After a month of school at PUC-Rio, the most expensive and prestigious University in the city, I am a little confused. While the actual content of my courses are up to standard and my teachers are rather knowledgeable about their subjects, my classroom experiences have been shocking. The source of my disappointment is the relationship between students and their professors. Whereas at Princeton, professors are often revered and respected by their students, even if students secretly hate their professors, at PUC, students act as if they are on equal footing with their professors. This is shown in a number of ways. First off, students have, on multiple occasions, yelled at their teachers in arguing a point that goes against the theory we are currently studying. Students yell over their teachers so as to have the last word, while others lash out when the teacher points out holes in the students' argument. In other situations, I've seen students argue with a teacher over the due date of an assignment already assigned months ago because they "will be busy that week." The portuguese equivalent of "what the hell" is "que é isso, cara?" and can I say I've heard this said to professors a multitude of times. I was talking with a bunch of American students about the complete lack of respect shown to teachers at our private University. A couple of us were thinking that maybe kids here see their teachers as employees given the fact that they pay for education unlike many other students at the federal universities. And then from another angle, maybe its just the elitist culture that many of these kids may have been raised in if they are able to pay the cost of a PUC education. But as we continued to discuss, we found out that even exchange students at the federal university experienced the same abhorrent scenarios. One girl attributed it to the fact that they don't pay anything at all for their education so they don't really care what they get out of it since they don't put "anything" in. At the end of the day I think its a class issue. I think its the failure of the upperclass, because at the end of the day they might already have ties to a job or industry from their network. For this reason, college is way more of a symbol to put on their resume rather than a time to gain real knowledge and experiences. For me, and I know a lot of other Princeton students, college is a place for me to really grow as a person and gain insight from my professors and the academic environment around me. If I already had a job lined up, maybe I wouldn't put so much effort into my studies. But if the only useful aspect of Princeton was its name, I would stop trying as soon as I got in. But it just stinks because the professors understand this and teach with this mentality that they are just here to get paid not really to enrich these students mindsets. And at the end of the day, this sucks for the kids on scholarship and from poorer communities who might not learn as much as they would have in a different kind of culture.
