The evaluation for the course
will be based on these items, out of a semester total of 200 points:
Work due on a given class day is due at the start of class time, unless
otherwise noted. Missing a tutorial costs one full grade. Late (even barely
late) work loses the point equivalent of one full grade (=10%), and a further
grade for each additional twenty-four hours of lateness. (Except for the
assignment due during finals week, for which no late submission is allowed.) Keep
in mind this cost when deliberating about taking more time in which to complete
a paper.
Final letter grades for the course will correspond to the
following percentages:
A- 90–92 A
93–100 A+ **
B- 80–82 B
83–86 B+
87–89
C- 70–72 C
73–76 C+ 77–79
D- ** D
60–66 D+ 67–69
F 0–59 ** = doesn’t exist at SMCM
Attendance
policy
Executive summary: don’t hit the two-week mark!
You have sensibly chosen a small college. If you had
wanted to be facelessly anonymous, you could have chosen to enroll at Enormous
U. Directly relating to each other about matters of (I’m sure you’ll come to
agree) great importance to us as individuals and as members of communities is
the best of college experiences.
This course is structured as a seminar. That means we
use real-time, in-person discussions to explore, understand, and even disagree
about the text assigned. Even though I have guideposts for the discussions, the
presence or absence of individuals in a class on a given day will shape how
that day’s conversation unfolds and what new understandings we develop as a
class. Missing class isn’t just about missing the content. In this course, it’s
not just about “what we go over,” but “HOW” we go over it that’s critical for
your learning. That’s why showing up matters. And not just to you, but for the
rest of us, too.
For at least this reason, regular attendance at, and
participation in, class are required. (Furthermore, it is impossible to do well
in this course without regular attendance, and difficult without regular
participation.)
For this course, everyone is allowed five absences
(excused or unexcused) per semester. Having a sixth absence—excused or
unexcused—will result in failing the course, despite the quality of the rest of
the student’s work. (The College
policy’s minimum is to allow two—thus, I am out of the gates already 150% more
generous than the College requires!)
(Students using an approved ADA accommodation for
“modified attendance policy” will be granted one extra absence; so the grade wouldn’t be affected even with six absences,
but would automatically become an F upon the seventh.)
So because this is a
MWF class, you get one shy of two weeks’ worth of absences. And you fail the
course if you hit the two weeks’ worth. (Or if you hit your seventh class, for
those of you who have an approved ADA accommodation for modified attendance policy.)
The one exception to the preceding paragraph is for
students who are forced by quarantine rules to stay away from classes. In such
cases, the student should contact the instructor ASAP—and in any case, prior
to the first class missed due to quarantine. This being said,
we hope the days of quarantine are in our rear-view mirror.
The first recourse students should use for catching up
when absent—for any reason—is to look for a communication from their Back-Up
Buddy, a system to be explained and signed up for in class. Students can
also contact the instructor for added assistance, of course.
As I hope is obvious—or soon will be once the semester
starts—the fact that you are allowed
these absences without any automatic loss of grade should not be interpreted as
a recommendation to actually use said absences.
Not only do you want to avoid imprudently and prematurely emptying your bank
account only to find out that you’re getting walloped with some virus near the
end of the semester, but your ability to make sense of the material, your
ability to become fluent in philosophically informed ways of thinking, and your
ability to succeed in your assignments would be unhappily compromised in
proportion to your number of absences.
Tutorials
The tutorial papers will be run as paired tutorials.
You will be scheduled in pairs to read your paper to me and to the other
student. We will discuss your paper with you, interrupting you more than once.
Then the other student will read their paper in the same way. So that we may
follow along as you read, ensure that the other student has access to your
paper. Realize that it is your paper which will be graded, not your reading of
it or your answering any questions which I or the
other student may bring up. The purpose of having you read the paper to me is
that I can give you most comments directly and suggest ways to improve your
future work. This is much easier for me to do and much more helpful to you than
having you read my comments in dried ink on a dead piece of paper. Because I
will have to schedule many tutorial sessions, I am canceling class for the days
during which the tutorials will be held.
You will have the opportunity to submit a
substantive re-write (that is, not only correcting mechanical errors—see next
paragraph) of the first substantive paper (the one on Socrates, King, and
Malcolm X), and the grade recorded will be the average of the grade on the
first submission and on the second submission.
Writing
Since writing is central to the course, both in reading
others' and in creating your own, respect for writing will manifest itself even
at the level of writing mechanics. You will be expected to take stylistic and
mechanical concerns most seriously in your three papers. As a motivational aid
to this end, you will be allowed two grammatical, spelling, or punctuation
mistakes per page (partial pages counting as full), after which you will lose
one point for each mistake. For example, if you have a 24-point paper of five
pages, and you have made thirteen mechanical errors, then you will receive a 21
for the paper. N.B.: the same mistake (not just similar) repeated will
count as one mistake. You will be allowed to submit a revised version with the
mechanical errors corrected, and in these cases you
will be assigned the average of your original and revised grade.
