May 25, 2009

Part of the responsibility that comes with the power of being sovereign in the classroom is determining student grades. Passing out the occasional F is part of the job, an unpleasant part. Many professors, including me, will go to great lengths to avoid failing a student. Educators–at least the good ones–don’t go into this business because they enjoy seeing people fail.

But.

Once in a great while, a student comes along whose behavior is so insolent, so arrogant, so utterly dismissive of the welfare of his classmates, that he challenges even the most saintly professor not to take some joy in the justice of his failure.

I had one this time. My syllabus states that students are allowed to miss six classes. This student seems to have read this statement through a theory of literary interpretation so arcane only someone with the education and life experience of a college sophomore could comprehend it,  and concluded, “Hey, I only have to go to class six times!”

If he attended more than that, I’d be surprised. I took attendance once or twice a week. Even without taking attendance daily , I still recorded more than 15 absences for him. Our department policy states any student who misses more than 25 percent of a course cannot receive credit. So, naturally, the kid failed.

Did the shock of an F on his grade card humble him? Cause him to reflect on his deficiencies as a student, as a man? No, it did not. Instead, it provoked him to email me demanding to know why attending class was necessary at all.

Here is the text of his first email, excluding only his name.

I’m just wondering how it is possible that i failed the class, since all of my speech grades were above 80%. I fit had to do with my attendance then i would like to know why it was necessary that i come to class.

Clearly, this was written by a busy, busy man. So busy, in fact, that not only can he not spare the time to come to class, he can’t spare time for pleasantries like a salutation or proper capitalization.

His argument, as far as I can tell, is that a man who can’t spare the split second necessary to depress the shift key, can’t be expected to attend my class.

Not only did this kid seek to have me justify, after the fact, why he was required to come to class, he sought to go over my head, and wrote to the Dean. Upon learning, shockingly, that the college administration believes students ought to attend class, he wrote to me again.

 Here is an excerpt.

I understand that my attendance was the issue. I never recieved a warning report telling me to come to class, nor did you ever mention it to me. i also don’t understand why it was necessary for me to be there. I never recieved anything less than an 80% on any of my speeches, so obviously my understanding of how to give a speech, based on your
judgement, was above average. my attendance in class was not necessary tolearn the material, as evidenced by the grades i recieved. i do not understand why this is an issue. please explain.

Please explain. Pretty demanding for a kid who just failed his basic public speaking class.

Still, here’s my explanation. Perhaps, kid, perhaps the classroom experience is about more than you. Perhaps the goal of sitting in a room with other people and learning something, even if you think you know it already, is something other than maximizing your personal benefit.  Perhaps the reason you need to be there is to benefit others, to lend your presence to the mix of personalities in your class from which flows a character-shaping experience called education. By skipping every class session except those where you had assigned speeches to give, you cheated your classmates and broke the contract you made with me and everyone else in the room.

 So, you failed. You will have to repeat the class. See you next semester. If you show up.