Why are a lot of students so confrontational?

Question

The 18 to 25 year olds are fine , with a few exceptions, but the older students have an issue. I spend the majority of my time counseling students on their behavior. I teach at the college level

The behavior includes making fun of other students on a daily occurance, having social hour during class, thus disrupting class and this is from 30's year old.

Answer 1

I'm in the 18-25 group but from what I've experienced, some of the 30 somethings think they know it all and are just taking the course to validate what they think they already know (for resumes and that sort of thing).

On the other hand, I don't claim to know to know plenty of things (even if I answer question on Yahoo! Answers) and I'm usually willing to defer to somebody who's an expert in their field and has presumably spent a number of years studying it.

Answer 2

Well, I fall in the 18-25 range, and consider myself pretty non-confrontational, but I would love to teach at the college level someday, so I hope someone has a good answer! My best assesment is that some of these students already have a good deal of life experience, and some firm opinions about things, and thus feel more inclined to speak out about those opinions. Also, the older students I have had in my classes seem to feel more of an identification with the professor, who is generally closer to their age, than the younger students, and thus they are more bold than they would be otherwise due to seeing the professor as a peer rather than an authority figure. Best wishes in the rest of your teaching, hope you find some good answers!

Answer 3

I am an older student, with much life experience. I have found that going back to school, I often had more experience and knew more then the profs. For the most part, all of them (except one) were more then happy to have a student who was actually awake and participating in class.

I had an instructor last year, that was almost 20 years older then him, I came into the class cold, most of the students had done at least the fundamentals in high school. I was the one who answered questions, questions his lectures and contributed comments. I got an A in the class, he told me that he welcomed that challenge of a person with a more experienced perspective.

Maybe you have to change your attitude and instead of seeing these students as adversarial, you could use them to your advantage to by presenting other points of view.

Answer 4

Maybe you have a bias against the older students...most of them have had jobs and would therefore have less reason to have any respect for a university professor, or maybe you are causing the confontations in some way. As the educators say, keep an open mind, encourage diverse viewpoints, expand your mind..etc

Answer 5

Yeah right. Having fun?

Answer 6

most of the older age students have a big chip on their shoulder.

Answer 7

maybe its because they think they know everything