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In the margins of one paper I was grading I wrote, “The plural of ‘woman’ is ‘women’.” In another I underlined “lead” and wrote, “The past tense of the verb ‘to lead’ is ‘led’.” On almost every paper I wrote, “Weak thesis”, “Unclear organization”, or “Needs topic sentence”. I was not grading papers from fifth graders, as one might expect from a lesson on proper plurals of common nouns. I was not grading junior high, or even high school papers. Rather, I was grading college papers as a teaching assistant at a top California university.
After three years as a high school teacher, I was eager to experience teaching at the university level. As a doctoral student, I was responsible for leading discussion sections and determining grades for thirty to forty-five students each quarter. I looked forward to teaching the best and brightest students in California. After all, I was at the University of California, and according to the California Master Plan for Education, the UC system was “to select its freshmen students from the top one-eighth (12.5%) of the high school graduating class.” The average high school GPA for students entering the nine UC campuses in fall 2006 ranged between 3.58 for UC Merced to 4.17 for UC Berkeley. These are students used to succeeding in school.
The students I taught were bright, some of them exceptionally so. They worked hard, attended class, and came to office hours for help. They grasped complicated ideas and asked good questions in section. But they could not write. Somewhere, at some point, California’s public education system has failed these bright and motivated students.
I should not have had to teach college students basic plural forms, or the past tense of commonly used verbs. They should have had rigorous writing instruction in junior high and high school, so that such mistakes would be the exception rather than the rule. But in class after class for which I have served as teaching assistant, the students have lacked important writing skills. From the level of organization to the execution of individual sentences, students have required long hours of class work and individual coaching in office hours. And despite my most valiant efforts combined with dedication and hard work by students, their writing still needed work by the end of the quarter. Quarters last only ten to twelve weeks. Writing should be taught and refined over the course of years. By the time students reach college, they should have a basic command of grammar, syntax, and style.
I’m not arguing that all students should write perfectly. After all, graduate students and professors still work on their own writing. But the ability to organize thoughts coherently and to communicate effectively does not require literary genius.
As a high school teacher I also noticed this problem. But I taught at an urban school in a district with a notoriously bad track record. I wasn’t surprised to get high school students who had not been familiarized with thesis statements. Then, at least, I was able to work with students for an entire year. By the end, they could all develop a thesis and a well-organized supporting argument. There were still many gaps, but I hoped as they moved on through high school these would be filled in.
I assumed that by the time California’s best students reached college, they would be able to write. So I was stunned by my first round of paper grading, where I saw the same mistakes my high school freshmen made, and sometimes even more egregious errors. For this, there can be no excuse.
These students are bright, and most are highly motivated and hardworking. They can’t know what they haven’t been taught. They have been getting As and accolades throughout their high school careers without being held accountable for the knowledge and skills necessary for success. It is not that these students are incapable of possessing these skills. It is not a matter of ability or desire. It is a matter of education.
I’m not blaming individual high school teachers. I was one myself, and I know how hard that job is. I’m blaming a system that has encouraged mediocrity in the name of self-esteem and allowed for grade inflation that masks serious holes in knowledge. That system serves no one but the bureaucrats and politicians who depend on it. It certainly doesn’t serve the bright and capable students who it has failed to educate.
Source: Not as Good as Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice
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11 comments:
I would also include spellcheck as a major culprit; I've noticed that people tend to think a document is ok once it's been spell-checked, without putting any additional thought into what's actually printed on the page. The worst errors I see these days come from either homonyms or similarly-spelled words (there/their/they're, or spelling 'loose' insted of 'lose').
Which, of course, makes all those claims about the efficacy of technology to replace 'superficial' knowledge of arithmetic or spelling all the more laughable.
Slightly off-topic, but does anybody else think IM-speak to be an affront to God? People make fun of me for spending 10 minutes writing out text messages with correct spelling & recognizeable grammar, but I just can't bring myself to write in any other way.
I wonder how much of the problem can be attributed to the rampant plagiarism and cheating that is so common now.
