" if it is academically permitted/encouraged"
I’d be amazed if any of the top 25 or 50 universities and LACs would encourage parental editing. They might not have a policy against but encouraging, my guess would be a definite no.
I had also been thinking what was said about the first generation students or students whose parents do not speak English as a first language being at a disadvantage but I was too chicken to bring it up.
Thank you @dfbdfb for highlighting that.
@dfbdfb “Creates a handicap…”
I think we’ve launched into near satirical hyperbole at this point. Of all the many, many, many, many advantages that better educated or more affluent (or both) parents give their kids, I don’t think “proofreading the paper with my top-50 college brain” is going to even crack the top 100.
@CaliDad2020 it does if the papers are graded on a curve.
I volunteer with a first gen, low income program. The kids are already internalizing that they don’t belong on the campuses, believing that they are behind. Help from home does affect the sense alienation.
@CaliDad2020, why do you do something your student could so easily do for himself? Or can he not? if he can not, when he is already in college, you have a whole lot more problems. If he can, your continuing to do so is about your needs, not his.
So I shouldn’t have asked my dad for help when I had a TA for Statics and Dynamics who couldn’t speak English? And getting a private tutor for physics was wrong?
I’m giving @CaliDad2020 an “A” for writing posts that made me laugh.
@roycroftmom in so far as I like to engage with my kid intellectually, it is for sure all about my needs. I’m just not sure why that is an issue. I wonder why me enjoying discussing the process of writing a paper with my kid, when I’ve done 1000’s and they have done dozens would be bad? Why does bringing down the quanitity of engagement help the whole?
I do think we are overthinking this, and as I mentioned my involvement at this point is sadly nothing by hypothetical, but I really fail to see why any parent would not be interested in engaging with their kid at a focussed intellectual level, but we obviously are not going to agree, and we don’t have to.
@snowball city except that a disadvantaged kid:
- already knows which kids are disadvantaged and which have resource-rich home lives. (I, too, have done a lot of volunteering with 1st gen college kids… oddly enough helping them write application essays. I am very well aware of the issues. I think if you ask most 1st gen college kids their top ten concerns, that their roommates parent might proofread a paper now and again is not top of list. And I’d also happily proof and make suggestions on that kid’s paper too, if it was requested and allowed. I think that people are losing the education effect in service of the appearance of the process here.)
- Has no idea whose parent, roommate, buddy, sister, crazy aunt edna proofed their paper anyway.
- is at a disadvantage in sooooo many other, way more meaningful ways due to asymetrical education resources and opportunities as to make this concern marginal at best.
Anyway, my kid doesn’t want to hear from me, so if any of your kids want some advice on a feral cat fantasy economic analysis paper, I’m usually good at about 11 pm… It’s when I do my pre-bed absinthe and get ready to do my little one’s finger-painting project for Pre-K. She is VERY advanced! I’m thinking of something a little Miro…
The one thing I see left out by some people is the level of involvement of the parent. Proof reading and the kind of editing I think many are talking about is a last step, not a first one, and we aren’t talking totally rewriting the paper, usually it is to pick up typos and goofs, not substantially write the paper. Getting feedback on how it read, was it too boring, did it show enthusiasm for the subject, are opinions the kids could ask of peers.
I suspect when schools put in no collaboration policies it is deliberately broad because these days, with the internet and e-mail and the like, it is very possible to have the parent write the paper for the kid or be involved too much, so they are putting out broad policies in an attempt to stop the many abuses the internet can do (someone asked why this didn’t happen in the 80’s, answer is because it was pretty hard to do, unless the kid lived at home it would be hard to instantly send a paper written on a typewriter home and have the parent magically change it…). If the parent is doing what a friend or a writing center would do, give feedback on style or grammar, I don’t think there is an ethics problem there, and if a parent has to write a paper for kid in college that is a pretty dumb parent,to be honest, and most parents I know recognize that the kid has to do their own work, but using a parent as a sounding board for how it reads or to look for grammar and other issues doesn’t seem to be much of a problem to me, we aren’t talking 7th grade English where dangling participals are the root of all evil, after all.
