In Which I Rant About Classes

Mandatory attendance is the bane of my life.

I have never had a mandatory-attendance class that was actually worth attending. Attendance points are, as far as I can tell, a substitute for actual teaching.

Case in point: My gender studies core requirement class, Gender Across Cultures. First, a disclaimer: Although this is anthropology class, and anthropology is my major, I have a marked antipathy towards gender studies. I think, frankly, that that field of study is a watered-down conglomeration of a number of other fields and really only scratches the surface of the issues it claims to study. Additionally, it nearly always leads to value judgments - such as what political system is 'best for women' - that I believe fundamentally countermand the entire point of anthropology. However, my issues with this class have nothing, or very little, to do with my feelings towards gender studies as a whole. My problem is that this class is almost entirely a waste of my time - a long, early waste of my time.

In Gender Across Cultures, we spend much time discussing and augmenting the readings - a process involving the same three people and sometimes a PowerPoint presentation - and contributing to lists of words on the board. My professor, the head of the department, is almost always absent, called away to various meetings, and this leaves us in the no-doubt capable hands of the TA. The TA is Finnish and talks as if she has a mouthful of marbles. I realize that she is not responsible for this, nor can she help it, but it doesn't help. She invariably attempts to lead class discussions, involving a very unwilling audience and attempting to draw out certain conclusions and follow a specific line of reasoning. This, incidentally, defeats the purpose of a discussion. It also means that she oversimplifies everything and fails to give the gender issues we discuss any context other than, for example, American culture - which varies radically by socioeconomic status, region, race, education, and any number of other factors which definitely are not consistent.

Another problem with the discussion angle to the course is that it is used by the vast majority of the students to fulfill a core requirement. Not only do they not especially want to be there, but most of them don't see why they need to learn anything from the class. This is fairly obvious every time the Finnish TA attempts to draw a contribution out of one of the douchebag males in the class and he repeatedly mumbles something about not knowing. He is clearly unwilling to even try to think about the class and I don't think I'm getting anything out of hearing someone try to get blood out of a stone.

The readings for the class are all right, but not great. For example, we keep reading the name of one woman who supposedly pioneered this field. It might be interesting to see what she wrote, however outdated, because it's going to influence the course of the field. But we never read anything of hers in the class, not even an excerpt from one of her papers.

Now, I understand that for a discussion-based class, you might need to require attendance - especially since nothing discussed is going to appear on the multiple choice tests. But why not change the multiple choice tests to essay tests, thereby making the discussion time and procession of ideas provided the class actually applicable to something? And for that matter, why predicate a 200-level core requirement class so heavily on discussion? That's something more suited to a smaller 300- or 400-level seminar on the subject, taken by students with some actual interest in the subject. Hell, even a once-a-week recitation led by a TA would work better. The entire classroom structure is unsuited to this presentation method; there are more than 70 students in the class. Someone's voice is always going to go unheard.

And yet I still have to attend this class, despite the fact that I get more out of talking to my mom on the phone for an hour or hanging out in my room and reading, because of attendance points. If students aren't motivated to attend the class without coersion, perhaps professors should rethink their teaching methods. I never skip my more interesting classes, or smaller classes, or classes that cover a lot of material, and these very rarely have any kind of attendance policy.