College students always looking down is a big downer!

By Prof. Jack Mandel
Campus News

I may be old-school but…

I don’t understand what’s going on with college students today. It’s obvious that they have changed so much since I started teaching at Nassau Community College in 1978. There is less and less verbal and face-to-face communication with one another! People always look down, never ahead, and do not smile as much. But why?

In a word … smartphones!

You see, although students stand in a hallway in close proximity to each other (probably inches away), there is no facial or communicative recognition of each other. They are probably in the same class waiting for it to begin – but they would never know it. I call it being in a “personal time zone warp.” And, unfortunately, this is what has become the norm, not only in colleges, but in the workplace, the playground, the library, in a restaurant, and the mall – EVERYWHERE!

Look, we will never be back to the days of rotary phones. In fact, landlines may become extinct in another decade or two. Only those of us 40 and over can appreciate a public pay phone and the privacy it gave an individual. Today, if you talk on your cell, YOUR business is now MY business. No one seems to care about privacy.

And I don’t seem to get it. It’s almost like an addiction. Students in high schools and colleges need to be told over and over again to put their mobile devices away – again and again.
And don’t think it is totally appropriate to text a “thank you” after a job interview. NO, NO, NO. A phone call or a written (huh?) letter is far more meaningful and shows greater thought and interest!

It’s almost like the SPOKEN word has lost its place in society. I have to laugh when I think back to my early days of teaching at NCC in the early 1980s. Everyone talked and a class would be told to “calm down” so I could take attendance. Today, I walk in to TOTAL SILENCE as each student is in “his or her personal time zone warp.” I surmise this is the end-product of a high-tech society (sarcasm). Readers, what do you think?

Have a great summer! And please, when you come back to class, speak up a little more! LOL!

Jack K. Mandel is celebrating his 40th year as a professor of marketing at Nassau Community College in Garden City, NY. He is recipient of the prestigious Outstanding Teacher Award conferred by the NYS Association of Two-Year Colleges.