CampusIntel

As a student blogger I am not sure that I will be offering the best kind of advice in this particular article; however I feel the issue has annoyed me enough and that I am now entitled to write about it. I’m talking class time, the 15 hours (or more) a week of class time.  Is it really necessary? Could we not meet for one hour per class each week to discuss what we should be learning and the track we should be on? And if need be, for those who feel it necessary, offer the other ten hours of class as an optional learning experience rather than an obligatory time-taker. I may not speak for every student, or even the majority of them, but I know for a fact that everybody gets tired of class and many drift into the zone of non-existence while they should be scribbling down notes. Is that really the goal here? To bore your students to death and make them wish they never got out of bed? I doubt that.

As an English major and philosophy minor, I personally feel overwhelmed with readings and essay writing. There is no way I am willing to sacrifice my social life, cut downs I can do, but ridding it completely is not likely to happen. My issue here is that I am asked to do over five hundred pages of reading in total before a week’s worth of class. However, finding the time has become somewhat of a problem for me. On Wednesday’s alone I am in class for six hours – six precious hours that I could have spent reading. What do I learn in these classes?  Well I learn the ways in which my professor and fellow students interpret what I have read. When it comes to my essay and choosing a topic, nowhere do I find a question that asks me to divulge in the opinions of those who attend the class or even the highly educated one who teaches it. They want to know what I think.  So what is the point? I know there are some benefits to attending class, but are those benefits universally appreciated? One might find class necessary in their learning regimen and feel lost without it, me however, I find class to be a waste of time and I feel that I am able to adequately understand and analyze most subject matter on my own.

This is where I begin to wonder why for so many years in our early developmental stages did teachers and educational teams work so hard at finding our strengths and weaknesses? What was the point in assigning students as different types of learners? I know very well at this point in my life that I learn the best when the information is put in front of me and I get to read it; analyze it, and absorb it at my own pace. Others, I’m sure, learn better when someone dictates or explains the information and some like to just stand up and put it all into practice. We know this is true, we know that everybody has a unique way of learning, so why is class made mandatory? Where do our professors get the right to assign ten percent of our grade to attendance?  Don’t even get me started on the fact that we pay to attend these classes. All I am suggesting is that one class a week is made mandatory for the reasons I’ve stated above, and the rest be made optional – intended for those who learn better in a classroom setting.  Everyone’s needs would be accommodated this way and I personally feel that my productivity would sky-rocket. At the end of the day it comes down to one thing – if you can learn as much and as well without class, why would you attend?