Extra Credit

I don't like the concept of extra credit. Or at least, I don't like what it's become.

Extra credit was rare when I was in school. If it was offered, it was some kind of harder, over-and-above-what's-required part of the assignment: something that the kids with a real talent for the subject, or a real drive to learn more, would get. And that seems fine to me.

What I don't like is the "new" Extra Credit. The "here do something sort of small-scale and busyworkish to salvage your poor grade." Or the idea that extra credit should make up for not having done the "required" work.

(I will admit to once in a while doing "extra credit" - really, "point reclamation credit" - in one of my classes when students bomb a particular exam: one of the classes I teach has a subject matter section that's quite difficult, and people don't often "get" it the first time around. But I tell myself that's different; I try to set the assignment up so the students are "teaching" themselves or looking at the material differently and maybe they will get it then).

But one thing that really bugs me is how some people EXPECT extra credit. I suppose it's a societal thing; people have come to expect quid pro quo. They want handouts. They don't want to do something and be told, "The benefit you get is intangible" or "This will help you down the line but you're not getting anything for it now."

The other thing with "expecting" extra credit, is when it's offered and people can't do it for some reason, they get OFFENDED. Or at least some people do.

Here's an example, and what got me thinking about this: Every spring, there is an event here in town. It's a good thing for our majors to go and participate in, it helps out the community and sometimes they learn something. I announced it this year and immediately the question came: "Are we going to get extra credit for going to this?"

I told them I'd think about it.

The problem is, if I don't, there'll be almost no attendance from our students. And the organizers will look all sad at me, and say, "Why didn't more students come?" And the administration will look all sad at me and say, "Why aren't your students more Engaged In The Community?" (This is their big push for "make the faculty work for us even on their free time" "make the university civicly active"

The thing is, I did offer this for extra credit in previous years. Several years almost no one showed up and I got the sad faces anyway. But then one year, I had a student pull me aside in the hall:

"You should know, I'm a Seventh-Day Adventist."

I looked at him, kind of puzzled: thanks for sharing, but why?

"Saturday is my Sabbath. This extra credit event is on Saturday. I can't go do stuff like that on my Sabbath. You're closing me out of extra credit!"

He as much as implied that I was discriminating against him because of his religion. The upshot? He felt he should have been permitted to be offered an "alternate" extra credit, "Like, you could have me write something," for the points.

I told him no. I told him he was already earning an A or very close to it (true) and that he wouldn't need extra credit - and that if I offered an "alternate" assignment for him, to be fair, I'd have to offer it to others.

Fortunately, he didn't take things any further. I suspect if he had gone to the dean and been butthurt enough about it, I would have been raked over the coals and then told to give him the damn alternative assignment.

I also, every semester, get people going, "ooooh, but I WORK on Saturdays!" Yeah? Well? Sorry. That's how life goes sometimes. Don't count on extra credit to save your grade!

So that's what stays my hand when people go, "Oh, can we get extra credit if we go?" Because then there will be a few VERY UNHAPPY people who act as if that five points (out of 700 total for the class) are the thing the desire the most in the world, and yet, circumstances are preventing them from getting those precious five points.

(I don't know. Maybe extra credit points seem sparklier or something than the typical points students earn by, I don't know, HANDING IN COMPLETED LAB ASSIGNMENTS or STUDYING HARD AND DOING WELL ON EXAMS)

And that I'm an ogre for even OFFERING these points, which, you see, they cannot have, because, poor them, they work. Or they worship that day. Or they have to go see Sally Tomato in Sing Sing that day. Or goodness knows what else.

And then, after I get put through all the agony of having to hear how a couple vocal people are very, very upset that I would choose to offer an extra credit opportunity at a time where their life interferes with them doing it, I will have two people show up for the thing. Probably the two people who would show up even if it weren't extra credit.

So that's why I hate extra credit, and tend to think it's a stupid idea. (The problem is, I have a colleague who hands extra credit out like candy on Halloween. So some of the students come to expect it, and almost are trained not to do anything unless you dangle it in front of their noses.

I suppose it's true that in any given generation, any given group, there really would only have been the equivalent of those two people who show up "unrewarded." But at least in prior years, I bet people just didn't show up without first complaining about how they weren't going to get extra credit for it.