This has been reported many times, so you can just go check out Joanne Jacobs's recent blog entry on cheating.
If they have been assigned papers, and have turned in papers, but have never actually written said papers, then it's understandable that they would not have a grasp of basic spelling and grammar.
I TAed several hundred students over the course of a few years as a grad student at UC Berkeley. The students were taking CS or math courses, both lower and upper division. They were supposedly the top of the tops at Cal, as most of them were Engineering College students or part of a strict system of entry into those majors via the L&S college.
They couldn't read, and they couldn't write. They also couldn't be bothered to write legibly enough to have their homework readable. They didn't care about reading or writing in college, and they certainly weren't being taught how to read or write while there. Since no one every graded them poorly based on their lousy spelling or grammar, they had no incentive to care. This was true in their science as well as their humanities classes.
I would not have called them highly motivated or hardworking, though. I found them much more interested in just getting by than in learning for learning's sake, no matter what the subject. But if you insist that they are so hard working and highly motivated, I assure you, it's only on the things that they think they'll be graded on. No one fails them for egregious errors in writing, so they aren't going to care.
Hi, Google Master!
As far as I can tell, we have a HUGE amount of content-downloading happening in the middle school.
Three years ago we went to the "Jason Project" exhibit at our middle school (not worth going into details) and Ed saw at least two IDENTICAL papers put up on display for all the parents to admire.
Unbelievable!
The school was displaying downloaded papers.
Probably a fair number of the papers for the Civil War Museum had cut-and-pasted copy, too. That's the way they read.
In this case it's not even plagiarism, I don't think.
I'm pretty sure the kids haven't been taught what plagiarism is and is not.
The other night, when I was working with C. on his article summary, I was having to tell him, "You have to put it into your own words."
He didn't really know this. He was headed towards just using the words in the article as his own words.
He definitely wasn't plagiarizing. He was sitting there with me, trying to figure out how to summarize an article. (NBT)
He didn't seem to KNOW, in his bones, that you have to paraphrase material - either paraphrase or use quotations.
AND: LET ME ADD THAT HIS TWO ELA TEACHERS HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD.
(I can probably document that.)
I'm reaching the conclusion that writing and math are the two most difficult subjects for schools to teach.
I've got to get Ed's take.
I have a memory that over the 20 years that he taught at UCLA student writing improved quite a bit.
I'm trying to remember what he said about NYU student writing....
I know he thinks NYU students are well-prepared for college.
They also have difficulty writing, however.
WOW
LOVE THE WEB SITE
WHY THE MIDDLE CLASS NEEDS GOOD SCHOOLS TOO
THANK YOU, GOD
IG
I have no comment on IM or Blackberries or anything of that nature, because I have steadfastly refused to buy a Blackberry and I can't get IM to work.
Well, I have so many comments to make that I don't even know where to begin!
I have spent the last six years teaching business law and business-related classes at the university level, and I require my students to write.
This is usually the point in the semester when I throw up my hands in despair and ask, to whomever will listen, "Who decided that commas and semi-colons were irrelevant to writing?"
I ask that question because many of my students use them improperly, if at all. It's almost as if they think, "Oh, I should throw in a comma somewhere, just for fun."
I certainly hope my use of "whomever" was grammatically correct, given that this comment is about writing. : )
I also attempt to lay down the law with them from the beginning in terms of expectations. I let them know that I do read their papers (every last word) and that I have a red pen and I know how to use it.
Some of the errors that students make are a result of carelessness or a failure to proofread. So, I always give my proofreading speech at the beginning of the semester (especially with freshmen), which includes a gentle reminder that reading a paper out loud is one of the best ways to catch errors.
Obviously, there is a difference between errors that occur as a result of carelessness and errors that occur as a result of lack of knowledge.
I hope this comment doesn't cross the line of good taste, but I recall a student who referred to Andy Warhol as Andy Whorehol. I have yet to recover from that incident, actually. I can assure you that the error was not intentional.
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