One of the biggest differences I noticed on college tours with my pups was that colleges today all seem to have a writing center, whereas virtually none of them had one back in the olden days. Sitting through the tours, they all gushed about how great it is to have someone review/critique any of your papers, as long as you get them done in time to have someone look at them, and to still save yourself enough time to make any changes.
This was a service that simply did not exist back in the day. Since it is now much more widely available, I suspect that the Professorâs expectations have increased accordingly.
One thing I did notice though, was that several schools have them with âwalk-in hoursâ only. I guess they donât want kids to email them a draft paper at 2:30 AM, and expect to wake up at 9 to review comments, then turn it in to class at 10:30âŠIn todayâs electronic world, it seemed refreshing to me to see kids have to âwalk inâ to the writing center.
Speaking as a professor: No. Just no. If youâre doing this, stop it, and stop it now.
I will say that if your child has a specific question about usage for you, or wants to read you a couple paragraphs to find out if they flow together well, sure, that works. But copyediting an entire (or a large chunk of) paper? Noâcompletely out of bounds. And offering suggestions for rewriting? Thatâs the kind of egregious behavior that gets people failing grades, at the least.
I have a co worker that was bragging about the fact that when she was in college whenever she had a paper to write she would send her parents a set of bullet points and they would write the paper for her. She saw absolutely nothing wrong with this. Oh, and by the way, she is a teacher.
Very timely - my kid just phoned. She was walking back to her dorm after a session at the writing center. It was very helpful and caught some things that she hadnât caught in her rewrites.
She already has a session lined up for another paper due at the end of next week.
I like how she has a habit of getting papers done early. No panic if she comes down with a cold or all nighters.
@dfbdfb, do you, as a professor, forbid your students from using the writing center at your college? If not, why would you forbid a student from getting that same help from a relative? Obviously any âhelpâ that crosses the line from any source is wrong, but why do you assume that any editing assistance from a parent is automatically inappropriate?
For the record, I personally do not edit my kidâs work. I donât even remember the last time I saw any of his writing. Eighth grade maybe? I doubt he will want my help for his college application essays. I bet he will get a lot more heavy-handed assistance from his English teacher on those than I would have provided, though I trust the teacher not to cross the line. Maybe two or three times this year heâs asked me for help clarifying a math or physics problem, and of course I didnât do his work for him. But if he asked me to take a look, then sure I would provide the same type of help I did for years as a tutor and for my professional colleagues. The same kind of help my husband still asks for occasionally.
Also for the record, I did not ask my parents for help in college but if one of them had great skills in areas where I needed help then I would not have hesitated to ask. Alas, neither knew anything about fluid flow and heat transfer or organic chemistry so it was off to the TA and professor for me. Seeking out appropriate help from a variety of resources is a valuable life skill. Leaning on any one resource as a crutch is harmful, as is seeking out inappropriate help that amounts to cheating. Assuming all parents donât know the difference between helping and cheating is misguided. I know plenty of parents who get far too involved in their kidsâ workâŠsome of them try to justify it by saying âeveryone is doing itâ or âitâs the schoolâs fault for putting so much stress on the kidsâ and I have no doubt they will think nothing of writing their kidsâ college entrance essays and then later on doing some inappropriate âeditingâ of their kidsâ college work. I am not in any way trying to defend that infantilizing behavior, but there are plenty of parents who have excellent skills and experience and can offer appropriate assistance when asked.
@traveler98, in brief, itâs because the tutors at the writing center are trained in how to guide a student through the process of rewriting in ways that donât cross important linesâso itâs a matter of having a guarantee (or at least as close as one can get) that the work is actually the studentâs.
(And those lines are actually way more restrictive than most people tend to thinkâconsider all the shock and horror you see on CC when people discover self-plagiarism isnât allowed in an academic context, for example.)
For what itâs worth, here is the academic integrity section of the syllabus from one of the courses Iâm teaching this semester; note that this oneâs a 100-level class, so I do allow light copyediting by others, but I donât in higher-level courses:
@dfbdfb, I disagree that parents automatically do not understand how to give appropriate editing assistance just because theyâre not trained writing center tutors. Honestly, itâs not that tricky. Absolutely there are kids who will cheat, whether itâs getting a friend to write the paper or asking mom or dad to do too much. And absolutely there are parents who are such helicopters that they will insist on seeing every paper and âfixingâ it. There are also plenty of students who will do everything on their own and never need help, or if they do will never seek it from their parents. And there are plenty of parents who understand where the line is and can provide guidance such as finding typos, suggesting areas where more clarity or better flow are needed, and reminding the student to cite sources. There are, I promise you, plenty of parents who will err on the side of caution to ensure their edits do not cross the line for student work.
I think his point is that by having the students use the writing center, the parentsâ ability to respect that line doesnât come into play. There cannot be a huge parent education effort at the beginning of every semester. Trained writing tutors are available.
I like the idea of writing centers and think having trained writing coaches is a great idea. It is a real art to teach people how to improve their own writing style instead of trying to get them to write more like the mentor. It is especially good that they require the students to walk in their papers and come in and talk it over rather than allowing students to send things in at the last minute and expect to be rescued.
Ha, my son in Beirut just called me to ask for help with grammar on a 14-page paper about vegetarianism. He tends to capitalize words at random and use quotes around single words a lot. He also throws in commas in strange places. His professor takes off 2 1/2 points for every comma used incorrectly (or not used when it should be). I warned him that the teacher might not agree with all my edits but I gave him my thoughts. Iâm just amazed he asks me for help because when he was in high school I was the last person he would have asked!
I agree that writing centers can be great resources and should be the preferred option for assistance. I agree that students should be encouraged by both professors and parents to use the writing center. I disagree with the âno parent help everâ message.
The important thing, at a practical level, is not whether anyone on this board agrees or disagrees with any particular course policy, itâs what the professor teaching that course thinksâŠ
Yes, @dfbdfb, but even your own policy which you shared does not prohibit the student from seeking help outside the writing center. And even if your personal opinion is that parents should never edit, as long as the parents are not crossing the line then it doesnât matter if you like it or not. I canât imagine you would be allowed to prohibit specific people from helping; you are only allowed to prohibit and punish cheating in any form.
Actually, my policy allows for copyediting help outside the writing center for 100-level classes, but not for others, as I wrote (pretty clearly, I thought) in #46. Also, yes, I explicitly allow collaboration **with other students/b. This is rather different from calling up, say, one's parents.
I **can**, in fact, prohibit specific people from helping students with an assignment. Word for word from my university's policy on academic integrity, we find a prohibition on "providing assistance without the faculty memberâs permission to another student, or receiving assistance not authorized by the faculty member from anyone (with or without their knowledge)". Basically, the default is that the instructor of a course has to give **affirmative** permission for a student to receive assistance from someone elseâand this is a pretty common formulation across higher education. (And seriously, do you really think I'd go into this not knowing my own institution's policies?)
Also, as @âSnowball Cityâ has asked, why in the world should a student use parents rather than the writing center, anyway?
Well, technically itâs academic dishonesty, not cheatingâcheating is a different type of academic dishonesty. But yes, itâs cheating for the colloquial meaning of cheatingâand academic dishonesty weakens the presumed value of education, and casts doubt on the entire educational enterprise.