Sunday, November 13, 2011

Student is Offended By Grade

A Student Writes

Thank you for taking the time out to grade our group's paper. I just wanted to say that I was a little offended when you commented on us having  "Poor writing skills". I know that by no means are we perfect in writing. And it's probably a good thing neither of us are looking to become journalist. However, I personally, feel insulted to hear that in my senior year I confused words that would potentially be an embarrassment in business writing.

I would like to give you a little bit of a background on me:

I was once a high school drop-out and did not attain my GED until ...


I respond:


I’m very sorry you feel insulted as that was not my purpose. My purpose is to help you advance by pointing out a deficiency that you are capable of correcting. One of the very serious mistakes the educational system makes is emphasizing self-esteem at the expense of hard skills.  I don’t recall which paper is yours, but if I said that the writing needs work, that is my true belief. It has nothing to do with insulting you.  It is a way to help you achieve your goals.  I am on your side.  I could do what most others do and what I did for years:  ignore the writing issue and pretend that all is well. But that is not going to help you. 

If you look at your pique from my standpoint, you might consider that I pay a price for what I do with the grading. I could give everyone an A or B+ and say everyone’s paper’s great. Instead, I spend a week of my time thoroughly reviewing your work and giving you pointers as to how to improve.  I don’t get paid more for doing that rather than just giving everyone an A or B+ and doing little more.  

As far as your background, given the impressive gains you’ve made since returning to school, I would think that you would appreciate my selfless and unrewarded efforts in helping you improve. I’m not BSing you, trying to make myself into  a VIP, or building my own ego.  This is a painful, time consuming process for me that I do to help you. I get nothing in return for it. I could not do it. But that wouldn’t be of help to the students.

3 comments:

Mairi said...

We are producing an entire population who refuse to acknowledge they are not perfect. No one is. If it is true we learn from our mistakes, then students should be thankful that you are trying to help.
My sister was a teacher in a private school. One of her students failed, and failed miserably. When she held the student back, the parents threatened to sue the school. The principal begged my sister to reconsider. My sister still refused. The principal passed the student, and my sister quit.
I wonder what became of the child? Students don't realize how very fortunate they are to have a teacher who really cares.
GOD Bless you, Mitchell.

Anonymous said...

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/06/29/google-shuts-down-anti-obama-sites-its-blogger-platform

Google Shuts Down Anti-Obama Sites on its Blogger Platform

It looks like Google has officially joined the Barack Obama campaign and decided that its contribution would be to shut down any blog on the Google owned Blogspot.com blogging system that has an anti-Obama message. Yes, it sure seems that Google has begun to go through its many thousands of blogs to lock out the owners of anti-Obama blogs so that the noObama message is effectively squelched. Thus far, Google has terminated the access by blog owners to 7 such sites and the list may be growing. Boy, it must be nice for Barack Obama to have an ally powerful enough to silence his opponents like that!

It isn't just conservative sites that Google's Blogger platform is eliminating. For instance, www.comealongway.blogspot.com has been frozen and this one is a Hillary supporting site. The operator of Come a Long Way has a mirror site off the Blogspot platform and has today posted this notice.

Mitchell Langbert said...

Google pulled that on me in '08. What can I say? Mairi, I couldn't agree more. Professors have a gun put to their heads. If they don't nurse the students' self-esteem profs often don't get tenure. But no one cares if the students aren't writing or doing math well.