Professor Bill Maxwell
According to a report a former college professor and previous St. Petersburg Times journalist quit his job as a College Professor due to his students having no interest in learning. Professor Maxwell compares his first day at the 800 bodied Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to “Chris Rock’s joke, or Dave Chappelle’s.. the one about every U.S. city’s Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, ironically being the place where shootings and robberies are taking place as we speak.”

In the article Professor Maxwell was seeking out to infuse fresh, young minds with the wealth of his knowledge, but it seems like that goal was not accomplished.

“Driving my 13-year-old, unairconditioned Chevy Blazer past the guard house, I became apprehensive when I noticed about a dozen male students wearing baggy pants, oversized white T-shirts, expensive sneakers and assorted bling standing around shooting the breeze,” stated Professor Maxwell.

“At least two had “jailhouse tats” on their arms, crude tattoos suggesting that these young men had spent time behind bars. They carried no books or anything else to indicate they were on a college campus.”

“I got a good look at their faces. I wanted to remember these young men if any of them showed up in my classes.”

“Behind them, several others sat on a low brick wall near the dorm entrance. They, too, were clad like extras in a gangsta rap video.”

“It was a scene straight out of “the hood” - young black men seemingly without direction or purpose, hanging out on the corner. In this case, they were hanging out on what is popularly known as “The Yard” on a college campus where they were supposed to be preparing for a more productive life.”

According to the article and interview, Professor Maxwell wasn’t the only teacher feeling this way while at the school.

“Have you noticed that our students never have a sense of urgency? They don’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. They just stand around or mosey along. Frivolity.”

According to Professor Maxwell, Greek organization activities such as step shows were more favored amongst fraternities and sororities and that people would come up with any excuse to party and play music were the most important events were on campus.

Professor Maxwell also noted that at least two students who wouldn’t be able to cope with the ongoing gangstaizm at the school were a New Orleans native, Leonard Merriman IV, a student that wrote for the school newspaper, and a young woman who worked full-time at Target to pay for her college tuition.

A majority of the student body would avoid any extra learning activities, invited speakers, and treated the school as a place to hang out as opposed to earning a college degree, Professor Maxwell stated, which made him in turn feel helpless and irrelevant.

This activity went on for some time until the second year and that when Professor Maxwell quit.

A week before he left the school campus, Professor Maxwell saw the same people who greeted him upon his arrival at the school the day he left, in which was called “his welcoming committee”.

“The same four I had seen when I drove onto campus nearly two years earlier were milling about on the lawn. I parked my car and walked over to the group.”

“Why don’t you all hang out somewhere else?”, I asked.

“Who you talking to, old nigger?”, one said.

“You give the school a bad image out here,” I said.

They laughed.

“Hang out somewhere else or at least go to the library and read a book,” I said.

“They laughed and dismissed me with stylized waves of the arm. I walked back to my old Chevy Blazer, sad but relieved that I would be leaving.”

“In my office, I sat at my desk staring at a stack of papers to be graded. I’m wasting my time, I thought. I’ve wasted two years of my professional life. I don’t belong here.”

“I put the papers in a drawer. I did not read them. Why read them?”

“I had no doubt that the influences of hip-hop contributed greatly to this ugly reality and other deleterious trends.”


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