Woman sneezing into a handkerchief
Sneezing in class, a seemingly minor nuisance, has become important enough to make it onto the CNN News Videos. When I first came upon the video “Teacher Stands Up to Sneezes”, I was extremely curious it reminded me of the class discussion we had regarding Ryanair’s toilet charges. Both targeted a human need. Just as Ryanair’s policy resulted in much criticism for placing profit before consumer comfort, the teacher’s strong stance against sneezing landed him on the RidicuList. Clearly, it is never a wise choice to mess with people’s “rights” and “needs” not only in the business world, but also in classes.
However, the teacher’s stance against sneezes may be more reasonable than it appears. Delving deeper, I realized that it wasn’t sneezing that the teacher had issues with but the “God Bless You”s that followed. He deducted marks off students who said “God Bless You” when someone sneezed because it was a meaningless phrase that interrupted class time.
The opportunity cost of saying “God Bless You” is high as the class time interrupted could have contributed to a more cohesive lecture, a more productive class discussion, and simply a better learning environment.
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