UPDATE: There’s an update to this post, but it’s in the private posts. If you read it, you’ll see why. You’d think by the time graduation rolls around, every student would have learned that doing homework leads to good grades, and not doing homework, especially homework graded in cumulative performances rather than leveled evaluation, leads to bad homework. You’d think they’d know to make sure what the basis of their grades will be at the outset, to pay attention when it’s stated and ask carefully if they missed it. And most of them have. Most of them.

I should have known, but of course I didn’t expect it. Now, I should clarify: most of the students who have come and seen me about grade-modifications have done so on relatively understandable grounds. They admitted error, but expressed an opinion that perhaps I was a little too harsh in my grading. This I can swallow. But there is a small group of students in one of my classes who basically spent the semester, to one degree or another, shirking a major assignment that I informed them many times, from the beginning of semester, would be worth 25% of their …