Our
View: Talking in class unnecessary,
disruptive
Some people need to talk less in class for the general good of the student body.
We all know who they are. They are the people who do not stop talking in class,
not to other students with idle chatter, but to the teacher. Lectures are stopped.
Discussions are one-sided and yet they keep talking away.
Most of us are bothered to different degrees ranging from annoyed to contemptuous
because of these people. Many of the annoyed to contemptuous have already joined
the Facebook group appropriately titled, “People for the Elimination of
the Person in Class Who
Likes to Hear Themself [sic] Talk.” There are chapters of this Facebook
group at many universities. Cal State Long Beach’s currently
has 91 members.
That name says it all. The people who apparently like to hear themselves talk
in class are, by many standards, detrimental to the group learning process. Because
they talk out of turn excessively or take the professor toward non-test-related
tangents as adventurously as Indiana Jones, not as much gets accomplished in
the classes we pay thousands of dollars for.
But of course, intelligent discussion is part of the academic learning process.
In that regard, these people are entitled to speak out. Talking about subjects
and formulating ideas is essential to learning. But, we ask, at what price? When
is too much just too much?
There must be a delicate balance between discussion and listening. Most achieve
this balance in an intelligent and respectful manner.
Those excessive talkers, however, do not. They surely must end up learning less
because they too often
refuse to listen.
If he or she knows everything about a class already, why doesn’t he or
she settle down, be quiet, actually listen and/or learn some humility. Stop debating
with the instructor at every opportunity just to show how much you know or think
you know.
Those excessive talkers are often in the bachelor’s programs here at CSULB,
not some whiz-bang Ph.D. program. How much do they really know, anyway? There’s
always enough room to learn more.
Class discussions work well when everyone throws in an opinion. But when a class
has a few individuals who talk too much, it turns into a one-man or one-woman
show, whose star is not the instructor.
We’re all here to learn we need to allow others the same right. If those
excessive talkers want to have tangent-like discussions or impress some professor
with encyclopedic knowledge, wait for office hours. Some professors get lonely
during those required help times and probably wouldn’t mind the company
of some intelligent discussion on just about anything.
School is a place to learn, not just a place to blabber on with vast rhetoric.
If those chatterboxes want to talk endlessly start a web log or, better yet,
write a weekly column for your campus publications.
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