Why bother attending classes?
A conversation overheard between two female students this morning: “Like…..how come students who never come to class get good grades and others who are always here get lousy grades?”
“Yeah, like, I figure, why should I come to class to learn about the history of the telegraph? What good is that going to do for me?” How’s that going to help me get a job?”
“Yeah, like, I have a friend who doesn’t bother going to his MBA classes. He figures, why am I paying all this money to have somebody at the front read stuff from the textbook? I can do that myself.”
The conversation ended with one of the young women remarking: “Like, I pay a lot of money to come here. Why should I pay for stuff that I can do on my own, like reading?”
All good questions. Why bother attending class?
For some students, the most difficult adjustment is our expectation that they attend classes regularly. They’re more familiar with the university model: attend a few classes, make sure you show up for exams, do your required presentations, hand in your essays.
We demand that they attend class and participate in lots of in-class group work, exercises, simulations, role plays, problem-solving and graded assignments. Many of these activities aren’t pre-announced. (Just like a regular day at the office, you don’t always know what’s going to unfold.)
I sympathize with students forced to sit through a 40-minute class where the entire time all they’re expected to do is listen and take notes. This is not teaching and learning.
I also understand how students perceive a class has no “value added,” when it consists of just going over the readings or endless, off-track, circular debates with no conclusion. This is not teaching and learning.
Learning is about making meaning. By extension this means designing meaningful classes that get students involved.
How do do it?
Ask their opinions. Find out how much they already know about the subject. Learn about their previous experience in the work world that relates to the subject. Provide concrete, current examples. Get them to dig into the material by analyzing samples. Expect them to add to content. Challenge them to think critically about the concepts being explored during the class. Set up classroom conditions that raise their curiosity about a subject, concept or point of view in an entirely different way.
Like the comedian who wants to leave ‘em laughing, make it your goal to have them leave the classroom thinking.
If you do that, the next conversation you might overhear is: “Like….boy, am I sorry I missed that class! I heard I missed a lot.”
Although I know that this blog is geared towards adult learners, and that the students are closer to peers with the teachers than younger people might be, I have to disagree with you somewhat on this one, Christine - the kinds of questions these students were asking were just disrespectful, and the idea that you ought to be allowed to graduate from a school you barely attended is a discredit to the student and the institution.
People who have this kind of attitude should be summarily dismissed from the college. If their counter is to say that their critique stemmed only from wanting to be adequately prepared for the working world, you can tell them that what is happening to them now is precisely what happens in the working world when you don’t show up to work, just like you didn’t show up to class. As you say - not every day at the office is necessarily or predictably spellbinding, but it doesn’t relieve one of the obligation to go anyways.
I say this from a position of having abused many of the freedoms of ‘higher’ education myself, where I was often irreverent about attending classes if I did so at all - I wish now that someone had thrown very sharp consequences in my path immediately, and without restraint, rather than let me sink slowly into a mist of my own sour disposition.
I’m not saying that educators shouldn’t strive to make their classes as consistently challenging and interesting as possible, but I don’t think they should feel the pressure that they can be righteously ignored or have their value question if they don’t.
Will O'Neill — April 4, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Thank you so much for this point of view. You raise a number of good points.
As much as I agree that students need to learn: “no show up this much at work and there’ll be consequences” I have trouble reinforcing the concept. College policy states I cannot include attendance as one of my course measures. This is frustrating because, in a work setting, reliability counts for so much.
However, when an employer calls and asks me to recommend candidates for internships, guess who gets the nod? Definitely not the student who can’t be bothered to show up for class most of the semester.
Christine Smith — April 6, 2008 @ 5:23 am
Will and Christine, I agree with both of your arguments. As a student who attended class regularly, I can definitely see the benefits I had over students who couldn’t be bothered. Yes, some days are not as exciting as others, but the material is always relevant. I had a sore spot for certain individuals who randomly showed up but always got good marks. How are YOU doing better than ME when YOU are never in class!?!?
The great thing is that marks don’t really matter. I may not have been an A student 100 per cent of the time, but I went to class, applied myself, and am now sitting at my desk at one of the biggest (and best, I might add) PR agencies in Canada.
So I agree, Christine, that it is important for educators to make students want to attend class, but don’t sympathize with the students who have to sit through an un-exciting lecture. They are paying to be there for your knowledge and expertise and they should only be so grateful that you take the time to make classes engaging.
Megan Ramsay — April 10, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
I will admit, I did skip class sometimes because I just could not roll out of bed, but I think it would be accurate to say that I was at school enough to keep in the loop and to keep my grades up.
Textbooks will not teach you everything you need to know to enter the workforce. They just teach you the formulas, provide you with templates and give you definitions.
This can’t be said for all programs/classes, but I found in both my joutnalism program I graduated from and from Centennial’s PR program that going to class gives you the ‘work smarts’ that teach you how to interact with colleagues at work and potential clients.
I am in my fourth week at my internship and I grateful for everything that I have learned - in class and out of class - over the course of the school year. The mock media conference, the presentations and the guest speakers all provided me the tools to refine and further develop my communications skills…
No, I didn’t pay tons of money to have a professor read out of atextbook at the front of the class. I paid tons of money so that I could gain the tools and knowledge to help my begin a successfuk career in my field.
“Yeah, like I figure, why NOT come to class? It’s, like, better than doing like nothing at home!”
Maricel Dicion — April 25, 2008 @ 1:36 pm