Ailyn Maung

Hnou Lee
Ethnics 21
October 25, 2022

Week 10: Brown and Rosevelt

This week we provided two readings: Brown - Why I don’t let students cut my classes,
and Rosevelt - Student expectations seen as causing grade disputes. While reading Brown’s
article, the author discussed the importance and their own beliefs about attendance during class.
The author states “- but after I instituted the no-cut rule, student performance in my classes
improved markedly-,” (Brown, p. 92.) I think this part of the reading is interesting because once
professors/teachers set mandatory attendance, students actually begin to show up and listen. In
comparison, for Ethnics 21, we have mandatory attendance which goes towards our grades, and
because of that majority of my peers show up to class, and all are constantly participating
majority of the time. But, for Ethnics 14, our professor does not take attendance and even claims
himself that students are not required to attend class because he does not take attendance and all
work is posted online, after this announcement the class is only a third of what it was in the
beginning of the school year. Moving onto the next reading Rosevelt - Student expectations seen
as causing grade disputes, which talked about how students have expectations on how they
should be graded. The author of this article stated “-if students developed a genuine interest in
their fields, grades would take a back seat, and holistic and intrinsically motivated learning could
take place,” (Rosevelt, p. 49.) For this particular part in the reading I can agree because unless
students find a personal interest in school or a certain class, they will not be motivated to really
learn the course material. Overall, with both readings I found them interesting to read because it
gives the sides of both the educators and the ones being educated.