Sending the wrong students to college

[lookingforward]

I worked as a writer for a woman who had all the style manuals and knew which had which unique twists on rules. Bottom line, you have to know which manual your context will base expectations on. It made my head spin.

[bovertine]

Ok. Lookingforward's explanation looks reasonable, despite the insult.

[lookingforward]

what insult?
No offense intended, friendly apologies. Something about 65 got me going.
Btw, I looked at the AP Absweet mentions- and it just reinforces that we all should just rephrase, as she suggests.

Maybe we should get off grammar, which, I guess, sometimes is like religion.

[bovertine]

Actually I read your sentence about educating the kiddies as an insult but on second thought I read something into it probably because I am just annoyed that I had this wrong and it took me so long to get it.

[bovertine]

I prefer arguing about things with a right or wrong answer. Even when I find out I'm wrong. At least I learn something in the process, as opposed to arguing for months about AA or some other such nonsense.

[OHMomof2]

I also hate possessive (proper) nouns on welcome mats but it was fun to try to figure out how to write them anyway. Thanks for the Saturday fun bovertine

FWIW I put the apostrophe after the s, without an additional s. The Jones' yard for the Jones family, the Jone's yard for the Jone family. Never The Jones's though The Joneses as a plural works for those who try to keep up with them...so I guess if we were talking about a possessive plural it would be The Joneses' yards?

LOL.

[bovertine]

It all seems so clear and simple now.

Sometimes you just get a mental block that's hard to shake.

I remember on some forum we had a 1000 page argument about an airplane on a conveyor belt. I could sense many posters going off the deep end until it finally clicked for them.

[lookingforward]

Maybe a lot easier if we had multiple choice.
It's okay.

[Agentninetynine]

I'm a big fan of clear, coherent, grammatically correct writing. It's an essential skill for the well educated individual, even those in traditionally STEM or blue collar industries. Oregon students have abysmal writing scores and I believe it's because these kids don't write enough.

Teachers either don't have the time or the inclination to correct essays once a week, so kids read about how to write, rather than actually writing.

DD was mortified freshman year when her paltry writing skills landed her in the "regular" class. Her teacher is the most difficult and feared instructor (and the only nun) in the school and DD HATED Sister You-will-learn-to-write. Students start with a C and anything above that has to be earned. A's are rare in that class -- your basic nightmare for an honors kid focused on the "A."

Every day DD came home with a two to three page paper covered in red. And every day, DD corrected and rewrote. The strangest thing happened after about 8 weeks -- DD improved and the red marks were fewer. By the end of the first semester, Sister You-will-learn-to-write was the favorite teacher. DD got an A in the class.

[OHMomof2]

Agent...my D's always gotten As in school and I never looked over her shoulder much. She's in "pre-AP" English (10th grade) this year and on her first paper she got a 79. Distressed, she showed it to me.

Whoa.

Disorganized, no flow, boring despite the many many superlatives she used, apparently trying to liven it up. A red pen wouldn't be effective here, the whole thing was, IMO, cr@p from thesis to conclusion. Kid is NOT a good writer, though she can spell and her grammar is fine. She loves science and math and has only written as little as she could get away with.

This is the teacher and the year that she will get better. I started helping her, working with her on coming up with an interesting and clear thesis, outline, making a point and carrying through all the way. Her teacher provides a very detailed rubric on which writing is graded, and we work with that.

She re-wrote that paper and got only an 81...next paper I stepped in to help guide her, 89, next one - a bigger research paper, 92...she really is getting it, slowly but surely. There are at least a dozen papers this year, ranging from 2 to 12 pages each. Some are research, some are essays on literature...this teacher is not messing around, she plans to make them all write and write well. I help however I can but am careful never to write FOR her.

I wonder about the kids who never get this experience of feet held to the writing fire.

[cobrat]

Scratch the door-to-door sales (too dangerous), replace it with a summer of farm labor, manual labor, hard labor--something that makes him/her sweat, honest work for honest pay. Makes a kid feel good--I know it did me.

I'm wondering whether you're one of those "damned intellectuals need to be put in their types" I've observed among some crappy middle school teachers or certain crackpot dictators like Mao Zedong who was fond of sending intellectuals and their families to the countryside to perform forced labor on farms and factories.

One byproduct of that happening in China during the Cultural Revolution from 1966-76 was that all educational/research institutions effectively ground to a halt and a whole generation ended up going without any meaningful education.

So as someone whose great-aunt/uncle and their kids were subjected to that BS, pardon me if I'm reminded of Mao's idiotic policies and his political hacks calling for the glories of intellectuals being coerced into performing farm/manual labor.

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by OHMomof2

She loves science and math and has only written as little as she could get away with.

Scientists and mathematicians need to be able to write clearly, just like everyone else.

However, there are differences in scientific writing for other scientists (e.g. journal articles in Nature and Science), scientific writing for the general public (e.g. articles in Scientific American), and writing focused on fictional literature (what is taught in most high school and college English courses).

[Agentninetynine]

OHMom: My daughter is also a science and math kid. She will moan and groan about writing for english but can crank out a 12 page paper on physics. The kid can't spell, but neither can her dad.

What's wrong with kids getting a job, working on a farm or waiting tables? We have a farmette and both my kids have learned amazing skills just from having to be resourceful.

[bovertine]

A farmette? You must be in the Khner Rouge or something agent 99.

[bovertine]

That's Khmer Rouge. I hate this Blackberry.