Class Attendance: Mandatory or Not?

425 Words2 Pages
Class attendance is important because of the learning benefits and crucial class interaction that happen during the class period. These benefits would be lost if students did not attend class. Policies that reward regular attendance and encourage class participation help the students in the long run even though the students don’t appreciate it. Some colleges require students to attend classes or risk being withdrawn or failed. This policy is put in place to prevent students from missing important class opportunities and to get the most out of their classes. Also, some teachers are “concerned that in missing classes they [the students] are inevitably missing learning activities and opportunities.” (Hahn) But other teachers argue that they don’t want to deal with disruptive students who are forced to be there. As a result, they let them decide whether they want to attend class: “I much preferred to teach a smaller number of volunteers than a large army of conscripts.” (Sperber) Also, these teachers believe that college students are old enough to decide and take responsibility for what they do. “If you choose to use the time of the class meeting to do something else, that is your decision ...” (Sperber). Many students agree that they should be able have the choice whether to attend or not and they resent that the policy doesn’t treat them like adults. Attendance policies wouldn’t be needed if people only missed classes because of emergencies or important events but that is often not the case. But if irresponsible adults won’t attend class voluntarily, thus missing out on the value of class participation and possibly seeing their grades suffer, the college will be blamed for not enforcing a mandatory class attendance. This is why mandatory class attendance should be enforced. For those students whose schedules are very busy and find it hard to attend
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