David Foster Wallace on Teaching Millennials

How did David Foster Wallace feel about teaching millennial students? In today's video, we will read an extensive quote from Wallace on the existential crisis he would have at the start of every semester with students and their inability to write well.

Discover over 100 of David Foster Wallace's favorite books and the three books he wrote with by his side below

[edemont]

Why not do some educational videos on the fundamentals?

[michaeldundrea]

I can't blame this parents since the parents don't know what they don't know. I can't blame the teachers since this isn't something stressed by the district. I believe the blame falls on the district and the lack of funding. you can't expect anything to work if it isn't funded.

[enriccoc]

one major problem is class size. the more students in class, the more time you need to spend teaching to the poorest performer in any particular aspect of what you're teaching. What sizes are you classes? I think they found that teaching gains goes down once you get past 20 students

[acuerdox]

Youre crazy if you expect normal people to be proficient at parenting, its just not in our nature. Normal people just do and follow what the people above them tell them or do themselves

[FrancisGo.]

Patanjali, Sage of the Yoga Sutras, was also a master of grammar and usage.

Isn't that weird?

In his films, Wes Anderson has featured both sentence diagramming and siddhis derived from mental clarity.

I think he kind of knows what's up. 🤔

[timmellis]

I blame the parents first and the teachers second.
I've had a lot of jobs and I'm old now. I've noticed throughout my life that when people train you on something (especially at some job where you're getting paid, but actually anywhere), they blame you for not being able to do it. Without going too far into it, it's not your fault- it's their fault for not training you correctly.

I've gone through horrible training practices for what seems like millions of times where the person who trained me is now treating me like shit because I don't understand how to do it. As I got older, I started noticing that there's no way anyone could know how to do it after going through their shitty training.

Whenever I train someone on something, I just make sure I'm clear and I do it right. Then I watch them and show them their few mistakes.

Anyways parents are more responsible for their children than teachers are.

My grammar sucked shit when I finished high school. All my teachers thought I was an idiot... and I thought they were douche bags.

If you blow up at a student while reading his paper, he's going to feel like an idiot and he's going to be scared of you and he's going to think you're a dick. He's not going to think, "It's my fucking teachers' fault." It's just like calculus- he's going to think: "This shit is impossible." Meanwhile the university teacher is all red faced and glaring at him. Doesn't help. It happens in The Simpsons. Flanders is questioning Bart and Liza on the bible and Bart says, "I don't know? Jesus?" And Flanders takes a shit on the rug.

[danupsandowns]

I'm not American, thus my poor standard American English I'm afraid, but I feel so frustrated sometimes because I consider I received a middlebrow education. My family is not that well educated so I do blame my environment, not my parents at all, they did their best even if it wasn't enough. Right now I'm finishing my undergraduate studies and I blame my environment again, I'm at a "prestigious" institution yet it's not pushing me, it's not pushing anyone, to get better. My peers are lazy and dramatic, my professors are tired and disinterested. It feels like we are just letting time pass by and let the market and fortune decide what's useful to grab it and go with it.
Anger devours me because I know at this pace I'll never make it out of this cicle of poor choices and education.
Is this environment I refer to an education policy gone wrong? Or the sum of a community's lack of interest, vision, desire and drive to go beyond what they´re given?

[nathanbranson]

The parents are the ones who should be held accountable. I'm a teacher and I see the work ethic and driven-mindset embedded in certain students. I attribute part of that to parents who care about their kids. Parents (or some childhood authority figure, grandparent maybe) instill certain skills and values in their kids. I want to thank the parents who push their kids. It makes my job much easier. For me, I think we need to pay attention to what good parents are doing to raise competent kids rather than fixating on what all the "weaker students" are doing wrong.

[maithamboland]

Man, your material rules.. pretty neat stuff 👍🏻

[Ykpaina]

My grammar was always bad I just wanted to write son so I did . My graded college papers were edited by my fiancé now I work in finance so it’s not that important except for emails . Well there’s gram marly for that now.