Now that’s a whole new level of bizarre

Sydney has been getting all kinds of interesting email from students.  Though I am sure some are wonderful, organized, dutiful students, others are now desperately trying to figure out whether they will pass the course, and how much effort they need to expend this final week in order to ensure that they pass. I, draconian instructor that I am, think all who haven’t attended class and section regularly should not only fail, but be branded and made to walk the streets of Ithaca so that all may look upon he who failed to take advantage of his education. But that’s just me 🙂

I think I have some justification for hitting the roof, however, when Sydney told me that his professor had been forced to schedule a make-up exam not because the final exam schedule had some conflicts, but because some of the students in the class were scheduled to take an exam for a class that met at exactly the same time as the philosophy course. That might provide another reason for students not attending lectures: they were sitting in lecture in another course! Doubling up on courses, hoping to skate by simply by turning in papers and taking the final exam sounds really appalling to me.

Even as I am truly grateful I’m not battling the red tape in elementary and secondary education, I occasionally wonder what kind of “education” it is that we’ve gotten ourselves into here.

Erin