Uni Students Face University Discipline:

¶ … Uni Students Face

University discipline: Becoming the perfect student

Transitioning into the university environment is a two-fold process for the new student. On one hand, he or she is forced to let go of his or her dependant identity as a child. The new student must self-regulate the most basic aspects of his or her life, such as going to class without prodding, budgeting study time outside of class, and regulating his or her eating and sleeping patterns. But the student is not wholly independent, as Barbara Grant points out in her article "Disciplining Students: the construction of student subjectivities." Every student, good and bad is disciplined as he or she must conform to, or at least respond to certain social demands of the university environment. The student learns obedience to certain norms as well as discards old norms. Grant takes "a Foucauldian view of the university as a disciplinary block which produces subjected and practiced bodies, or docile" bodies that move in certain ways, conform in certain ways, and even rebel in a fairly standardized fashion (Grant 102).

The university's institutional model of the ideal student has shifted and changed over the years. However, within the context of liberal education, the resonant model of an "autonomous, rational, thinking individual" still holds an honored place in the rhetoric of many schools (Grant 102). The student is expected to learn about a broad range of subjects and to self-select his or her major and life course, with relatively minimal direction from advisors. To succeed in the estimation of the school, individual competitiveness (in terms of grades) rather than seeking teacher-oriented direction is encouraged (Grant 102). Students themselves may reinforce such ideas, resisting the idea of 'spoon-feeding' on the part of lecturers. Also, the increased drive to allow students to tailor-make their own education through self-designed majors further reflects this trend, such as at Brown and Wesleyan Universities in America, which have no specific requirements for graduation, other than the completion of a specialized major. This undercuts, however, another ideal of liberal education, the 'well-rounded' individual, socialized into liberal arts, common core of expected knowledge. Both the traditional mode and the new multicultural or otherwise self-designed student model still prioritize the need of the individual to learn to do things him or herself, educationally. Students who are too shy may suffer, if they cannot seek out appropriate advising or are reluctant to speak up in class. Ironically, although the university may embrace multiculturalism in its offerings of majors, students from cultures where individualism is not prioritized may have difficulty in acclimating to their new environment.

Grant points out that some students need additional assistance because of learning disabilities, and despite of the fictional independence of the ideal student, all students find themselves placed to some degree in a position of inferiority regarding their professors. Students are embedded in certain expectations -- expected to succeed autonomously in some respects, yet rendered dependant in others. They are also encouraged to be 'good' students, almost immediately from orientation. Every freshman student is subject to a series of lectures about what constitutes appropriate academic conduct, the expected GPA they are supposed to maintain, and also appropriate behavior regarding sexual and racially sensitive language.

Grant's article, written in 1997 during the height of multicultural debate in academia, questions the effects of such discourse of tolerance. "For student-subjects, then, while some positions are made more likely, others are made 'more difficult'. For example, it is often easiest for the young, white, middle-class male to be constituted as the 'good' student because the characteristics of this position sit most snugly with his other subject positions…for a minority group working-class older woman such a fit is almost impossible and the agony of trying to achieve it is intense" (Grant 106). A student who must work so hard that this conflicts with his or her class requirements or prolongs obtaining a degree, who must remedy deficits in previous education through learning assistance, or cannot fully participate in the social environment of the school is thus considered a 'bad' student. And if balancing these various obligations becomes difficult "the culture of autonomy and individualism at the university constructs students who believe that success or failure lies with them" (Grant 110). 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.

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).