If you’ve ever taken a college-level humanities class, I am sure you can relate to the struggle of sitting through a lecture with mandatory participation. Your peers likely repeat the same points just phrased slightly differently to get full credit. And you can’t blame them — who wants their grade dropping because they didn’t talk enough in class?
Maybe you are tired of hearing your classmates say “to piggyback off of what she said” and then repeat exactly what she said, verbatim. Maybe you’re looking at the clock nervously as class ticks away, trying to think of the right thing to say. Class has transformed from a collaborative exchange of information and ideas into an anxious, redundant back-and-forth.
You may think this is just a “you issue,” but it definitely is not. Mandatory participation harms the classroom environment, the individuals in it and the way the humanities are studied and viewed more broadly.
Incentivizing people when they have nothing to say leads to poor, circular conversations. In these cases, contributions to the discussion are rarely graded for quality. The professor simply notes each time you talk. This creates an environment where the quantity of participation is more important than quality, a point not lost on the students who feel the need to talk frequently to earn points.
In fact, in “Rethinking Evaluation Strategies for Student Participation,” Meyer and Hunt explain that “some students indicated that the use of graded participation functions as a means of eliciting pseudo critical thinking and may even provoke psychological reactance in the form of student silence.”
Generally, compulsory participation rewards those who enjoy hearing themselves speak while simultaneously penalizing individuals who prefer to process internally rather than externally. Why should we reward people for being confident and plowing on with superficial contributions to the conversation, rather than a person who thoughtfully considers everything they say and might talk less?
Plenty of people prefer to fully formulate their thoughts before sharing them, but can’t keep up with the required level of participation. According to a 2022 study on classroom participation from the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, “mandatory discussion can create a biased classroom culture which rewards confident students while marginalizing students that struggle with public speaking.”
Not only are more self-conscious or shy students hesitant to participate in discussion, but some students do not want to participate unless they have something insightful to say. Personally, I always hope that when I say things in class, they are original or interesting and not just regurgitating what others have said. I tend not to speak up unless that is the case, and I am sure others relate.
Furthermore, this participation-based grading system can feel subjective, leading students to feel they are being assessed unfairly. It can make it hard to know how you are doing in a class until the very end of the semester, when you are slapped with a grade you weren’t expecting. And often, there is no universal way to ensure every student is held to the same standard for participation.
This result is pretty unavoidable, as people have different barometers for what qualifies as valid participation. Many people I have talked to about this have expressed concern that they feel targeted by unfair grading or that they don’t understand the grade they’ve received.
Beyond the content taught, the skill of listening to others with openness and humility is essential for schools to teach. Forced participation impedes this because, rather than listening to others to truly learn their perspective, students are incentivized to plan how they will earn points and jump into the conversation. When I have to participate in class a set number of times to earn credit, I spend the entire class thinking about what I will say next rather than focusing on my classmates’ contributions.
Listening is often an underappreciated skill, especially when it comes to listening to your peers, not just a professor or lecturer. And there’s value in listening and learning from others when you have nothing to say. This is why it is counterproductive to reward constantly repeating ideas rather than participating and listening when necessary.
Beyond being annoying and potentially even grade-ruining, compulsory participation more broadly can devalue humanities subjects. Since many of these classes are discussion-based and place a strong emphasis on participation, how participation is conducted in humanities classes is important. When professors don’t emphasize making a meaningful contribution to the conversation and instead stress talking as much as possible, the classes become less rigorous and substantive.
Studying the humanities is a real academic pursuit and higher-level classes should maintain that by not allowing for diluted conversation. The truth is, these classes are no less demanding than other subjects if you are a committed and engaged student, but the classroom culture might reinforce negative ideas about them.
Ultimately, I think mandatory class participation hurts more than it helps because it degrades classroom conversation by incentivizing the sharing of half-baked ideas and rewarding those who plow on with confidence, rather than those who prefer to process more slowly and share fully fleshed-out answers. It can make students feel that they are being evaluated unfairly and that their grade is unexpected or doesn’t reflect their performance.
Compulsory participation doesn’t teach the skills of listening and learning from peers. Rather, it encourages students, first and foremost, to share their ideas, which are often just repetitive and insubstantial. This negative effect on the classroom also harms the study of the humanities, where these issues are present.
Shefa Stein-Talesnick is a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial.