While driving to campus this week, listening as I do to NPR’s “Morning Addition,” I had an epiphany. Perhaps not an epiphany, as much as a lightbulb moment.

That’s why, I told myself. They don’t have the ability to self-regulate. Why didn’t I know this before? It doesn’t change my frustration, but at least it explains things.

They? Self-regulation? Things? Allow me to fill in the blanks. Sometime in the late 1940s, psychologists did a study of children to determine their ability to regulate their own behavior.

Three year olds, the study showed, were unable to stand still for any length of time when asked, which translated into no self-regulation. (Hey, they’re three.) Five year olds, on the other hand, were able to stand still for approximately three minutes, the beginnings of self-regulation. By seven, however, children had developed enough self-regulation to be able to stand still as long as they were asked.

In 2001, researchers replicated the study to determine if children’s ability to self-regulate had changed. It had. For the worse. Five year olds, it turns out, were self-regulating like their three year old counterparts from 40 years ago, while the seven year olds’ ability to self-regulate had diminished to that of the five year olds. Not good news.

The study concluded that “[k]ids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.” And, as it turns out, self-regulation is a more important determiner of success in school and in an adult’s professional career than good grades.

If you’re 18, you may or may not be surprised. In fact, you may not even care. If you teach 18 year olds, the same light bulb is probably going off for you that went off for me as I listened to the report.

Still lost? Let me illustrate using a recent, real-life example: On Wednesday, a female student I didn’t know opened the door to my classroom. At first, I thought perhaps it was one of those oops! moments that we all have. As she stood there, and it became evident that she hadn’t merely opened the wrong door, I wondered if she had left something behind.

-“Can I help you?”

-“Do you mind if I sit in the back of the classroom and study?”

Did I tell you that it was the middle of class? Students were gathered in work groups, I was walking around monitoring their progress.

-“Of course I mind!”

-“I just thought I’d ask.”

What was more frustrating than the preposterousness of the request was the look on the student’s face that suggested she had done nothing wrong.

What, it turns out, I thought was rude behavior was merely evidence of an inability to self-regulate – albeit an extreme case, but certainly not isolated.

If you’re a student reading this, chances are you’re laughing right now, not unlike the students in my class. Professors and lecturers, however, are probably shaking their head in solidarity. From the students who stealthily try to send text messages in class, to the chatter-boxes whom all teachers have to ask to be quite a half-dozen times, to the students who think that reading The Daily Campus during class is more interesting than listening to the lecture, such behavior, which was once unheard of, might just boil down to the inability to self-regulate.

If you want to know if you have trouble self-regulating, ask yourself the following question: Am I one of the students outlined above, or am I one of the students who is frustrated by the students outlined above?

It would be easy to dismiss my comments, as some are wont to do, as the rantings of a mad man, a football hater, an all-around misanthrope who should be forced to live under a bridge somewhere.

The truth, however, is that any professor who has spent 10 years or more in the classroom has witnessed the gradual erosion of classroom decorum. What used to be unacceptable is now acceptable. The exception is the rule. The unheard of is commonplace.

In the big scheme of things, perhaps a student’s inability to resist reading an incoming text message in class is small stuff. Perhaps those of us who went to college in the days before cell phones and e-mail just don’t understand the shifting paradigm. I’m open to that possibility – if you’re open to the possibility that today’s students’ inability to self-regulate is one of the factors that has led to the alcohol- and drug-related problems on campus.

Several people have asked me recently what I thought about the task force’s recommendation to open a pub on campus. Believe it or not, I don’t oppose it. (As a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, I spent many an hour at the Rathskeller drinking pitchers of beer. Perhaps too many.) I just don’t think it will have the effect that the task force is expecting.

A campus pub will not teach a student with poor self-regulation to drink responsibly. The student who can’t decide when to stop drinking will still get falling-down drunk, whether at the campus pub, on Lower Greenville, at Jack’s Pub or at Across the Street Bar. It will, however, give 21-year-old students (and the myriad of younger students with fake IDs) the ability to congregate, drink a brew or two and unwind with friends.

Only time will tell what impact a pub will have. One thing is certain: No student I’ve talked to is excited about the prospect of sitting at a table next to one of his or her professors sipping on a Grolsch or a glass of cheap merlot.

As for the in-class self-regulating skills, let’s work on those one at a time.

George Henson is a lecturer of Spanish and foreign languages and literatures. He can be contacted at [email protected].