flexible deadlines and rework

i believe both flexible deadlines and allowing students to rework mistakes are critical for student learning. face it, folks don't always learn at the same rate. in the grand scheme of things, how is a student's learning best served - by allowing an extra week to get an assignment *right* or by compelling the student to meet a deadline - often an arbitrarily-set one. mistakes are critical for learning - if teachers allow students and motivate students to learn from them.

that being said, students need to understand, that in many ways, late assignments hurt them more then they do the instructor. a student is robbed of a chance for timely feedback, and flexibility can be abused to where students fall hopelessly behind. with freedom comes responsibility. still, the bigger danger is to try to force each student to learn on the exact same schedule. anecdotally, i believe i have had many students who were able to successfully complete a class, as opposed to dropping, because of my flexibility.

many say that deadlines are important to teach students about professionality, yada yada. there is validity in this line of thinking, however, a few things to consider. first of all, there aren't *always* deadlines - secondly, students are students, not professionals - i mean there are tons of other differences between students and professionals (most obviously, professionals get paid, students don't)- why enforce this particular standard, when students are, by definition, not at the level of an accomplished professional...