I teach high school. I don’t take off points for forgetting to writeyour name unless it’s a persistient problem, and even then, honestly, by this point in the year I know all their handwriting (lots and lots and lots of essays) and often don’t even NOTICE there isn’t a name. On the occasions when I don’t recognize it, I don’t spend any time figuring it out, I just write “name”? across the top, throw it in the graded paper basket, and if they find itk and then find me (i.e., if they give the slightest damn), I replace the zero.
I’m teaching English and their grade reflects their command of English rhetoric and the American Literary Tradition. Everything else I reinforce through the old-fashioned techniques of shame and guilt. ("How could you not put your name on your paper? It’s your NAME! Do you have no pride? No dignity? Do you think I have time to sport through a hundred papers to find out which is yours? Bah, give me that . . . ") (I do know my kids and adjust my approach. )
That said, I am always hesistant to attack somoene else’s pedagogy, as often things fit into a larger picture of their teaching technique. A policy like that might serve a role if you are trying to create an atmosphere of extreme attention to detail or something. I myself do certain things that seem arbitrary because I am trying to create a certain folkgeist in the room.
So many of you are assuming there is only one student in the class who forgets to write their name. But without the penalty policy, what if there were three? Or seven? How much time should a teacher be expected to put in to not only grade the test but do detective work (handwriting analysis, etc.) in order to determine which paper belongs to which student? And the teacher has more than one class per day. So if three students per class forget to fill in their name, that is potentially 12 or more papers a day that have to be set aside until their ownership can be determined. For a test at the end of the term, that can delay getting grades entered and delay report cards. Especially if the test is given right before a holiday, and grades need to be entered before you see the students again. Explain to your principal why the entire school’s report cards are being held up, and you’ll see some consequences!
If I forget to enter one piece of information on a form I fax to our ordering department, my order either doesn’t get shipped, gets shipped to the wrong location, or is shipped incorrectly. Either way, the company loses money and I might lose a customer. Better I should learn the lesson in seventh-grade than when thousands of dollars are on the line.
And the poster who said they’d be tempted to just fill in their name on the next test and leave the test blank…well, words just fail me. Who exactly suffers in that situation, hmmmm? Sounds like something a seventh-grader might do, but it is a good example of the type of attitude many students have: If I have to suffer a penalty, then I’m just not going to play any more. That’ll get you far in the real world.
Why are you opposed to consequences that don’t including dinging the letter grade? And what’s wrong with Manda JO’s approach? Every student without a test gets a zero, until that student checks the graded paper bin and says, “Hey, that’s mine. Sorry!” Again, sorry if as an outsider I don’t have the appropriate empathy, but I’m betting most times you don’t have 3 kids who forget to put their names per test, but even if you do, well, that just doesn’t seem like such a catastrophe. I have all kinds of things go wrong or out of process every day in my job.
Manda JO has it exactly right. Your job is to teach that kid your subject. Peripherally you may be creating other good habits, but they’re beside the point. You’re not teaching him to remember to sign his checks. If he doesn’t later in life, he’ll have to deal with it, just like the rest of us. Just my opinion, but what I hear “between the lines” in many of these responses doesn’t sound like, “It’s for his own good.” It sounds like, “Why the hell should I have to deal with this? I have enough problems.” Just my opinion.
What if a kid lost 10% of his exam score, lost his valedictorian status, lost his scholarship, couldn’t go to college, and was killed a drug-related shooting at the age of 19? There’s no point in spinning hypotheticals unless they’re at least tenuously attached to reality.
At my high school, no points were ever deducted for failing to write your name on the paper. None. In my two years there, in my six classes per year, exactly three people failed to write their names on tests. I know the precise figure because the teachers always annouced it as it happened. This mild public humiliation was the only penalty. Nobody’s GPA took a hit. No one’s scholarships were threatened. And yet, somehow, we avoided a slide into nameless exam anarchy.
Also, what high school do you teach at that requires one paper per class per day? I think the teachers there would have a rough time of it no matter what they did with unattributed papers.
That’s weird. When I forget an entry on the forms I use, whoever wants me to fill them in sends them back to me and makes me finish. I fill in what I missed, whatever I was trying to make happen happens, and life goes on.
When I went to school, we had a ton of standardized tests every year. We were always told, somewhat jokingly, that you get 5(or 10, I forget) points, just for writing your name in the bubble-spaces correctly. That’s the only time I ever heard of your name affecting your grade.
It sounds like the teacher punishing students to avoid doing a small amount of extra work, then using “well, in the Real World™,” as an excuse. Perhaps, to give the kids a better sense of what the real world is like, they should have a position of unaccountable authority given to one kid each day, who is able to make arbitrary rules that the rest of the class must follow to make his own life easier.
I don’t understand what the uproar is about. The teacher told the students there would be a penalty for not putting their name on their tests. The student didn’t put his name on the test.
