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Professors, stop grading students
on class attendance
By Leslie Mason
September 28, 2007 | We've all experienced it: the
first day of class. The professor walks in, hands out
the syllabus, and the tyranny begins. His evil eyes
squint through his plastic smile.
This smile is a trick.
He is leading students to believe that, finally, this
class will be different from all the others.
It won't be different.
More and more often, USU English professors are requiring
rigid attendance. Students are forced, under penalty
of unredeemable grade deduction, to miss no more than
two classes. If a student misses an additional class
beyond her allotted two, her grade is immediately dropped
one-third a letter grade.
There are many justifications teachers give for this
gross error. Professors claim if a student is not present,
he cannot possibly be learning and therefore his grade
should be docked for failing to learn.
This excuse is easily refuted when we consider the
widely used solution: testing. Students take tests for
a reason, and last we checked it was to show what the
students have learned from the course. Therefore, a
student can prove by means other than attendance that
his brain has evolved as a result of the class.
Next, professors point out that if a student does
not attend a class, the other students in that class
are not benefiting from her insight.
Let's face it. No one listens to anyone but themselves.
We're all too busy thinking up our next profound insight
to listen to the dribble other idiots come up with.
Attendance is a policy that should be encouraged,
not graded. USU students have paid enough tuition to
entitle them to the choice of attending class or sleeping
in. Students who choose to miss multiple classes will
likely pay for it, and their grade will drop accordingly
as they fail all their tests. By dropping student's
grade based on attendance, professors are successfully
punishing that student twice. Bravo.
Professors should allow students the freedom to determine
when class attendance is important. No amount of discussion
or group projects is going to guide a student to greatness.
In fact, it's mildly ironic that many successful writers,
John Muir, for example, hated school. If he missed more
than twp classes, we're all silently wondering how he
ever figured out which end of a pen is up.
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