the financial and time investment worthwhile requires a certain degree of collaboration and deference to the university's ideals.

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Some students may fulfill the requirements, even excel, yet strive to remain fundamentally unchanged. They validate and are shaped by the system by becoming aware of social norms, and by paying lip service to conventions, but see it as artificial: "You can't store knowledge on paper just to get a degree; you must store it in your mind and heart. There I believe university fails. If these are concepts the university wants for its students -- 'the mask I can wear' -- it seems easy. I just hope that that's all it is and remains so. 'Just a mask'" (Grant 112).

In Grant's article, one Maori student challenges "the view which assumes that the more knowledge people have, the better they will be" (Grant 112). This, according to Grant is perhaps the ultimate resistance, but it does not really affect the institutional practices. It is an 'opting out' that is relatively silent, as the student strives to better his or her marks, even while believing the race is meaningless. Grant calls for a unified effort on the part of lecturers and students to change: "student learning assistance tutors can work with students, particularly marginalized ones, in new ways than those of simply helping them to adapt uncritically to the demands of the institution… Lecturers also have a responsibility to reflect critically on the question of what kind of students they are trying to produce" (Grant 113). Even as students have had more input into course structures in recent years, some students will always resist. Some of those resistant students will do so out of a lack of interest in learning and a desire to simply get a degree while not being shaped by institutional practices. Others will resist with genuine conscientious cultural objections. Learning demands change -- cultural change on the part of all students. But the concern remains that some students from certain cultures….....

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