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Should class attendance at university be mandatory

20130201060 黄文婷

Should class attendance at university be mandatory?

I have been to university for as long as two years. What I heard of the complaints of my peers most was too much classes! What’s worse, you can’t skip them for it’s mandatory to attend those classes and even someone would track your attendance! Some people think it ridiculous, claiming that students have the right to manage their time as they see fit - even if this means missing class. However, there is also overwhelming support for creating more strict attendance guidelines to ensure the attendance rate. They hold the view that it’s student’s duty to attend the class. As for me, I must confess that I am strongly against the latter’s opinion. I really think that class attendance at university should not be compulsory because university students are supposed to and must have freedom and flexibility during their studies as mature adults.

It must not be unfamiliar that we have always been told to think, act and pursue our own studies autonomously. But that is almost impossible since we must attend so many lectures and we don’t have our own time enough for independent learning at all! I must say that such a requirement that students must attend lectures is, to some extent, against independent learning. Actually, university students are fully competent to arrange their own studies in a more effective way. As a mature adult, we can weigh up the pros and cons, so it’s not necessary to make us to attend the lectures. If one skips the class, he must have something more important to do than attend the class. As university students, we are autonomous learners, not animals fed by the owner. We have and ought to have our own thoughts about learning.

Of course, if the professors of the lectures are very humorous and we can learn a lot from them, we would not care so much about our independent learning. We would love to attend their classes. However, some lectures are nonsense and that we are absolutely not interested in, yet we still need to attend them because it’s compulsory to do so. That is unbearable! I consider it meaningless and just a waste of time for the students. Now, you might argue that one would never know what he might have learned if he hadn’t attended the classes at all. So, do you really think that we should spend our precious time in pursuing the potentiality of learning something that might be a little bit from the lectures rather than read books and think independently? According to my observation, most of the lectures that are boring themselves don’t play a good effect on students under the condition that the students are made to attend them. Most of the students are doing their owe stuff - finishing the numerous homework before deadline, flirting with their boyfriends or girlfriends through mobile phone, dozing off or just being absent-minded. So I really don’t see the point to make students attend the classes that they don’t want to attend at all.

In addition, it’s also good to the lecturers if class attendance at university are no longer mandatory. You might be confused - wouldn’t it be better that more students attend her/his class for the teacher? Actually, most teachers would rather their students skip the classes and learn by themselves than be absent-minded and learn nothing from their classes. What’s more, it would be much easier to handle students if less for the teachers in many ways.

From what has been discussed above, we knew that it’s a waste of time to attend some lectures and students could have spent those time on studies more effectively. It also would be a win-win situation for both teachers and students if it’s not mandatory for university students to attend the classes.

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