What's Meghan's apparent attitude toward ethics? What does the poet think of her attitude? Is Meghan's attitude toward class and her social role as a student ethical? Why or why not? Is Meghan a potential Stephen Glass? Explain.
(Don't treat this as just another task to get through. Use some thought. I don't wish to read anymore any three- or four-line responses submitted at the last minute.)
Please respond by 4 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 7.
TO MEGHAN, ASLEEP IN ETHICS CLASS
As if what people are is all they’ll ever be
you close your eyes
and it’s suddenly night everywhere and always
nothing can reach you not even
the agitated ghosts of ancient philosophers
swirling around our hot basement classroom
but to you it’s just words love death etc.
so why wake you to see the firelight
beating frantically on the walls of Plato’s cave
when your sleeping face is beautifully composed
like that of a fairy-tale princess
with a piece of poisoned apple caught in her throat
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
35 comments:
Meghan appears to be disinterested in the study of ethics and is demonstrating her lack of interest by breaking the ethical code of a student. As a student, it is expected to give full attention to the teacher no matter how dry the subject matter. By falling asleep, she has failed to complete her duty to the teacher. While this action may have been an ethical violation, I do not believe it will contribute to her becoming the next Stephen Glass. Students are generally over-worked and stressed, the fact that Meghan fell asleep in class could have just been an accident and should not call her professionalism into question.
Last night I was students messing around with their "devices" or zoning out as I stood up in front of the class and worked my little heart out to make things intellectually exciting and ethically relevant. Sure, they had other things to do and to worry about. But, hey, so did I! My life -- and feelings and thoughts -- are as important to me as yours are to you. That's an important moral consideration.
Meghan does not seem to have any interest in her ethics class. If she did, she most likely would not have fallen asleep. Granted, we don't know the circumstances she was under, but by falling asleep she is coming off as not being interested in learning about ethics. Not only does her professor get this feeling from her, but also her classmates. By falling asleep she is being rude and disrespectful. Sure she may just be tired, or not feeling well, but by signing up for a class you make a promise to be there. Being there means not only sitting in the class, but paying attention, participating, and not texting, surfing the web, or falling asleep. By sleeping she is giving off the vibe that she could care less about what her professor has to say, regardless of if that is what she actually thinks or not. If the professor is taking the time to teach her, she should be present and listening. If other students are taking the time to listen to the teacher, she should too. It's not fair to her professor or to her that she is asleep. She doesn't HAVE to be there. Nobody is forcing her to be there. If she wants to sleep, she doesn't have to go to the class and waste everyone else's time.
As for Meghan being the next Stephen Glass? This is a little more difficult to figure out. By falling asleep Meghan is missing important information she would need to know if she wanted to do anything in the journalism field. She's actually missing important information she would need to know about life ethics in general. She could easily go on to be a journalist and do something wrong because she didn't know it was wrong, all because she fell asleep during that one lesson (or maybe more if this is a common occurrence for Meghan). Maybe that lesson was about how journalists always need to tell the truth and they can't fabricate anything, and so she does it not realizing it's wrong therefore becoming like Glass. Or maybe the lesson was on Glass himself and everything you shouldn't do, that he did. Then again we talked in class yesterday about how our ethics are pretty set as is. From a young age we are taught ethics and it's hard to change them the older we get. A professor can talk to a class about ethics, and while they listen during class they may not actually take in what he or she is saying and follow through with it. That being said, Stephen Glass may have attended every single one of his ethics classes (if he had one) and did extremely well. He could have been present, alert, and participating, but that doesn't mean he actually vowed to practice what was learned. As we also said in class, there is no oath for journalism. There are "rules", but some people don't follow them. So even if Meghan was awake, she may not have followed through with what she had learned. I think that anyone can easily become a Stephen Glass, whether they are alert in their ethics class or not. Meghan can become like Stephen Glass, but so can anyone else in the world. We are all vulnerable to becoming like Stephen Glass, but hopefully by staying awake and paying attention when we learn about him we will not follow in his footsteps.
