A University of Georgia professor has adopted a “stress reduction policy” that will allow students to select their own grades if they “feel unduly stressed” by the ones they earned.
According to online course syllabi for two of Dr. Richard Watson’s fall business courses, he has introduced the policy because “emotional reactions to stressful situations can have profound consequences for all involved.”
As such, if students feel “unduly stressed by a grade for any assessable material or the overall course,” they can “email the instructor indicating what grade [they] think is appropriate, and it will be so changed” with “no explanation” being required.
“If in a group meeting, you feel stressed by your group’s dynamics, you should leave the meeting immediately and need offer no explanation to the group members,” the policy adds, saying such students can “discontinue all further group work” with their remaining grade being “based totally on non-group work.”
Similarly, when it comes to “tests and exams” for Watson’s “Data Management” and “Energy Informatics” courses, all will be “open book and open notes” and “designed to assess low level mastery of the course material” (the “Stress Reduction” section has been removed from both syllabi, but an archived version of the “Data Management” syllabus has been provided here).
Finally, for in-class presentations, Watson will allow “only positive comments” to be made, while “comments designed to improve future presentations will be communicated by email.” For entire story: Campus Reform
Perhaps someone should give the good professor a ticket to Afghanistan so he can spend time with some of our young, brave, college-age troops who don’t get to chose their next assignment because it might be “too stressful” for them.
Parents of these students need to start speaking up. We are raising a generation of marshmallows who will have no idea how to handle stress in real life situations. We as a nation, will have no one to blame but ourselves for raising an entire generation of coddled snowflakes with absolutely no coping skills.
