Too Mature comment on my son's essay

Magpie did you get to the bottom of the comment?

I also still remember bitterly questions as to whether work was my own. It never got as far as detention but it still smarts!

" I don't think the fact that there were Soviet spies in the State Department (has anyone ever seriously argued that there weren't?) diminishes the points he's trying to make in The Crucible or the cultural background against which it's written."

You may be right. I think the problem is that he equates naive young girls with people who joined the CPUSA in the post-Holomodor 1930s, and I have a difficulty with that. The CPUSA was a fairly naked Stalinist organisation, and there's a rich irony in members of the CPUSA whinging about being traduced by HUAC and McCarthy's senate equivalent when the CPUSA position on the Stalinist Purges (in which rather than being denied work as screen-writers, artists were routinely shot) was that they were "a signal service to the cause of progressive humanity."

That the post 1950s red scares are a scar on democratic processes goes without saying. However, it's one of those "plague on both their houses" things: anyone who was a member of the CPUSA post 1935-ish was a fuckwit for whom it's hard to work up much sympathy. Miller, to me, sets up a dubious moral balance, in which the bona fides of the persecuted as innocent victims are a given. I don't think membership of the CPUSA is something that allows you to claim the moral high-ground, and I think Kazan's nuanced view on his testimony (wikipedia isn't bad on this occasion) is interesting.

I was punished with detention for writing essays that my parents 'must' have written for me. Of course they hadn't. I was just clever. Yup, still bitter about it! This was many years ago, however. I hope things have changed since then.

I don't really get the relevance of Venona surely from Miller's POV he was writing about McCarthyism and its effect on relatively "ordinary" people those in the entertainment industry, teachers, union officials... unless the Venona Papers back up the blacklisting in those areas by the HUAC and the American Legion, which I don't think they do? He'd fallen out with his good friend Elia Kazan over Kazan's testimony to the HUAC just before writing The Crucible and was himself denied a passport to attend its London opening -- I don't think the fact that there were Soviet spies in the State Department (has anyone ever seriously argued that there weren't?) diminishes the points he's trying to make in The Crucible or the cultural background against which it's written.

I know tokyonambu, that's why I said sorry!

I think as a teacher you just have to do your best with whoever walks into your classroom in September. Don't think we're unaware of the issues you point out but you have to work with what you've got.

It's my day off too, I'm going to stop thinking about educational issues now!

Interesting article:

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/21/schools-gcse-results-league-tables

"You don't think it possible that the teacher might adequately prepare ALL students for the assessment?"

I don't think it's overly contentious to point out that exam results are strongly correlated with parental education.

I agree IHeart. Of course teachers will go through themes, essay planning, choice quotations with every student. That's their job. They want their students to just as well as they possibly can. It won't be the case, however, that kids with 'literate' (what has that to do with anything, really - 'literary' maybe) parents can take loads into the ca with them. So far the info. we've been given suggests one sheet each with no chunks of text / drafts etc allowed. If a student is prepared, in his / her own time to write the essay at home then learn it, good on them.

Hmmm...perhaps we English teachers are just grumpy today. And it's my morning off!

Sorry, stressed today, I don't mean to sound so irritable!

You don't think it possible that the teacher might adequately prepare ALL students for the assessment?

'The Crucible', by the way, has been the most successful play I've taught in terms of the enjoyment of students and the quality of the responses.

I can sort of see what you're saying but what are you suggesting exam boards do - penalise students with helpful parents?

As several people have said, the controlled assessment scheme means that cheating now requires the teacher to actively connive, rather than just look the other way.

But my elder has just started the new scheme, and we were talking about the way it'll still clearly differentiate people with literate parents. Especially given The bloody Crucible is still a set work thirty years on from my O Level (especially odd in these post-Venona days, when we know the critical difference is that there were no witches in Salem, but there were spies in the State Department), candidates with literate parents who wish to "help" will arrive in the C.A. room with a theme for the essay that definitely answers the question, a well-structured essay plan, a list of page numbers for quotes, and will have (if they're smart) actually written the essay at home the previous night so they know they can fit it into the time/words/effort/etc limits of the format. They may even have a few well chosen phrases ready to go.

Weaker candidates, and those without the advantages of the middle-classes, will arrive with a few notes, a vague idea of what they're going to say, and a lot of hope. It may remove some of the overt writing of assignments by parents, but it probably doesn't reduce the advantage much.