Personally, I wouldn’t deduct points for not putting a name on a paper, but I think the teacher was absolutely within her rights to do so as long as she warned the students in advance. Teachers are within their rights to set any guidelines for submitting work that they like, within reason, and it’s a good lesson for the students to learn to pay attention to that sort of thing.
Well, you’ve gotta admit that it would help make the tortoises faster. I’d draw the line at giving snapping turtles skateboards, though, because that’s just dangerous. Let’s use our heads on this one.
Personally, I think 10% is excessive, especially when writing the name doesn’t have anything to do with what’s being taught (The comparison with deducting points for spelling just doesn’t fly.). In the real world, sure there are consequences and penalties for not writing your name, but I can’t help thinking that there are better ways to go about this than slashing someone’s grade. Oh, and by the way, 10% off a final exam could easily lower your final grade by a letter. I just don’t think it’s fair.
If it’s a real problem, and you absolutely have to make a policy like this, then I think jacquilynne’s answer is the way to go. At least give them the heads up that there’s a problem.
People seem to be assuming that mechanics are the only part of an assigned grade. No, there are portions of the grade assigned to mechanics, and parts to contents.
I’ve seen students fail to sign job and graduate school application forms, and have their applications denied. I have sat next to someone who did not sign his Eurail pass for the day of travel, and had to pay a large fine. I have seen a grant proposal rejected because linking numbers were not placed as directed.
What uproar? The OP is asking people if this is excessive or not, in their opinions. And people are answering.
If the teacher had said in advance expulsion would be the result for omitting one’s name, would that be excessive, or does the “advance notice” argument still hold?
I don’t think people are missing this. I think the point is that if 10% of the grade is applied to the mechanics of writing one’s name–admittedly a nuisance deduction–then there’s something out of kilter.
Don’t know what the last one means, but the other examples seem like draconian nonsense as well.
Say what? How does a “change-of-address” form fix a failure to sign a check or put your social security number on a tax return? Although those things don’t necessarily have a significant negative associated with them, they can. If you’re on your third notice for your electric bill and you send in an unsigned check on the last possible day, it’s going to be sent back and your power will be cut off until you can rectify the situation. No, it’s not the end of the world, but neither is losing 10% of a final exam score.
Maybe, or you call the electric company, apologize for not signing your check and they’ll give you a week or so grace to send them a signed check or come up with another means of payment.
The point being, they (the phone company, bank, electric company…etc) isn’t trying to teach you a lesson or punish you, they just want you sign the damn forms so they can close your file and go to the next person.
Yup. The world is full of draconian nonsense. The fact that you don’t like it won’t make it go away. I see nothing wrong with the idea of deducting 10% for leaving off their name GIVEN THAT THEY WERE WARNED AHEAD OF TIME. Getting burnt by that rule might help the student be a bit more anal about following rules (draconian though they may be) and avoid more serious consequences from not bothering to follow “draconian” rules down the road.
I don’t have much sympathy for students who lost 10% of a grade for failing to do anything. They want or need an A? They better be damned sure their paper is A quality, and that means contents and mechanics are exemplary.
Then everybody in your house better make sure they are meeting the requirements of an assignment, regardless of how arbitrary those requirements seem. Everybody’s trying to find “real world examples” of consequences for leaving off your name…what about real world consequences for ignoring an important part of <I>any</I> process? What if your boss told you to do 10 specific things, and you blew off 2 of those things? I can’t imagine most employers appreciating that.
As for the person who’d fill in her name and leave the test blank… :rolleyes: That’s what I’d do, right before I put a big, fat zero on the paper. Though I’m sure somebody would argue that’s not fair too.
I’ll defer to some of the resident jurists (Campion, Bricker, anu-la) to fill in the details, but making critical errors in documents submitted to the court can cost you a motion and potentially a judgement; hence, all the anxiety and angst over correctly placing commas and citing references. It still happens, of course, and I’d guess a single incident rarely makes or breaks a career (unless it’s on that critical last minute motion to re-examine a defense witness who was condradicted by late disclosure of evidence) but someone who is habitually sloppy isn’t going to end up senior partner in a major law firm. (Well, in theory, anyway.)
Harsh? Yeah, 10% is pretty harsh. It’s also a tiny taste of the bitterness of real life in an environment where the consequences are pretty much forgettable in the long term. (I’m guessing that the teacher might bend the curve a little if it were a situation between a C and a D, or a D and failing.) It may be due to nervousness, or anxiety, or just lack of attention, but the odds are good that it won’t happen again. I made a habit of always naming, dating, and signing tests and assignments first thing, and then looking them over to find questions or errors to avoid this, and I do that now with work data, which has served me very well many times when other people have left off some little bit of information, like a date, location, units, or whatnot.
The teacher might be being a jerk about it, too, but that’s a touch of real life as well. You have to learn what people expect of you and find a way to do it (or accept the consequences of deciding not to do it), regardless of whether it’s reasonable or not, and the sooner the student learns, the better.