So let’s say your kid is living at home while going to college. The school allows you to have your paper proof-read: grammar, spelling, and stylistic suggestions (like ‘hmm, your sentences are too convoluted’). Is it unethical for the parent to proof-read regularly? What about a sibling? A friend not in the class? A girlfriend/boyfriend? A friend at another college? In my view, if proof-reading is ok, and sometimes it is not, then who does it does not matter.
I don’t think that allowing/encouraging proof-reading on essays is a slippery slope to allowing/encouraging help on lab write-ups, problem sets, etc. IMO, you set clear parameters of what help is allowed and then stop micro-managing where students get that help.
BTW, my D would never let me read her papers in HS and me proof-reading her paper over break was an unusual occurrence. My youngest on the other hand views me as his personal proof-reader and I’ve had to give him rules about when he shows a paper and what sort of errors I’ll allow. If I’ve corrected xyz error 3-4 times in his papers, then I make him fix those before I read a new paper. He’s in HS and he has to add a blurb to his essays regarding any help he received. Like @CaliDad2020 I’ve stopped some whoppers. OMG, he had a paper on slavery and used an allegory about dogs enslaving monkeys. Horrid. Took awhile to convince him that this was really offensive.
In your beginning paragraph you mention the school approves it. Then it is ok.
I am looking for definitions because I think the terms mean different things to different people. To me, proofreading is spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. To you, it includes grammar and stylistic considerations.
We need a common glossary.
@CaliDad2020, your post #167 basically reads to me like you’re saying (a) cultural privilege is okay as long as the culturally unprivileged are aware that it’s working against them, and (b) relatively small levels of cultural privilege don’t matter, anyway. I’m going to assume that that’s not what you meant—so can you unpack it a bit for me?
@dfbdfb:
Are you saying that basically if a kid has parents who can help proofread papers they shouldn’t be allowed to because that wouldn’t be fair to kids who for example are the kids of immigrant parents who couldn’t help them? While I can understand the sympathy, if we were going to go that path then for example, well off parents of kids in the burbs shouldn’t be allowed to fund all the EC’s the kids do to get into colleges, they shouldn’t be allowed to send their kids to SAT prep or tutors in AP subjects and the like, they shouldn’t be allowed to help their kids with their homework if they have problems because that isn’t fair, and so forth. That doesn’t mean you should have like the movie “Back to School”, where Rodney Dangerfield has Kurt Vonnegut writing a paper on one of his books (one of the funnier scenes in the movie, when the teacher said whoever wrote it knows nothing about Vonnegut) or parents are doing the work, but kids resources vary, when I was a CS major some kids had pc’s in their dorm room and modems so they could dial into the computer systems and work 24/7, the rest of us had to trudge to the computer center when it was open, wait for open terminals or machines and hope we could get our work done before it closed or whatnot, it was the way it was.
The concern is the simple academic dishonesty of it all. That’s why Princeton prohibits copyediting. Because the work students turn is should be their own,not the product of editing by others. Since we all know proof reading takes very little time and effort, it really isn’t a major difficulty for a student to do himself, so my guess is that parents are providing more than just proofreading help. And while some may claim “intellectual engagement” with their child, if such engagement is consistently before, and not after, the paper is turned in, well, that rationale doesn’t work for me either. If parents are so defensive about their assistance, why not just acknowledge it on the front page of the paper? The fact that such is almost never done tells me that parents know it is wrong and are hiding their help.
The problem is that there’s two goals–learning and grades. If the goal is learning, ask whoever can help. When the goal is a grade, then asking for help could become a problem, depending on the situation. Where the value is placed can swing the discussion, and the nature of parental help, in a big way. I’m not sure that where help is obtained is really the big deal. My kid uses the writing center, her professors, peers, and me when she wants input on a paper. It’s not as if all the sources of help are mutually exclusive. And she writes the paper.
