Should attendance be a large portion of a class’s grade?
Classes are starting to tie a student’s grade in with their attendance. But what effect does this have on the students?
Did forcing children to go to class in high school make them learn the class? Of course not.
In fact what student would rather be forced to attend an hour-long class just to occasionally space off than to just sit down at home and study the material instead.
This would also bring students to a better understanding of the material and have questions about the material to bring to their professor during class time. On top of all of this the better understanding of the material would make test and quizzes easier and require less study time.
Now you may point out that some people may not show up to class if it wasn’t required but wouldn’t do any studying outside of class either.
However if someone is not responsible enough to do either it is their own fault if they do poorly, because it was their responsibility to either learn through study or through a class lecture.
Class would still be taught as normal because at least half of the class probably needs something taught to them by the teacher since most people do not understand everything they study outside of class.
College is a time to grow and reach out with your potential with new responsibilities and to use your gifts and talents accordingly.
However if you hardly have any new responsibilities then your growth is restricted or even stopped completely. Furthermore instead of grading your growth in knowledge of a particular class it is graded on how often you can walk into a classroom at a certain time on a certain day and listen to someone talk in a half-monotone voice about something you could have figured out in twenty minutes.
Now some of you may be thinking that your attendance isn’t a large part of your grade, and that may be but it does make a difference.
Someone who could normally walk out with a 100% in a class is now bumped down to a 90%. People who could normally slide by in a class are now at the risk of failing because they actually had a life outside of the classroom and had either clubs, family, work, or other classes to think about during the same time as a class that they didn’t really need to show up for.
Even the fact that they might want to sleep in is a good reason.
In conclusion I think that you should not be graded on attendance. Getting an extra hour of sleep to be able to do your schoolwork better and more efficiently is much more important than being forced to attend a class that you are acing, and it makes a person’s experience at college much more relaxed.
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