Looking back, I think of my days in elementary, middle, and high school as much easier times. Those were the days when I didn’t have strenuous deadlines to meet. Back then, I didn’t have to worry about doing my own grocery shopping. I never had to pay rent to my parents, tests and homework weren’t glaring at me from next week telling me “you can’t have fun now, you need to study,” and I didn’t have nearly the amount of freedom that I do now to chose how I got things done.
Wait a second, that’s not something I consider a burden to have now. That’s something that I cherish. That freedom to work my schedule my own way is what makes me feel like an actual adult. It’s one of those things that as a child you crave. All your life you are a slave to the restrictions and curfews your parents lay down and then once you get to college you are supposed to be free, right?
It makes sense for us to have freedom as college students. We are no longer mooching off of the government’s free public education program but we are putting our own money down and I’ve always thought that if you buy it you can do pretty much whatever you want with it. So why is it that even now, as a junior in college, that I am still being required, by threat of an incomplete in a course, to be actively present in classes? Well as it turns out NC State has a policy regarding attendance in 100 and 200 level classes it says: “Instructors in 100- and 200-level courses must keep a record of attendance throughout the semester”.
This policy is in effect in hopes of making sure new freshmen don’t abuse their new found freedom and flunk out of classes for such a silly reason as never showing up to class. This thought really isn’t that bad. It’s intended to help students succeed in life but it fails in one regard. It fails to give students a real reason to attend class.
By not giving students a real reason to attend class, the attendance policy is merely delaying the point when the slackers start slacking. If someone is not going to go to class because there is no attendance policy—the people the current policy is targeting—requiring them to go to class for another year is not going to teach them the importance of attendance. They have already been required to attend school for the past 13 years or more – what difference is one more year going to make?
Instead of an arbitrary requirement for attendance, professors should give students a reason to go to class. It’s easy to say that the lecture material should be enough of an incentive but the fact that the current attendance policy exists shows that this is not the case. Some things that could be done could be to occasionally require actual, physical homework or to give random quizzes. Really, anything that requires participation. These kinds of things would get students to class just as effectively as the current policy and it would have the added benefit of giving students a sense of purpose in attending class. This is a much more important lesson, which would stick with students longer and help them to really see the importance of classroom attendance.
