1/2 of life is showing up: 50%= F, pt. 2

The table looks on in amazement.

"But how do you make sure they come to class?"

I assign Dostoevsky and grade hard. It amazes me that in this day and age there are professors out there who give lectures covering material that any sloth could get through Spark Notes or a simple Google Search. Is biographical information really all that necessary any more? I am, I think kind of demanding in the depth of thought I require. You will not get a paper idea off of Spark Notes and have it ready made to turn in. I'm not really all that interested in the "Patriarchy" as it is represented in the works of Kate Chopin. I want deep thoughts, not shallow overplayed rhetoric. To give you some idea, we spent three weeks covering "Bartleby, The Scrivener"; that's a thirty some odd page story.

My peers weren't exactly convinced until I told them that last Friday, I gave my first pop quiz and received answers from 32 out of 37 students... 10-11am on Friday. Beat that.

I did not tell my fellow grad students that I don't take attendance because I honestly don't care. I do not feel the need to artificially insite people. If they want to think, they'll show up. If they don't, they won't. From what I can see (and feel: 37 students in a tiny room causes the place to boil!), they want to think.

And if they don't?

Walmart needs greeters.

One or two students every semester all but demand that I flunk them. They might show up were there an attendance plan in place, but honestly, I don't care. If their motivation depends on my punishing them into showing up with book un-read, the I'd rather not have them there. They're a few less blank faces that I have to deal with during my lecture. Hey, it's easier to flunk someone whose never there than someone who always shows up and never does any of the work.

Any case, back to the meeting. The fellow grad students began to admit that they, too, do not actually take roll. They do not keep books. Why, then, the paragraph concerning attendance in their syllabi? Scare tactic. They figure that gives them a whole semester befrore the students realize that they are paper lions. I ask, what sort of way is that to earn the students' respect? They figure out their teachers are full of steam; how exactly is that a good thing? Although, it does explain why so many of my students think, even until the bitter end, that they are doing well despite their not coming to class or doing any of the work.

At this point, the faculty advisor admits that she too does not take rol.l, and pretty much for the same reasons. She says, "if someone is that level of prodigy that they can ace my class without coming then I'm okay with that."

There's something between the lines that I thnk deserves a bit of investigation. If one doesn't take roll, the philosophy--the pedagogy--suggests that something is happening in the class that cannot afford to be missed; that something is being taught which later will be tested to determine if students have learned. If they haven't then they flunk, or at the very least get a grade that they otherwise wouldn't want. Notice that the pressure here is on the teacher to supply something beyond what is offerred on Wikipedia or Sparknotes because, if they can't, the students won't show up.

On the other hand, a teacher whose grades are dependent on attendance and participation has shirked all responsibility. They have all but admitted that they will not be teaching so much as reviewing the pedestiran, the obvious, and thanks to the internet, the infinitely available. If they were saying something worth their title as educators, the students would have to show up in order to be educated.