You might consider spending a bit of time at my writing site.
Few would fail to benefit.
Hellenistic Week
journal
As we wrap up our
discussions of the three main Hellenistic (323-31 BCE) schools of thought
(Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism), you are to choose one of these schools
and keep a daily, reflective journal as if you were a follower of your chosen
“ism,” though alive today. You will try living as a proponent of that worldview, and keep a journal of your reflections of where that
“ism” seemed easy to adopt, where the challenges were, what this tells us about
your chosen school, or what this tells you about you. (You might even want to use these four
headings for each day’s entry, together with any other headings you find useful.)
If you already
consider yourself a member of one of these traditions, then the only added work
of this assignment is the writing.
Bear in mind that
keeping a reflective journal is not the same as a keeping a mere diary.
You might reflect
on ways in which you behaved in keeping with your tradition, and where this was
for the good. Or where it turned out poorly. Or ways in which you didn’t
measure up as a follower, but where your actual, alternative course of action
was the better choice.
Distinguishing journals will incorporate passages from our reading (with page
citation) into their reflections.
Personal electronics
This seminar
requires a free-flowing exchange of ideas, between you and the authors, as well
as among us. The presence of electronic devices, replete with their glowing
notifications, creates a barrier to this flow. Therefore, the use of
electronics is allowed in class only in order to
access the readings online or by those with documented needs of which I’ve been
notified by official channels.
Cell phones
should be stowed away in any case, and not simply on the table—even if turned
upside down—even if powered completely off. “Why,” you ask? Well, recent
studies indicate the distracting effect of even a cell phone not one’s own,
laying on a nearby table. In fact, of even a drawing or a thought
of a cell phone. So
I hereby prohibit you during class even to think
of a cell phone! (I’ll keep mine away, too.)
(If a phone
is the only way you have of accessing the readings in class, fine…just give me
a heads-up so I know not to bark at you.)
And even with
a laptop or a tablet, you have a responsibility to stay on task during class
time. This provides
a nice summary of some of the recent research on the effects of off-task use of
electronics in the classroom. Treat your seat in class as if it were the
driver’s seat in a car. Steer responsibly.
As for note-taking, consult this study,
which found superior recall in students who took notes by hand compared to
those who took them by typing, and this recent article
sums up some of the research findings.
Students with documented disabilities
“Following the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, and applicable state law, St. Mary’s
College of Maryland (SMCM) does not discriminate against any individual on the basis of handicap or disability. As a result, SMCM
will consider requests for reasonable accommodations for students who
self-disclose a disability or disabling health conditions. Accessibility
Services works with students, faculty, and staff to promote access on our campus.”
The SMCM Office of
Accessibility Services
Academic integrity
Of sickness makes
sickness,
Contagion of
trust can make trust.
--Marianne
Moore, American poet
from “In Distrust of Merits” (1943)
The College’s definitions and policies about academic
misconduct are laid out here. Ignorance of such matters is no excuse.
Academic misconduct can result in automatic failure of the course, regardless
of how well a student has been doing on other assignments. In addition,
extra-course penalties may be pursued, like being prohibited from ever
re-taking the class.
“So, what about using a chatbot?”
Using AI, including platforms like ChatGPT or Bard, can be
helpful as a tool in studying for exams. There’s no guarantee that the info you
get from it will be accurate or to the point of the question. So you have to refuse to surrender your good judgment. It’s
ill-advised to parrot what a chatbot tells you the answer is, just as it is to
assume that the first hit on a Google search for “best Thai restaurant near me”
will delight your palate.
“OK, but what about for writing papers?
AI can also be useful as a resource for getting clear on
some issues that you would need to understand in order to
write the paper, as would consulting Wikipedia or YouTube videos. In order,
that is for YOU to write the paper.
1.
It’s fine by me for you to use AI as a RESOURCE,
pre-writing.
AI can also be helpful as an editor, to do proofreading and
grammar- and spell-checking, and to improve the organization of a paper. I’m
not saying that the suggestions you get will always be correct, of course.
Don’t outsource your common sense. Also, be wary of missing an opportunity to *learn*
how a proposed revision of, say, a given wording is an improvement. (Assuming,
of course, that it is an improvement.)
2.
It’s fine by me for you to use AI as an EDITOR,
post-writing.
Where AI software should NOT be used is as an author.
For YOU are the author, and to represent the work of another (whether of
another person or of a software application) as if it were YOUR work is clearly plagiarism. As with using any other source,
you should not copy and paste into your paper any content you did not create.
3.
It’s def NOT fine by me for you to use AI as an AUTHOR,
doing the writing.
Good (and short!) tutorials on topics like samples of
acceptable and unacceptable paraphrases can be found at a page put up by
Indiana University: https://plagiarism.iu.edu/
Send me mail: mstaber at smcm dot edu
Go to the home page for this course.
Go to Michael Taber's home page.
Go to the SMCM home page.