Meghan’s attitude towards ethics is pretty ignorant. She thinks she knows everything therefore falling asleep in class. As she is asleep, she is missing important knowledge that could help her improve or re-evaluate her life as a student and as a future journalist. Meghan’s reaction is stoic as if nothing in class is interesting to her. It hasn’t moved her emotions in a way for her to want to pay attention. The ghosts of ancient philosophers are trying to wake her, beat her conscious so she can listen, but by sleeping she is blocking out vital information. Meghan already made up her mind and she doesn’t care no matter how much firelight or warning is being waved in her face. Meghan’s attitude is not ethical or smart because she paid for the class; she paid to be there so she should PAY attention. That is the role of a student. You sit in class, focus on the lecture given from the professor, take notes and participate. Pay attention and in the long run, it is your decision on what to do with the information absorbed. I’m not necessarily sure if Meghan is a potential Stephen Glass, but from the way she is acting she may be. Meghan is completely ignoring the ethical training brought up in class that could help her career in the future. She could miss a lesson on the fabrication of quotes and later in her journalism career manipulate a person’s quote in an interview. Meghan could have also made up her mind and decided what kind of journalist she will be. She could down the road turn out to be a good journalist and realize falling asleep in her ethics class was wrong. She could regret not paying close attention in class. What you do now can affect what decisions you make in the future.
As the rest of the comments have reiterated, it is clear that Meghan's bored and apathetic attitude towards her ethics class annoys the poet. He states how "the agitated ghosts of ancient philosophers" would be rolling over in their graves at the site of a student sleeping during a class that can provide such valuable lessons. The poet believes she is basically a lost cause and there is no sense in trying to wake her because her disinterest will prevent her from retaining any vital information anyway.
Meghan's attitude towards the class and her social role are not ethical. As Professor Good stated in a previous class, as students we have made a promise to the teacher to show up, participate, and indulge in the lessons. In return, the professor provides students with valuable knowledge to further us in the future. Meghan's lack of attention, and even respect for that matter, break the unwritten agreement between professor and student. She should have just stayed at home and slept in her bed rather than sleep at her desk.
Meghan could potentially be the next Stephen Glass, but not solely because she sleeps during class. A student who focused during an ethics class could also still potentially be the next Glass. Ethics classes demonstrate the morally correct decision for a variety of scenarios, but no one knows what an individual will decide to do until they are actually put into the situation themselves. Therefore, Meghan's attitude may demonstrate her lack of morals and make her more susceptible to unethical decisions, but it is not for certain. Most of our values are instilled in us at an early age, so if she was brought up well, she could still become a successful and honest journalist. Just because someone may not realize the disrespectful implications they cause by falling asleep in a college class, does not mean they are destined to be a Stephen Glass. However, it seems as though the poet thinks this way when he talks about her beautiful sleeping face, "like that of a fairy-tale princess/with a piece of poisoned apple caught in her throat." To me, these lines state that the poet will not disrupt her from her ignorance now because she thinks she knows everything but soon she will have her downfall(the poisoned apple) that will remain caught in her throat and hinder her career.
I agree with most of the prior posts. Meghan has a very bad attitude towards her ethics class. If it was something of importance to her, she would make the time to pay the attention to it. The attention she signed up for and that it deserves. She would fulfill her promise as a student.
The poet is very upset with Meghan’s actions. He thinks it a personal loss for Meghan. It is quite evident that he thinks that she will be lost to the class and the lessons of the world with the lines, “you close your eyes/and it’s suddenly night everywhere and always.” He believes that Meghan made a decision to be ignorant and that she is doomed to succumb to those mistakes that she may have avoided if she only kept her eyes open.
Meghan doesn’t hold ethics in high regards, but I don’t think that it is a severe situation. I am not auguring that it is very disrespectful that she is asleep during the class. It is not only a class, but a life subject of importance and should be treated as such. There could be some outside circumstance that has led to Meghan’s downfall in class, but it is still a lesson she has failed to pay attention to. To question whether or not it is ethical as her for a student to fall asleep the answer is no - but will that potentially turn her into a Stephen Glass? It is highly unlikely. She could already be on the path of Stephen Glass with that lesson or without that lesson. As stated in class, we as students come into this class with ideas of our own mindset of ethics. New information may be placed before us, but ultimately the class will not have the impact that it could without an open mind and a willingness to learn such concepts. Maybe the only real way to tell if Meghan is headed in the right direction is if someone wakes her up and asks her why she is sleeping. What truth she begins to tell may give an answer.