If the professor, or the honor code, states that no one can help with the paper in any capacity, then my kid is on her own and that’s fine. If no restrictions are in place, then I’ll give help that doesn’t involve changing or typing the paper for her. I’ll let her know if I can follow her argument, and give suggestions if she’s made an odd word choice or really butchered grammar. That’s about it.
@musicprnt I am not sure the ECs for admissions is a fair comparison. For the colleges that look at ECs holistically, they claim to look at the candidate in context. The guidance counselor can highlight the student’s other commitments or financial circumstances. I don’t think that happens in freshmen composition.
@dfbdfb I think you are maybe missing what the post was in response to: @“Snowball City” city wrote: “I volunteer with a first gen, low income program. The kids are already internalizing that they don’t belong on the campuses, believing that they are behind. Help from home does affect the sense alienation.”
All of which I think is often (not always by the way) true - BUT I think that while “help from home” can “affect the sense of alienation”, my guess is there is a lot more conspicuous and important “help from home” that affect that sense of alienation, and that something like a parent (or uncle or sibling or whomever) proofreading and commenting on a paper (when allowed!) is not even something the kids @“Snowball City” is talking about are likely to be aware of or be concerned with much if they are.
The 1st gen, financially challenged and/or educationally resource challenged kids I’ve interacted with (and it’s been quite a few) have mentioned things like “I have to work 20 hrs a week just to afford RENTING books, XXXX has their parent’s credit card and gets stuff amazon-primed to the dorm.” Or “so and so is going to do summer school so they can go for a semester abroad, I’m going to be helping my parents in their business.” Or “my roommates Mom filled out all their FISA and loan applications. Mine can’t. I have to do it - and I have to help them get their taxes done AND I’m helping my little sister do her college apps and I’m supposed to stay on top of my school work.”
Over the years I’ve heard kids complain that music-school schoolmates have pianos delivered to their rental houses, that students can Uber to club meetings when their schedules are too tight. Have cars. Get to attend exclusive charity events with school admins because their parents bought tickets. Kids get INTO school because their folks are alums or because they went to the right school… The examples are endless. I know kids that have done a prep year. Been able to afford a gap year, where they brushed up on difficult courses. Higher ed is seriously stacked against 1st gen and lower-income or educational-resource deprived kids, of that there is no doubt.
I just think that a-parent-read-his-paper-not-mine is low, low, low on the list of very real inequities.
@roycroftmom again, many schools - Harvard, Williams, etc. expressly understand and embrace that collaboration is part of the education process. It says so in their honor codes. There was even a guy name Σωκράτης who thought that something could be gleaned by collaborative questioning from different arenas.
I think that you are too concerned with the “win/lose” concept of grading and not concerned enough with the opportunity to get the most out of a project or investigation. Which is fine. We don’t have to agree. But I think the casting of motives on others because of your own sensitivities is, uh… perhaps more telling of you then them?
I think that NOT engaging your kid’s academic investigation when presented the opportunity (and I believe more of us don’t get the opportunity than do) is wasting a chance at making your kid a slightly better thinker and student and wasting a chance at a nice interaction with them. I also think it would be awesome (and should be encouraged) for kids to add “conversation with Mom” or “talking to the butcher” or “discussion with my suitemates” in their bibliography. I’m 100% for that!
@CaliDad2020 As I said before I do appreciate your candor. I does provide access to a different way of thinking for me.
I agree about the barriers and inequalities you have listed. They are real and valid.
However I wouldn’t brush off what I said. We have seen in this discussion that there are many people whose opinion is that the help from home is ethically ambiguous. This can create a feeling of unfairness. And out of that, discouragement and resentment can grow.
And knowing what you do about the first gen and immigrant populations, having your kid not show you his work before turning it in is really not such a cross to bear.
It sounds like you are quite determined to have your son “win”, @calidad. Good luck with that.