N.I.C.E (4-letter word)

I teach COMP. Kids have learned nice.

It makes me wish I was not human. I don't know whether I should call them kids. Maybe it's patronizing. Though I would like to be called a kid. As a matter of fact, I identify as 'kid.'

My kid is taking COMP, though not in my class. He's been in my everything-else-class for so long, he's earned his lecture emancipation. He has learned a few lessons well—logical fallacies, for instance, and he's quick to remind me of these when I bemoan niceness.

That is, the quality of being pleasant or the state of being anthropoid balloons...bobbing above chairs, floating over desks, tied to pertly curled ribbons,

e.g.

Slippery Slope	If instructors do not fail nice students, eventually all students will be nice and all instructors will be nice and the world will be nice—just before it ends during a reiki practicum.
Hasty Generalization	Failure to reward a student's consciousness and enthusiastic blinking is a sure sign of pedantry.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc	Students who are nice but do little work pass class, so being nice but doing little work is passing.
Circular Argument	Nice students are good students because they are agreeable and pleasant.
​Either/Or	Instructors can either give nice students the benefit of the doubt by passing them or burn in hell.
Ad hominem	Instructors who can't pass nice students are clearly humorless, incompetent, and ill-prepared to engage students in Snapchat, Twitch, Discord, and other relevant platforms that could make learning fun.

I mean, I'm not trying to upset the 'kindness-matters' bandwagon or anything; I'm just trying to cobble together the 'kindness-isn't-the-only-thing-that-matters' bandwagon. All while the 'let's-do-away-with-grades-altogether' bandwagon is charging across the pandemic-addled higher ed landscape...but that's a nice conversation for another time.

For now, I'll take my son catching the counsel spilling from both sides of my mouth in his rhetorical cup as a win.

• Don't skip class. / Showing up isn't enough.

• Instructors are apt to look more favorably on students they like. / Grading is objective.

Look, kids, I get it...it's a tough world full of straw they/thems...I guess what I'm trying to say is:

If you don't get your nice pants dirty, you'll just never learn.