Meghan does not think staying awake in ethics class is worth her time. The poet deems Meghan a lost cause when he says "so why wake you to see the firelight." Meghan does not understand the complex issues students are grappling with in her class and how these lessons are beneficial to her. The poet illustrates her arrogance in line 1- "As if what people are is all they'll ever be/you close your eyes/and suddenly it's night everywhere and always." Meghan and possibly her parents are paying for her education. By agreeing to go to college she has made a promise to herself and her parents that she will not only attend class but be mentally present as well. If Meghan cannot keep a promise she has made to her family then it might be easier for her to break promises she makes to her colleagues and sources when reporting a story. I don't know if this incident will potentially cause Meghan to become a Stephen Glass. She might be forced to take ethics more seriously if her job/career calls for higher ethical standards. The last line in the poem illustrates the poet's opinion that Meghan's actions will have consequences. Maybe Meghan needs a real life experience to fully realize the importance of ethics and how analyzing her value system can make her a better person and journalist.
While there is a lot to condemn about Meghan's stellar performance in apathy during her ethics class (i.e. the sleeping and most likely drooling), I find in return there is much more to commend about the poet/apparent teacher's point of view. Granted, Meghan is a complete dope for choosing to catch z's during a class period, but the professor has done well to recognize that although Meghan is pretty much giving them and the rest of class the middle finger, by deciding to choose sleeping over learning it is pretty much her loss.
That being said, I find that referring to Meghan as the next, or even a potential Stephen Glass would be an incredibly misplaced complement. As stated in the text and featured in the film Shattered Glass, Glass (although flawed) was an ambitious student who edited to the University of Pennsylvania's student paper ( a task which most assuredly he couldn't do in his sleep, pun intended), Meghan cannot even be bothered to stay awake. There again, maybe Meghan's sleep habits are doing more justice to the field of journalism than the malicious intent and deception behind Stephen's work.
Either way you look at it, as stated above Meghan's actions are a complete slap in the face to not only her classmates but to the teacher as well. If she can't keep her eyes peeled, she doesn't deserve to know. So again, kudos to the poet for letting their words fall on deaf ears.
My impression about Meghan's statement, is that she believes that taking an ethics class is all fantasy to her. She does not take her work seriously and feels that the class itself is boring. Further on, she does not seem interested in hearing anyone's opinion or constructive criticism for the work being placed in front of her. She is literally blocking out useful, important information that can help her in the long run. She is not willing to take responsibility for the things she does, especially as it pertains to sleeping and not paying attention in a class. From my view, Meghan believes only what she wants to believe and will not adhere to the directions set out by the professor.
In regards to ethics Meghan’s thoughts about the topic are very ill-mannered, carefree and un-informed on behalf of her own mistake. Because she decided to fall asleep in class she has broken her own code of ethics as a student. She is not giving her professor the attention he deserves, her classmates the knowledge she may have or opinions she is thinking, and she is just being plain rude in general. Due to the response she is exhibiting her attitude displays uncaring attributes towards the idea of ethics. She feels that it is un-important, or maybe that she already knows what is being discussed so she doesn’t have to fully pay attention. The poet agrees with this, and that Meghan does not seem to care. This just displays ignorance in her character. Overall, her attitude toward class and her social role as a student is completely unethical. In addition, when the author says “with a piece of poisoned apple caught in her throat” I feel as if it is a metaphor for ignorance and that even when she wakes up she still will not be fully aware and knowledgeable of the topic because she thought she “knew it all” when she fell asleep in the beginning. Also, Meghan can potentially be a Stephen Glass, however if her unawareness and careless attitude towards the topic continues she will never fully know the ethical issues, ways of dealing with them or consequences that can be a result of them.
Essentially, sleeping in class means you are shutting yourself out from your surroundings. Meghan is doing just that. If she made the conscious decision to go to class then she also should have made an effort to keep herself awake in class -- coffee, tea, 5 hour energy perhaps, instead of going in tired knowing there is a possibility of falling asleep. We do not know what her situation is - if she's tired, sick, whatever - no matter what, falling asleep in class is wrong. It's disrespectful and very rude to the professor and honestly, I think it's a passive aggressive way of say "This is sooooo boring."
Furthermore, she is a student and as a student she should make every effort to stay awake in class. By not doing so, she made an unethical decision and didn't complete her job as a student, which is to attend and participate in class. If a student leaves class without having learned anything, even then they are failing at their job as a student. As students, we are supposed to learn what we are taught and apply them to our lives in some way.
