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Classroom Attendance Redux

Since so many people have been begging me to blog more about my thoughts on law school class attendance, I will finally relent.

Everyone knows how I distaste going to class. I go to the seminar classes that have mandatory attendance and I?ll even skip the bar courses that have a similar policy because most professors in large classes will not notice I?m gone. However, one professor in one of my bar courses caught me. This professor e-mailed me yesterday and asked me if I had dropped the class because he/she had noticed that I had not been in class the past couple of weeks. I didn?t know I had made such an impression. Anyway, I flirted with the idea of saying I had been recently released from a hostage situation, but decided to just tell this professor the truth: ?Nothing personal, I just have a hard time paying attention in all of my classes and I do much better learning the materials by grappling with it on my own.? She appreciated my honesty but said that she has an attendance policy and she has to enforce it universally. I didn?t respond, but if I did I would encourage her not to enforce it on anyone. Isn?t that universal?

See here is what I don?t understand; if class is so valuable that missing it would be a negative for me, than I?m already penalized, right? In other words, by marking someone down for not attending class, a person who missed out on the value of class already, its like double jeopardy; I?m being punished twice for the same crime. This seems purely retributive.

If I was a professor, and I wanted to encourage class attendance, I would attempt to make class invaluable. I would try to make the in class information and learning experience so indispensable that there would be no way someone who missed the class would be able to keep up. Then the student would naturally be disadvantaged from missing class and not arbitrarily marked down because a professor doesn?t like empty seats.

I obviously don?t believe mandatory attendance as a pedagogically sound, but I really think the reason I dislike it so is because it feels so paternalistic. I?m almost 30 years old for crying out loud, I?m paying this school $100,000+ and you are telling me where to be and when? I know what your thinking: ?You are going into the military and you?re complaining about paternalism at the relatively care free environment of law school?? Well, yea. If I was paying to be in the military, taking orders would be hard to swallow. However they are paying me decent government coin, so I have no problem with the salutes and the yes sirs.

Long rant short, I am going to this particular class from here on out because the last thing I need is to fail a class in my last semester. Just don?t ask me to like it.

Full post as published by SoapBox Law on February 13, 2008 (boomark / email).