I have previously had classes when there have been a few students who haven't done any of the reading. And, I think, this gets increasingly common as we go through the term / semester. We are now in the penultimate week of term, so I expect a few excuses, essays due, etc. etc. And I am used to "speaking to" the odd student who is a persistent offender in such matters. But I was not prepared for today's class...
What do you do when no one in the class has done the reading? Yes, you read that right. No one. They had been set 3 relatively short chapters on feminist theory to read this week. And not only had they not read all of them, but they, collectively as a tutorial group, had read the sum total of nothing in preparation for the class.
I played my usual card in similar situations (most often to do with them not bringing the texts with them): "What do you expect me to do for the next 50 minutes when you haven't done any reading?". This is not a rhetorical question. They suggest taking a stab at passages from the reading anyway, and with this I struggled on for half an hour, pointing at bits in the texts, trying to get them to extrapolate. I tried to discuss with them bits of the lecture, that some of them claimed to have attended, but they could only repeat their notes without any sort of engagement and we got no further than my additions, explanations and examples.
And then I realised that I was working far too hard for this class who had done no work, and I left them, after having them repeat after me "This will not happen again."
We'll see...
4 comments:
Make them read The Waste Land, like M did?
One of the (few) good things about our bigger classes is that there's usually at least one who's done the reading!
It's not a small class. There should have been 14 of them. Only 9 showed up, and they had done nothing. I thought about making them sit and do the reading in front of me...
Why can't we assign detention? Sigh.
This happened to me with two groups who had not watched the film for the seminar. I mean, what could be easier - sit down in front of a TV for a couple of hours and their seminar prep is done.
I did what you did with the first class, three of whom had seen it. The same happened, me and the 3 others were working really hard and after 30 mins I gave up.
The next group I took, I lulled into a false sense of security and got them to admit it if they hadn't seen the film. I then said that only those who had seen it should stay - I asked the rest to leave explaining that it was impossible for me to hold a seminar discussing a film they had not seen. They were shocked. I don't know if it had a lasting impact since they were not my group so I never had them again.
But I totally agree - doing a class with students who have not read it is a pointless exercise.
Bad students!
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