<p>From the New York Times 10/12/06: “A.T.F. Staff was Ordered to Help with Homework - The former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ordered his staff to help with his nephew’s high school homework, wasting the agency’s time and violating ethics rules… The nephew’s project, a documentary about the bureau that took 10 months to complete, was one of a half dozen examples of lapses in judgment … An estimated 20 bureau employees were pulled in to help with the documentary, spending dozens of hours on research, pulling film from the agency’s library and setting up interviews with Mr. Truscott (the former director, ‘Uncle Carl’ to some) and other officials in Washington and Philapelphia. The nephew received an A on the project …”</p>
<p>Gives us ammo (pun unintended) for the next time we hear a child say “but I’ll never have to do this in real life”. You just might - you could end up writing your bosses’ nephews’ reports. </p>
<p>I’d really like to know where the nephew went to school and what the other projects were like (and who worked on those.)</p>
<p>Yesterday I was at a meeting and during the break someone asked about my son’s college applications (or lack thereof). A woman I had never met before started talking about her college sophomore who just couldn’t get the essays written for his apps and how worried she had been that he wouldn’t get into any decent college. So she, of course, wrote them for him. Just admitted it right out loud. He’s at Baylor now - I wonder how he’s managing his coursework.</p>
<p>over30, I know someone who filled out his daughter’s entire application including essays to Yale and submitted it for her and she was accepted!!! Oh, wait, that was a TV show, not real, sorry, I get confused sometimes. However, I do know parents who mentioned that he (father) wrote daughter’s application essay for Yale, but she did not get in.</p>
<p>And for the OP, perhaps Uncle Carl saw the project as a money SAVER for the agency. Saved him the cost of hiring a proper film production crew to produce a documentary.</p>
<p>NJres - maybe dad should have done some DNA testing. Maybe she wasn’t REALLY his daughter. Wait - maybe he knew she wasn’t really his daughter and sabotaged the Yale application that he wrote for her. I think there’s a great parallel reality show in here somewhere.</p>
<p>An admissions person from Berkeley told a group of us that no matter what you do, the parents shouldn’t do the essay for the student since the admissions staff can almost always determine that it was written by someone other than the student (besides the fact that it’s unethical). It makes sense to me that they’d generally be able to tell. They probably have some great stories in this regard.</p>
<p>Wow. Impressive. I wonder if he entered it in any competitions? This certainly didn’t sound like just “homework”. And folks wonder why some of us look askew at the wondrous “almost” professional research done by kids in fields where the family has connections, especially for the prestigious national competitions and scholarships. Voila! (This would be why.;))</p>
<p>Cur - I do wonder what assignment spans 10 months, other than an Intel type project. What high school does this student attend, is the teacher who awarded the grade now aware and has (s)he done anything about it? I don’t think I really want to know. It must have been quite a juggling act for one student to keep up with a project that was farmed out to 20 professionals. Kid shows a real gift for delegation.</p>
<p>Doesn’t sound like this was a reasonable project to begin with. Was it some sort of independent study in hs? (not exactly independent, as it turns out – unless the kid was learning to “manage” other people who actually work!)</p>
<p>When my son was in 5th grade, we had the dreaded “architecture” project. He had to draw plans for a building on graph paper - top view, side views, etc - and then build the project. This meant using heavy duty cardboard or foamcore, both of which require an Exact-o knife to cut properly (or thin plywood, which would require a power saw). All the parents dreaded this because we knew we would end up doing all the cutting AT MINIMUM. I also did all the gluing, as it involved a hot glue gun, which again I didn’t want my 10 year old handling. One kid’s project was made of wood, complete with little wooden shingles. We all knew his grandfather built the entire thing – the kid drew the plans and painted the finished product. He got an A+. I am not crafty, when I cut the foamcore for my son’s octagonal house he designed my lines weren’t always straight, and the hot glue bubbled up in the seams. My son was marked down because his project wasn’t neat! I felt guilty!!! The next year a parent informed the teacher and principal that her child was NOT doing this project, because it required handling tools that were not safe for a 10 year old. As a result, the project was cancelled and has not been revived. WHY did it take so many years for a parent with common sense to stand up and say, “NO, this is NOT an appropriate assignment for a 10 year old?”</p>
<p>May have been an Independent Study project or for a class involving History Day competition project. Some students have to do these on their own time but some competitive schools with a history of winning have whole classes for this with lots of support. Kids will start as soon as competition ends the year before. Of course, it is absolutely necessary to start that early when you have to coordinate 10 or more adults for your 10 minute documentary. </p>
<p>Okay, and before Vegangirl comes on here incensed about the above comment, yes, a student can win History Day with little or no support from their school and with an incredible amount of their own time and effort. Some of these young people produce remarkably professional projects on their own and she is one of them who absolutely deserved her three national wins. But the truth is, like many things in school and life, many of these young people have supportive/connected/rich parents who do a lot of the work or fly them all over the country for interviews, etc.</p>
<p>I had a very senior person at our firm (well above my boss) pressure me into providing help to some relative doing a project in an elite MBA program. I was forced into several hour plus conference calls with kid’s “working group team” at their convenience, while I was traveling. Requested to drop everything else to do research for them in order to answer questions I didn’t know off the top of my head and treated rudely because they were on a tight timeframe and my turnaround time on their homework didn’t fit with their schedule. I did formally complain to my boss for what good it did.</p>
<p>Lafalum, this gave me such a good laugh! I’m sure your son will tease you about it for many years, the time when mom’s “help” cost him a good grade.</p>
<p>That project sounds like the kind of thing we criticize far-eastern sweatshops for expecting little kids to do.</p>