Fellow students, it has come to my attention over the course of the first half of our current academic term that we have a serious problem on our hands here at Dartmouth. Some of you are probably thinking that this piece is about to descend into yet another tirade on the matter of the alumni lawsuit. Since I still don't know any of the details of that situation, I can assure you, the following paragraphs will be nothing of the sort. Rather, the issue on which I focus our attention is one of "parroting" in the classroom. If you're not entirely sure what I'm talking about, then keep reading. Your coffee can wait.
"Parroting" is the tendency in classroom discussion for students to repeat one another, nearly verbatim, passing off the comments of others -- uttered no more than a few moments before -- as their own original thoughts. For your edification, an example: In one of my courses -- a lecture-style class that involves significant amounts of student participation -- the professor presented an idea to the class to discuss. One student commented that the professor's remarks reminded him of a certain product he once saw advertised on television. Fair enough. Immediately thereafter, another student raised her hand and proceeded to comment that the professor's presentation reminded her of the identical product mentioned by our first student, delivering her remarks without making any reference to the previous student's comment, or acknowledging his existence in any way whatsoever. I had to do a double-take. Had I just heard what I thought I heard? Oh, the audacity!
I don't know how I never realized this was going on before. Maybe my four classes and thesis research are pushing my brain to superhuman levels of perception. Hopefully, X-ray vision and gravity-defiance are next, but let's not get away from ourselves here. In any event, following the aforementioned incident, I began to notice the phenomenon taking place in another one of my classes, and I find it more than a little disconcerting.
It is our responsibility to exercise a little self-control and put a stop to something that genuinely detracts from the academic experience of attending class. This is not the faculty's responsibility; if professors called students out for flagrantly parroting one another, classroom participation would disappear altogether. Clearly that would not be an adequate solution to our problem. Rather, students need to take it upon themselves to not actively destroy our collective learning experience. This means that if you're sitting in class with a dynamite idea about the short story you're reading this week, and by some foul trick of the lighting -- damn those fluorescents! -- the professor calls on someone else before you who articulates the very same point you were thinking of ... then you lose. Sorry, Charlie. The mature thing to do at this point is to take a step back, respectfully concede defeat to your peer and get your mindgrapes working on another idea. Classes last at least an hour, so I'm sure you'll have another opportunity to contribute.
The plain and simple truth is that I don't want to sit through an hour of people going back and forth repeating one another's thoughts. Neither do you. We don't learn anything that way, and I just end up sitting in class, playing square or doodling the Van Halen logo in my notebook's margins; I've got this one really cool version where the "VH" symbol is on fire, courtesy of one particularly egregious student last week. Clearly, not a valuable use of tuition dollars. In all seriousness, the sort of intelligent discourse that we should be seeking out cannot thrive when people content themselves with feeding off the ideas of others instead of investing their energy in constructing an original argument. Moreover, the rest of us -- professors included -- do indeed notice when you've parroted, so you're really not impressing anyone. In fact, it's highly likely that your professor will have a lower opinion of you as a result of such inane contribution. At the very least, they'll think you were asleep when your classmates were speaking.
We all need to do our part and try to rectify this situation. If you have nothing to add to a discussion at any given moment -- we all have bad days and there's nothing wrong with that -- then please, take heed of the old saying, "Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
