Assignments

Friday is my grading day. At the end of the week, when I cannot do anything more productive, I grade. And it takes forever.... The amount of work I give my students is not insignificant. The worst part is if I want them to pay attention to anything, I have to give them points for that... and I hate it!!! Whatever happened to "knowledge for knowledge's sake"??? I mean, yes I wasn't an ideal student ever (maybe sometimes :-)) but there was at least something that interested me about everything. And I remember that in my school, we did assignments, wrote essays in class and did so much of in class work that did not count towards our final grade. Even then scoring highest points on each and every assignment was a must. I don't ever remember thinking "this is not necessary, it doesn't matter", etc... We would compete over whose essay/letter/story would be chosen to be read in front of the class. Even though that meant nothing for what your rank in class would be or how much final percentage you would score. At least for me, that meant I was reading all sorts of books, magazines and newspapers to: 1) learn about various styles of writing (the style of this blog is purely conversational... don't let that cloud your opinion :-))and 2) to know the latest that was happening around me.

Is there any way of telling these people that no matter what they do, it has to be great work... And that it counts....one way or the other????