The Soapbox

It seems as though some of the professors at CSUS have decided they don't teach at a state university but are teaching at a local high school. Or least that is the way it appears by their dogged determination to make sure no one enrolled in a course misses a single class.

Why is this, one may ask? Are they convinced that no student should miss the epiphany that will surely take place as the professor's particular knowledge is force-fed into the tabula rosa of each student's mind?

Or, as many students suspect, are these professors convinced that if they didn't force students to attend, they would be facing rows of empty desks when they step up to the podium.

Some professors even go so far as to deduct from a student's grade if they do not attend every classroom session. It doesn't matter if that student is doing "A" quality work. The simple fact that the student may have missed an arbitrary number of classes lowers his or her grade. Why?

There is nothing wrong in a student's participation in classroom discussions being used as part of the grading criteria. And some professors will award some type of bonus points based upon student attendance. But why deduct points simply because a warm body is not filling a chair?

The yardstick for evaluating student performance should be the quality of a student's work. If they can accomplish the goals of the class in half the class sessions, so be it. (If too many students are able to do this, the professors might reexamine the course syllabus)

If they decide instead to the pleasure of those classroom sessions and their work suffers accordingly, so be it.

One might hope that most professors would rather have a student who is interested and attentive filling that chair rather than a lump of flesh who uses hour to catch up on missed sleep.

Or are professors who penalize for attendance worried that without that type of stick, they might have to find ways to make their lectures more interesting than a simple recitation of notes originally written decades ago?

This is college and the classrooms are filled with adults who should be treated as such. The professors who make their classes an interesting and intellectually stimulating place to be will never have to fear for a lack of bodies filling those seats. Any professor who must rely upon implied threats to keep the seats warm should look for a new line of work.