For Parents
A Unique Environment
The student world is a thoroughly unique environment. It is more all-encompassing than school, probably one of the most intensive environments that someone can go through in life. Obviously it may not feel that way for some and there is a breadth of student experience depending on a student's living arrangements and their friendships:
| Breadth of Student Experience -> | |||
| Living Arrangements | Living at home and commuting to local University | Living in halls or residence during the week at a local University, visiting home at weekends | Living in halls or residence throughout term-time. |
| Friendship & Fellowship | Going with lots of friends Large Christian Union or Chaplaincy Many student friendly local churches | Knowing almost no one Small or no CU on campus No student friendly local churches | |
Some of the Characteristics (Independence, the academic environment, financial issues, the moral atmosphere and the social environment) that make the student world unique are worth exploring in more detail:
Independence
- Moving into becoming a young adult, the sudden rush of responsibilities from the mundane washing of clothes and cooking spaghetti bolognaise to renting a flat and living 24 hours a day out of the parental structures of influence is an enormously liberating and new environment for people to enter.
- This is a time to decide how to run your own life. ‘How to live’ now becomes a necessary technique to develop rather than receiving the regular advice of parents. This has the potential for enormous benefits in “growing up” students – it also permits the opportunity for trouble!
Academic Environment
- In school the teachers care what grades you get. Largely pupils are told what to do at every stage. In the University world you are quite often on your own to work out how you are going to learn what you need to learn. Students need to find the best resources for themselves; lecturers can be too busy to take a guiding role in each individual’s learning.
- Semesters mean more exams throughout the year, therefore more pressure to perform for the exams and less time to interact and meet other students.
- Factory rather than learning environment. The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education has been encouraging more and more people to enter University education but the values behind that goal are largely vocational and materialistic. Placements are becoming increasingly part of student experience, breaking up the lives of societies and the friendship groups so key to student experience. Universities are becoming less and less a place to think, reflect and establish values. More of our students will have third level degrees but their minds have not been trained to think in a third level way – they are vocationally gifted but not necessarily intelligent.
- Christianity Irrelevant, often anti-Christian ideas and attitudes.o Morally bankrupt ideas and non-Christian philosophies are assumed in much of the academic environment. Many Christians may not realize the assumptions behind the theories they are presented with.
o Often lecturers and staff are antagonistic against Christians who make exclusive truth claims.
o There is a social pressure in the classroom to go with the crowd, particularly to continue with a relativistic mindset. Suggesting that Christian principles are relevant to Economics, or feminist theory, or legal punishment theories can be often met with ridicule.
o Christian students have often shot themselves in the foot by attempting to shout down the lecturer rather than engage with them in reasoned argument. If everything was made by Christ and through Christ then the reasoned use of the mind should help us!
Financial
- In 1990 most students left University with no debts. You could have left in 1993 with a debt of £1500, five years later the average student might leave with a burden of £4000. Students leaving University at the present will leave with debts of around £20,000. This has a radical affect on current student life and their opportunities post University. How many students will consider a short term missionary service after University when faced with a twelve grand debt to worry about?
- Less money means more casual work - 60% of all students now work for an average of 17 hours a week while studying. Those who have money coming from their families can sleep at the weekends or study, those who do not have to work. Students still suffer from the inequalities in the system. Studying, summer camps, friendships, socializing with students from different cultures suffer as a result of the burden.
Moral Atmosphere
- Any glance at a Students Union handbook (given to every student each year) will include ridiculous advice about alcohol and sex. Student Unions are painfully aware of the necessity of good sexual health advice but the general moral advice is basically that University is a chance for experimentation – get as much sex as you can with whomever you can – just be safe. Alcohol, the oil in the engine of such experimentation is also the energy of Student Union life and is encouraged at all opportunities.
- Homosexuality is a live issue in the University scene. Many campuses have active Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual groups and most Student Unions have enormous sympathies which such groups. Many Christian students and Christian Unions have struggled with responding graciously to an antagonistic movement such as the gay lobby.
Social Environment
- Diversity. Student allows a chance for previously distant groups and cultures to get to know one another. This is especially important in Northern Ireland where it is one of the first occasions in our educational experience where both shades of politics and religious background are in the same classroom. Broader than Protestant / Catholic though is the opportunity to meet with many International students, with Muslim, post Communist and Buddhist upbringings.
- Denominational Diversity. The Christian Union and other such groups gather together Christian students in activities together from a wide range of backgrounds.
- Loneliness. Often students can lead a lonely existence in a halls of residence. Some have very few communal areas and so it is very easy for students to live their lives with a TV, computer and more interaction by email than with their neighbour.
- The Christian Union has a vital role to play in door knocking and social events which gather together this wide variety of people. Both regular and international students can be reached to show love and friendship to them