The poet doesn't seem to care too much about her sleeping in class. I get the sense that they are slightly annoyed, but at the same time apathetic because the student doesn't care. It's basically a situation of "if you don't care, neither do I." Also, it's clear to say Meghan doesn't care too much about ethics, demonstrated by her body language (which speak louder than words) however, I don't think that she is the next Stephen Glass and wouldn't make that comparison. Although both aren't fulfilling their duties in an ethical way, we don't know if this is Meghan's pattern in all classes, or just this one.
Meghan seems to not be interested at all in her ethics class. Falling asleep in a class give the teacher, and the rest of the class, the impression that she could care less about the topic and would rather be doing something else. Falling asleep is more disrespectful to the teacher more than anything. She is hurting herself by not paying attention and sleeping, but she is also showing the teacher that what he cares so much about and thrives upon teaching to his students means nothing to her. The line "with a piece of poisoned apple caught in her throat" really stuck out to me. I think the poet was trying to say that what she is doing, like i said earlier, is harmful to her. By not listening and paying attention in class, she is hurting herself because she is missing out on valuable lessons. All in all, Meghan is being unethical herself by choosing to not pay attention.
After reading the poem and the chapter 2, I do feel that Meghan can potentially be the next Stephen Glass. After sitting through the 2 classes of media ethics and a class I took last year, I feel as if I learned so much about ethics that will definitely shape up how i act in my career. Every lesson learned in these classes is valuable and worth our time. As mentioned in previous posts, I do think that we all already have our mind set on what we deem ethical and not ethical, but just by listening in class and strongly agreeing with your professor and can change your mind. This is why I think that falling asleep and missing just one lesson can affect your future.
Meghan appears to be completely apathetic towards ethics. The fact that she fell asleep during ethics class suggests that she places very little importance on ethics (even less than sleep). Her attitude towards her social role as a student is not ethical, because being a student is not simply filling a seat. Students should actively participate, attempt to understand concepts and terms, and grapple with the ethical questions that case studies raise. The poet seems to subscribe to the belief that Meghan is only hurting herself, because not even the “agitated ghosts of ancient philosophers” can reach her (never mind the professor). The poet alludes to the “Allegory of the Cave,” which speaks to the fact that Meghan would rather live in her “beautifully composed...fairy tale” (shadows) than reality (the objects that project them).She has “a piece of poisoned apple caught in her throat” which is symptomatic of the greater issue at hand (her ignorance towards ethics). Meghan is only harming herself by sleeping during ethics class. While Meghan is nowhere near the ideal ethics student, I would not say that she is a potential Stephen Glass. Stephan Glass was described as manipulative and ambitious whereas Meghan seems to be none of those things. She seems more uninterested and blasé rather than cut-throat. Meghan is okay with sleeping through ethics and remaining ignorant while Glass deliberately disregarded the ethical code in order to gain acclaim and recognition.
Sleeping in class is a clearly rude and un-attentive behavior. Although we don't know the background behind why Meghan would be sleeping in class—maybe she there is something in her personal life that is influencing this behavior—if you feel yourself dosing off, you should excuse yourself to get a coffee or food. Even if you are not feeling well, and that is attributing to your sleepiness, it would be more polite to excuse yourself from class altogether.
From an outside viewer's perspective, it is difficult to tell if Meghan consciously knew that she was falling asleep or if it was a complete accident. Even still, Meghan is defying her ethical role as a student. As a student you are expected to devote your class time to that particular course and be present, attentive and participating throughout that time period. At times it may feel difficult to pay attention in class and class does not seem worth your time, but its important to remind yourself how much more difficult it is for the professor to lecture to a classroom full of students with their eyes glazed over, gadgets in hand, or attention fixated on their computer screen. For a professor that would feel discouraging and it is also highly disrespectful.
In the line, "when your sleeping face is beautifully composed/like that of a fairy-tale princess/with a piece of poisoned apple caught in her throat," the poet's comparison of Meghan to a fairy-tale princess means she is aloof, ignorant and helpless. I think Meghan's situation parallels Stephen Glass' because they are both defying their own ethical standards. On the other hand, I do not think that she is another Stephen Glass because it is a different circumstance and by falling asleep, she was not lying or cheating as Glass did.
The author suggests that, by sleeping in her ethics class, Meghan expressed an extreme disinterest in the material. He emphasizes the fact that Meghan is blocking out intellectual discussions that would fuel her mind, if only she had stayed awake. He makes her appear ignorant and arrogant, and he compares her to a naïve princess who foolishly ate a poisoned apple.
When considering our discussion on the contract people enter when they become students, one would think Meghan is breaking a promise. Students agree to digest class material, not to sleep through a lesson. Her actions seem irresponsible, disrespectful, and self-hindering.
However, in the context of ethical behavior, I think it’s important to consider situations that may have been occurring outside the focus of the poem. It is clear that the entire point of view of the poem is from a frustrated and disappointed professor. An ethical person, when seeing a student sleeping in class, though frustrated and disappointed, would consider the multitude of “roles” people play in their lives.
Meghan could be tired because she has demanding parents or children; she could be tired because her other five professors push her harder than her ethics professor; she could be tired because she was taking care of her alcoholic best friend then night before, or because she was driving four hours home to help her brother take care of their sick mom.
An ethical person would not jump to conclusions before giving Meghan some credit. What time was the class? Is this a frequent event? If so, perhaps the professor should have spoken to her and asked if something was wrong in her life outside of the ethics class. That would make the professor seem much more ethical and compassionate.
Other than the poem’s lack of empathy, this poem is quite beautiful. It’s succinct, conveying its point efficiently by planting strong images in the reader’s mind. I really enjoy the line enjambment and the third stanza’s language. It annoys me that the whole thing is unpunctuated, though. The poem could have easily been punctuated while still maintaining its continuity. However, that’s just a personal preference, I guess. I never liked Cummings. At least the poet doesn’t lowercase his “I’s.”
As for Meghan becoming the next Stephen Glass...
Sure, the big mistakes start with a bunch of little carless actions. Still it takes much more than the act of falling asleep in class to create a sociopathic, psychotic writer. Glass was obviously mentally unstable. I'm sure there are plenty of tired students that maintain their sanity, and I'm sure Glass didn't sleep on the job while he concocted those grand schemes.
Here's the deal. . . One sentence responses don't count. . . Unless you do it as a haiku, in which case I may consider it a response showing some deliberation. . . Meghan was tired? Stressed? Well, what if the pilot of a plane you boarded was tired & stressed or the president of the USA or your surgeon or the judge about to sentence you. . . Come on, folks, try to get outside your assumptions and preconceptions.
Btw, I wrote the poem, so you might go a little easy on insulting the poet.
Alright, so Meghan fell asleep in class. It happens. Who is to say that this isn't an isolated incident? Maybe ethics is an 8am class and she worked a double or an over night shift? Is it a bit disrespectful? Yes. Is it totally unforgivable? No. Give the girl a break. I womder how many of my classmates who are condemning Meghan's behavior have fallen asleep in a class before. Sometimes you just need a nap. Can Meghan become the next stephen Glass? Possibly, but unlikely. Yes, she will miss things in class, but she might have read them in the class's text. Also, with all of the media coverage the Glass scandal got, it is hard to believe that someone who is taking ethic's courses or has an interest in journalism not to know about it. I mean, they did make a Hollywood movie about it.
Reading a textbook isn't the same as a give-and-take dialog in texture, process, or effect. If it was, we'd just hand out textbooks and cancel class henceforth. Socrates wrote nothing of his philosophy down. His teaching was all in the face-to-face encounters.
I'm going to be honest. I find some of these responses stunningly flip. They're actually kind of disturbing, as they seem to patronize the class and the subject and me. Or maybe I'm just the sensitive type.
Meghan's attitude seems to be apathetic and complacent. Apathetic in that she shows indifference to the subject matter and complacent because she forgot why she applied and entered college in the first place -- to get a degree, and hopefully learn something.
Perhaps the first line of the poem is the most revealing about how Meghan feels, and similarly, how the poet feels about her. Certainly after spending years and years in school one may start to believe that all they will ever be is a student. Similarly, maybe one wishes to always remain a student, because student's, for the most part, do not share the same responsibilities as other (young) adults. That's not to say that student's have no responsibilities, but rather that the responsibilities do not carry as much weight as, say, a newlywed couple that needs to begin making decisions for their children.
I do not see Meghan as the next Stephen Glass, because although what she has done, by sleeping, is wrong in many ways, it is slightly different than what Mr. Glass had chosen to do. She may show some signs of poor ethical behavior, but who doesn't from time to time? Also, one cannot gauge the maturity level of another based on a poem. But, as the professor once stated, maybe it's too late to teach college students about ethics. Maybe what we have been taught by our parents, teachers, family friends, etc. has already been made into a foundation on which our mentalities and attitudes will always be based. Personal paradigms, as it were. Mr. Glass clearly had very loose, or low standards as to what he chose to be ethical.
