In this interview segment, host Tyler Wagner asks B. Jeffrey Madoff about patterns he’s observed among college students over his 15‑year teaching career. Madoff notes that the key distinction lies in student engagement and ambition: those who actively contribute in class, especially in a Zoom setting where he can call on them by name, tend to excel. He frames college as a transitional period between childhood and adulthood, a time when students confront uncertainty about their future. Madoff reflects on the turbulent social climate of his own youth—multiple high‑profile assassinations and urban unrest—contrasting it with today’s constant 24/7 news cycle, suggesting that the relentless flow of information may have unknown, possibly negative, effects on students. The conversation underscores the importance of active participation, the enduring nature of uncertainty in life, and the potential impact of media saturation on learning environments.
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With, uh, over the 15 years of your teaching, have you noticed any like commonalities of students that like struggle the most and then excel the most? Like besides obviously the obvious of like, you know, if you do your work and study, then you'll— but meaning more, I guess the question is with students that are trying to like really find their path, cuz that's kind of what college is meant for, right? It's kind of like this interim between like childhood and then adulthood. And it's like, here you got 4+ years to like at least try to figure out your first step into the real world. So is there any commonalities you notice of students that like do really well and then students that don't?
You know, I've thought about that a lot and thought back on my own college. And I think that, you know, the simple bromide that people are people, there are those that are engaged and ambitious. There are those that it takes more to bring them out. And what I try to do all the time, and it's easy on Zoom because I can see your name on the screen. And so I say, Tyler, you know, I'd like to know, what do you think of that? And I don't wait for people to raise their hand. I want to get them involved and engaged in the discussion. And so that's that's fun for me to do, and it makes the classroom better. The more people are contributing their ideas and their points of view, the more engaged the whole class is, and that's really good. I don't know that the essence of a college student has changed. Uh, you know, I think that again, the emotional toll when you're entering a world of uncertainty, but you know, when you leave school, you're always entering a world of uncertainty. Now the stakes seem to be higher than others, but when I think back to when I was in high school and early college, and when I was coming of age, President Kennedy was assassinated. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Malcolm X was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Detroit was burning. The Bronx was burning. Chicago was burning. Los Angeles was burning. It was horrible. And it was really hard times. Now, you know, unless you're my age, you may not have a memory of, wow, shit got pretty heavy and bad then too. 'Cause it seems like, And there wasn't, by the way, a 24/7 news cycle. And that's another thing. So you weren't— the level of repetition that we're hearing these things, I don't think we know what that does to us either yet. But I don't think it's good.
No.
You know? And so I think that there's a lot of those things that temper our views and what they are. And, you know, I forget what the statistic is, but there's so much more information that is thrown at us within a year's time that used to be essentially a lifetime of info. And we can't process that stuff. You know, we just haven't evolved to that point of being able to process. What we do know is that we're very polarized. And we're better off when we're not. But we are. We know that With the internet, you can find your own truth. And there is no such thing as alternative facts. There's only facts. But if you lack trust in institutions, if you just speak to people who agree with you, and you stay in that kind of siloed echo chamber, the divide becomes wider and wider, where I believe We actually share much more in common than we have different, but those differences have become such points of contention that they seem near impossible to overcome.
