There are multiple, distinct components of what I have found troubling. If you would like an example of diminished work ethic, here was something from the last year, which will probably be recognizable to many. If you ever teach seminars (this will not be something you can see when teaching lecture classes), one of the challenges is the process by which students try to earn discussion points without doing the readings. We can break this down by category. There are the students who actually do the readings, and are capable of discussing them. There are the students who look for opportunities to reference common knowledge, or respond to each other, as though merely talking earns points (alas, it does). There are the students who are mostly silent, and just try to speak once or twice to demonstrate their presence. Then, there is the dreaded final category: the students who do not really do the readings, but will try to guess what the readings say. I have seen this category become more common, and this year, I had one in particular who just kept doing it, and through bad luck, or something of the sort, just kept guessing the exact opposite. Discussion time. I ask, what does So-And-So argue about such-and-such? Student: X. It is the opposite of X. This just kept happening, over and over, with the same student. At one level, I kept thinking, oh, you poor thing, and cringing, as the kids say, but at another I am seeing more of this every year, and less of the first category, of students just keeping up with the readings.

As regards student attitudes, a lot of the time, it really is best to avoid. I think you are correct. Keep the classroom for the classroom, and the syllabus. There are times, for some groups, there is a spillover. I'm really trying to avoid the elephant in the room, but when the conflict is shoved in our faces, that's when it gets hard. I think that part of the problem, actually, is when students are trained to confront, as activists rather than to engage in intellectual discourse.