Most schools require a set number of hours in a class in order to receive credit. These hours are aptly referred to as seat time, as most often that's what student are doing. Sitting.
Showing up at a specific time, doing what's asked or expected of you for a set time in order to earn a credit or an hourly wage, reduces you to a cog in a machine.
The work may never get wholly completed, but you get your credit/paycheque because you showed up and did a reasonable amount of work (a term more often used in school than learn), even if you spent a chunk of time watching others work or sat around and visited.
If only minimum wage rose like grade inflation.
You can't leave even if your work is done so why would you work harder? learn more?
Should we wonder why many of our students become the employees that employers complain about?
A student who gets 50% and one who gets 100% both receive the course credit. Do little work on your shift and make it look like you were busy, receive same wage as co-worker.
Shift the currency
Scrap seat time. And while we're at it, scrap grades and make it clear--working with the students--what the learning outcomes, opportunities and possibilities are. Once the goals (sometimes emergent) are met and discovered, the students can move on.
This will never work!
I hear you.
Too messy. Too unpredictable. Too much not like how we do things now.
How will we...? What if...? Where will I...? When will I know...? Parents...
The questions that arise come from a critical mind and an emotional heart. Embrace head and heart. Ask and answer all the questions. Get the students involved in the process. They have lots of questions about why we don't do things to better benefit their learning.
Together, let's engage in the process of designing learning spaces that matter and get students out of their seats.