Thursday, February 5, 2009

post ponment of assignments-ignorance and misunderstanding

i m going back to those initial classes of how is a collective action generated and the rational of an individual joining it..i, personally feel that when we ask our acad com to postpone the assignment or quiz, we initiate a collective action.. the extra rational motivation behind it is our misunderstanding or ignorance..we are unable to appreciate the value of submitting or completing the assignment by its due date..when we are made aware that the assignment would help us in the term exams which are ahead or in a longer run, learnig how to handle the pressure by sticking to the dead lines or managing the time more efficiently, we would not do this..
the constraints are not undermined here. but, given all these, there were always the possibilities of going on without postponing.

7 comments:

Bhardwaj said...

instead of saying ignorance and misunderstanding as the reasons for postponement of assignments, we can say that it is the magical number 2 that means survival in irma, which is resposible for this. when you want to survive then you have to cross the threshold of 2 and the assignments povide the opportunity to cross this threshold. it means you need to give your best and when you are willing to give your best, then it always need some (extra time, labor and everything) extra. so survival is responsible for the postponements of assignments.

Joseph Kalassery said...

if rules are not stringent, ther wil always b exploiters...

if faculty does not change the day of submission according to whim and fancies of students, then this problem wouldnt have come up. also, the work usually gets done one or 2 days bfore assignment due date. so, in most cases the quality of assignment or grades doesnt improve with extension of dates.

nd as u said, in professional organisations deadlines are extended only in the rarest of rare situations. so, y dont v follow the same in our institution?

this is just my viewpoint.
thanks.

irfan said...

bhardwaj, taking your argument a bit forward, what i would like to say here is that, we are not able to see beyond that 2. we need to realise that what matters is the learning we get out of these assignments. and when one argues achieving 2 as the short term interest and reaching this short term is important at the present time, it is again our ignorance of our loss of long term interest..
however, i would still not agree upon 2 being the minimum survival limit and we need extra time to reach that as we know this fact from the very beginning and still lay back till the last day is before us..
even this is ignorance..

irfan said...

joseph,
taking this example and relating to the beggar analogy which prof. sony discussed in the class, what i think is that faculty is actually demobilising. they are in fact, hindering the probable collective action that could have sprung up. that collective action could be timely submission of assignments next time or any other thing.
one other possibility could be that previously when the faculty were strict and never allowed postponement, mobilisation or collective action in terms of all students influencing the faculty to finally postpone assignments could have happened and all we are seeing now is a result of that collective action in the past..
i am stuck with a question now.
is this process of collective action generation a cycle...

Joseph Kalassery said...

yes...
until nd unless human beings become perfect ther wil b scope for collective action in a upward spiral structure..

i wud like 2 know whether faculty is doing this purposefully so tat v learn the hard way the importance of long term goals inspite of short term hardships...bcos ny person with average intelligence can realize tat postponement only gives losses in the long run...

thanks

Gopi Sankar G said...

a few questions...dont u think it is unfair to dismiss the postponment of assignments as an action out of ignorance? Rather isn't it an informed decision? and if the faculty are not accepting our request to postpone the assignments how can we term our collective action as successful? if we go by Irfan's argument(drawing analogy between beggars and we trying to postpone), would ther be any collective action which is successful?

Dr Priyang said...

Irfan I think it's not ignorance or misunderstanding but pressure of not geeting good grades and desire to perform better in case get the sufficient time leads to such types of action.