Meghan is content to let the lessons of the real world pass her by while she sleeps. As we have discussed in class, being a student is a social role, similar to having a job or being a parent. This role consists of expectations of a certain type of professional behavior as well as personal responsibilities to carry out. Surprisingly, naps don’t fall under this category. Meghan does not value her social role as a student and her unconscious approach to learning is unethical. The poet thinks this attitude makes her a lost cause. If she does not feel the need to pay attention to ethics then he will not wake her up and spoon-feed the lessons to her. As she dozes through minute upon minute of class time, she does not only miss material that could affect her final grade, but material that could affect her future judgments as a journalist. We have already learned from Meghan’s choice of naptime that she may not have the most trustworthy moral compass. To fall asleep in an ethics class isn’t doing her any favors. However, I don’t want to think that she is a potential Stephen Glass just because she nodded off in class, but I can’t ignore that this behavior bespeaks a tendency to take an easy (and disrespectful) way out of a challenging situation.
Megan is not only disinterested in ethics, she is unaware how this class will benefit her in the future. She is obviously being extremely rude in doing this because the teacher has a life and responsibilities outside of the classroom that he might want to attend to as well. She should learn to be more considerate in the classroom, because the fact that she cannot stay awake in class is not promising for her future as a journalist. Journalism is a competitive field, you have to want it, you have to be alert and interested. You cannot have a lack of curiosity or a lack of caring for what others think. Being curious and analytical are the ingredients that journalist a good journalist. Megan should either get more sleep or reconsider her career path.
The author is frustrated with Megans lack of caring. He thinks she is being rude and sees that she is very narrow minded. He explains that there is a poison apple in her mouth (which is obviously a snow white reference) which implies that she has foolishly consumed the idea that this class’s subject matter is unimportant.
Megan is not being ethical toward the class or in her social role as a student. She should have stayed home if she felt so tired. Even though I believe as a student, it is our choice what we get out of our classes; she is unintentionally telling the teacher that the content and not important to her.
As far as Megan being the next Stephan Glass, I think this might be a stretch. She is a young college student and could learn more before entering her career.
As a student Meghan is definitely not interested towards her Ethics Class and what the Teacher has to say and offer to the students. Clearly Meghan is doing the wrong thing by sleeping during class when she should be giving 100 percent of her attention to the teacher. Her attitude toward the class seems to be taken as a joke and something she can breeze right through. Throughout the poem, the poet takes Meghan's attitude toward the class to be rude, bad-mannered and inconsiderate, which is something no teacher wants to have happen in their own class. After reading this poem repeatedly, I feel that in my opinion the poet does not want to wake the student when he/she says "when your sleeping face is beautifully composed like that of a fairy-tale princess". Even though as a teacher you want to wake the student and embarrass her in front of the class, you do not want to because she is in a perfect state.
Megan's attitude towards her social role as a student is not indifferent to many students. Her attitude to the ethics and philosophic opinion on journalism practice is not dissimilar to many Journalists.
While Megan may be at risk of becoming another Stephen Glass I agree with the New Yorker's Anthony Lane that scapegoating individuals and making them seem like 'a rotten apple in the barrel' oversimplifies the situation.
Journalism as a whole needs to review the amount of pressure placed on young journalists. In the Postmodern era when truth is considered by some as an impossible ask, it can be easy for young journalists to misjudge hyperbole from damaging lies.
When young journalists are put under increasing pressure to turn out fantastical stories at impossible deadlines it is only a matter of time before other Stephen Glass' arises.
If editors and the public want journalists to stop cutting corners and want true good journalism they may have to start paying a little more for it.
I think this poem could relate to what we discussed about in our last class. The first line “As if what people are is all they’ll ever be,” I believe, means that we all have our own ethics that we develop through our lifetime. These ethics are so well developed in ourselves; other’s idea of ethics might not really matter to us. We believe what we want to believe.
Things can only “reach you,” if you want it to because it goes along with your ethics. In the end, it’s only your ethics that matter to you.