An obvious stylistic break in a text is also a good clue that you need to google a passage because somebody else has. Even at university level, some students are not literate enough to realise that if they submit a whole essay in a childish and ungrammatical style but with one large chunk in the middle written in beautiful scholarly prose, people are going to get suspicious...

And I agree with IHeart. The ones that would be clever enough to cheat and get away with it have no reason to do so and are usually too proud of their own unaided efforts.

From experience the plagiarised course work Is obvious ( they all use the first suggestion on google lol). To be serious though we know our students well enough to spot work that has had too much help, and a bit of questioning about the work can help to reinforce suspicions. And yes we can be wrong but most of the time any plagiarism is so obvious eg. Several pieces of work with exactly the same wording or language used that the pupil clearly does not understan

It's not about 'blocking' it. Most times a quiet word with the student involved will work and they'll do it again, or print out a copy without the offending paragraph if it's that simple.

Proof is easy if it's the internet (which it generally is). If they deny it you can Google it in front of them and generally they admit it then (and quickly go away to do the work themselves!)

Admittedly it's the ones where a parent or sibling or friend has 'helped' that are difficult. For those you have to tread carefully depending on the child.

I don't know why I'm feeling defensive about this, I just don't want you thinking we all want to stamp on kids!

I'm not a teacher myself, but i would imagine you would have to be very very brave to block the submission of a pupils work without definite proof of cheating.
Wouldn't the student have legal recourse?

I'm interested to see how it will work too! Still, if it will keep my students taking chunks from Wikipedia I'll be delighted!

And brassband, it's our job to know the writing style and capabilities of our students. A massive improvement would be applauded and rewarded but it is bloody obvious when it isn't theirs. I've never come across a plagiarised A* anyway; if they're stupid enough to cheat they're not normally clever enough to tailor it to the question properly anyway!

Year 10s have just started the new GCSE specifications which will have 'Controlled Assessments' instead of coursework. Work can be prepared at home and in class but actually written (with only one side of notes - not drafts - to help them) under pretty much exam conditions over several hours in school. Other subjects are doing the same, many having started last year. The aim is to stop students relying too much on internet notes / essays which, even if they didn't plagiarise, they were relying on too much instead of thinking for themselves. I hope it will save me all the time I was spending googling parts of my students' essays!

Speaking as a HoD it remains to be seen how the Controlled Assessments will all work out in practice...

Brassband I am sorry to hear about your friends HT and HOD. I think they are atypical.

'the new GCSE English syllabus has no coursework'
When does that start?

Jem - the teachers I am speaking about do not suspect cheating because the work is better than their normal standard ( come back to that), they KNOW for a fact that another student has done it.But what can they do-would you blow the whistle.Who is the HT going to side with HOD & Grades Versus young idealistic teacher?

To come back to teh first point.How do you get round the matter of a self-fulfilling prophecy ie you predict the student to get (say) a C.They hand in an amazing piece of A coursework and you won't submit it because it is too good!!The poor little bu*ers are damned if do and damned if they don't!

If it is in English, then it could be that the tone your DS has adopted isn't quite right. Language use and content should match audience and purpose. If he was asked to write something that was informal or chatty to a friend, or for someone younger, then his style may not have been as well-matched as his teacher wanted. If this is the case, it suggests he can write well and maybe the teacher was nit-picking in order to stretch him. My higher-achieving students sometimes need to be reminded that their fantastically wide vocabulary and enjoyment of complex sentences isn't always the best style to adopt. They always do very well because they are able to write in their usual 'mature' way for analytical work and in different styles for more creative work. The comment probably needs context - ie. 'Too mature for...audience or purpose'. If this isn't the case, I can't shed any light.

If I spot plagiarism or suspect parental help, I have a chat with the student concerned; I wouldn't just leave a cryptic comment.

Teachers have to sign every coursework folder before it is submitted. So does the student. I would never put my signature to something if I thought it was not their own.

My department in the past has made students complete coursework in school if they have obviously plagiarised but refuse to admit or change it.

Anyway, the new GCSE English syllabus has no coursework, I would imagine for precisely these reasons.

And teachers know their students well enough to know when the work is not their own.

brassband This is quite an accusation. You cannot extrapolate from your anecdotal evidence from your "several" friends that all schools cheat.