The Subtle Art of the Student Takedown
by David Parsons
A professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Scott Galloway, recently sent an email that has gone viral, due largely to its unique approach in response to a student’s particularly obnoxious behavior. The student, who remains anonymous, had arrived an hour late to class and been denied admission, and later emailed the professor to explain that he was late because he had been “sampling” different classes, the last of which was Professor Galloway’s, and that it was within his rights to explore different options at the beginning of the semester.
Galloway’s response has caught attention because of his brutal honesty in addressing what he sees as the student’s overall functional weaknesses. In short, he takes him down a few notches. The full exchange is easily googled, but I want to focus on a specific piece of Galloway’s final advice
“Getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a live/work balance…these are all really hard, xxxx. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility…these are all (relatively) easy. Get the easy stuff right xxxx. In and of themselves they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential which, by virtue of you being admitted to Stern, you must have in spades. It’s not too late xxxx…”
Opinion on the web seems split, centered largely around discussions of Galloway’s known personality quirks. The entire controversy, though, provides an opportunity to think about the appropriate tone and level of “honesty” in student-teacher communications. As an adjunct at Baruch for five years, I’ve certainly felt the occasional urge to respond to particularly ridiculous requests with a similar sense of disbelief. Galloway’s message, however, takes the impulse a step further, directly and personally addressing what he perceives to be the student’s overall failures. His main point seems to be that, by exhibiting such a lack of decorum, the student is effectively handicapping himself, making it impossible to succeed in college or the larger world.
I find Galloway’s response generally appropriate considering the student’s rather arrogant assumption that “sampling” courses (by walking in and out of several classes mid-lecture) was reasonable behavior. His most memorable advice (“get your shit together”), while perhaps obscene, communicates an underlying truth. If the student wishes to succeed in the business world, his presumed career direction, he will have to drastically adjust the attitude and expectations reflected in his brief interaction with Professor Galloway.
This is not to say that it is always within a professor’s rights or responsibilities to dole out life advice to undergrads. Yet, while the desire to tell students exactly what you think about them seems like a road fraught with peril, there is an undeniable mentorship inherent to a teacher-student relationship that leaves room for a certain degree of guidance. Highlighting a student’s particularly wrong-headed approach can sometimes be, both personally and professionally, the right thing to do. Under what circumstances such intervention is necessary is where the issue gets tricky.
I teach a course on the history of the Vietnam War that lends itself to sometimes controversial discussions. Several semesters ago a student began challenging my selection of course material and subject matter through a series of increasingly antagonistic emails that essentially attacked me as some kind of un-American propagandist. At first I was incensed, and my anger made me want to write a vicious and humiliating email in retaliation for such an affront. After realizing that I was about to engage in what would essentially be an internet flame war with a student, I reconsidered. Ultimately I didn’t think it was within my role to “correct” this kid’s absurd political notions, or to change the student’s beliefs about the Vietnam War. However, I did find it important and appropriate to tell this student, in a decidedly softened email, that in communicating with a professor (or anyone else) a tone of personal hostility is not the most effective way to win someone to your side. I held my tongue on the political points I wanted to score because I felt it was more important — and more in keeping with my position as an educator — to help this student correct his communication-related behavior, than what I perceived to be his misguided political stances.
The pedagogical role has historically been fluid enough to accommodate a wide range of interpretations about the degree of intellectual contact between student and teacher. As adjuncts in a huge urban system like CUNY, though, this relationship is circumscribed by a host of economic, social, and cultural factors that often override the adjunct’s ability and/or willingness to develop meaningful professional relationships with students. Before intervening in the kind of “brutally honest” way that Galloway demonstrates, the best kinds of questions to ask yourself are: how will this help the student in the long-term? Does “brutal honesty” directly address important, correctable behavior, or are you just blowing off steam?
Finally, it’s important to consider that the Galloway controversy happened in the context of a business school, which operates under a different set of educational imperatives than most of us are accustomed to at CUNY. Galloway’s email was meant to address the student’s lack of professional decorum, which would ostensibly impact his dreamed-of career in business. Certainly a student headed for a humanities degree would require a slightly different set of standards. But the main lesson of Galloway’s now-infamous transmission is that teachers should be bold enough to tell a student to get his or her “shit together” if that is in fact the correct diagnosis and prescription. It can be unquestionably difficult to judge if and when it’s appropriate to put on the counselor suit and start handing out life lessons, but if our ultimate duty is to better prepare our students for whatever challenges face them outside of college, it’s vital that we develop our ability to recognize and capitalize on the opportunity to assert ourselves in the lives of those students who are stumbling in the most profound ways.