In Plato’s scenario, prisoners in the cave only saw the cave. We, outside of the cave, know there are more then just the cave. The prisoners in the cave thought the shadows on the wall were real, alive. All their life they thought the shadows they saw are real. If someone shows them the figure that makes the shadow, the prisoners would still see it as two different things. They will always believe the shadows are real things.
I believe the poet thinks Meghan is ignorant, but it can’t be helped. The poem understands and believes the same way, in some sense. The poet believes the ethics he/she teaches will save her from the “piece of poisoned apple caught in her throat.”
Meghan’s attitude toward class and her social role as a student, is not ethical in my view because I believe we should get the education we demanded for and sleeping in class, your losing it.
Meghan may or may not be the next Stephen Glass. In class, she could learn the importance of truth but while sleeping, she might already have a perspective of truth. Even if she stayed awake, it does not say she will change her perspective after listening to the lecture.
Aristotle believed that the most important virtue that humans could have was citizenship and showing wisdom in everyday activities. I think the author is bitter at Meghan for falling asleep in class. It is our responsibility as students to stay awake, pay attention, and actually learn something from our professors. When people make the decision to go to college, they are making a commitment to invest in their education. If you don't take advantage of all the learning opportunities college has to offer, then you are wasting a lot of people's time, energy, and money.
When you look around a classroom and see people not paying attention, it sets a bad vibe for the whole entire class. The professor might see a student like Meghan and get discouraged, resulting in a lack of enthusiasm. The remaining students who are willing to learn will then be deprived of a good learning experience, which will make them just as uninterested as Meghan. It's an endless, bad cycle.
I think it's a little extreme to say that Meghan could be the next Stephen Glass. Sure, she's missing important material that could later be useful in her life. But maybe she's just having a rough day. We need more details. But if Meghan continues not showing effort she could be headed down a slippery slope with little or no ethical concern for others.
Obviously, Megan doesn’t give a hoot about ethics, or at least ethics taught in a classroom. Sleeping is a big sign of disinterest, boredom and carelessness. However the poet is partial to Megan’s sleeping because he feels she is her own worst enemy. According to the poet, education is what you make it and it’s up to the student to want to learn (referencing Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave definitely reiterated this fact). Even the last line of the poem suggests her own demise, because while she sleeps she’s letting this metaphorical poison apple get caught in her throat, and the poison apple is what keeps her from learning and understanding ethics. Megan’s attitude towards class and her social role as a student is not only unethical, but disrespectful. Ethics is about upholding moral code and loyalty and value, and disrespect is the opposite of these characteristics. By sleeping, Megan is not only NOT learning about Ethics, but going against any sort of ethical standard of justice or dependability. I think Megan could potentially be another Stephen Glass if journalism is what she studies because obviously she doesn’t give a hoot about the rights and wrongs of journalism. Stephen Glass didn’t care about the rights and wrongs of journalism; he cared about getting the best story even if it was all made up. However, I don’t think Megan even has the ability to make it in the journalism world if sleeping is what she will contribute. Megan probably doesn’t care, and therefore, doesn’t even have the potential to be a journalist. At least Glass passed the bar exam after he got fired…I highly doubt Megan could do that.
i read your longer comment, though as you're not using a name, it's kind of hard for me to keep track of who says what. i suggest you use a name when posting, if you don't find that too inconvenient.
i've been attacked plenty in my life. not just from students either. reviewers. colleagues. voters (i was a school board president for six years). and, way back when, teachers and parents and adults in general. i've never been an especially popular person. more like especially unpopular.
you say the poet doesn't have sufficient empathy for meghan. well, meghan has messed-up priorities. part of becoming an adult with a mature sense of ethics is learning how to balance competing, even conflicting, demands. if that seems an unreasonable expectation to you, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, too, if what i said struck you as a personal put-down. your last post did set me off (the straw, the camel's back, etc.), but i was responding to the flippancy of other responses more.
you obviously are a thoughtful person. that's good. keep it up.
Just wanted to point out that the haiku-like, one-sentence comment was an ADDITION to the much, much longer comment that came above it, which answered every question posed. I was aware that you were the poet, actually, and I was not insulting you. I was critiquing the poem for what it is, fictional or not, which could be constructive if you can stand criticism. If this was personally insulting, I apologize. I did enjoy reading the poem. I would appreciate it if you would review the comment that preceded the "haiku" one you commented on. It would give me some feedback as to whether I understand the chapter and the assignment.
Thanks.
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