To think "Persuasive Writing" lessons shouldn't encourage students to make up 'facts' and statistics?

[diagonallies]

My two DCs have both had several English lessons on the topic of persuasive writing in both primary and secondary school. These have focussed on persuasive techniques, but every time they have been told it's fine to make up some statistics or facts to strengthen their argument, presumably on the grounds that it's an English lesson, not a science lesson or a lesson on critical thinking.

But surely critical thinking should be at the heart of everything our children learn at school? If it's ok for future journalists, politicians, bloggers and advertising copywriters to make up persuasive stats in their English essays, then can we really be confident they will ever unlearn that?

I’m particularly at the pp who criticised a teacher’s English lessons via the use of the phrase ‘hence why’.

You know what? I love teaching English. But this thread needs to go away. It's the fucking holidays!

IHeart

I’ve spent the day putting a new SOW together for my dept. I’ve made sure up incorporate the ideas on here 😂

@SmileEachDay shhh! I'm not going in till next week.

Are we the 'sensible' ones, do you think?

I don’t know Heart. I felt pretty sensible today, working out to make pre19C lit accessible for a group of LAP students.

I'm not sure you can be sensible heart and smile. Unless you're putting appropriate Harvard references into everything then you're not giving the children skills for life.

Some of the more sensible teachers on this thread clearly believe in teaching skills for life, and for the benefit of society, rather than just teaching to the test.
What? You mean we can't teach varied literacy skills, critical thinking, interesting debate,a range of writing skills and teach children how to pass exams???

My eyes have been opened.

Now I know where I'm going wrong.

I was thinking a more radical improvement to a whole nation of English teaching: a crib sheet of 67 world issues with quotations from notable people and statistics from studies each with their own Harvard reference. Your more able could have 102 world issues.

Every lesson could begin with a quiz and if they fail to use the quotations in their writing with appropriate citation then we should dock marks.

We could have an APP style sheet where they highlight which ones they've used and every half term we could RAG rate then based on how confident they feel using the appropriately referenced study in an exam.

Think big smile think big. These are skills for life don't you know

Jfc students making up one or two stats during a persuasive writing task are not going to suddenly go mental and start making up stats all over the place. They are being tested on their English ability and their use of writing techniques, of which including relevant data is one. There are plenty of other subjects and English tasks designed to use their analytical skills to interpret and accurately use specific statistics, but persuasive writing pieces have a different focus.

I run an English immersion camp for Spanish teens for the Spanish Ministry of Education and as part of the program they have to (with the help of English speaking teens) create a "Dragons Den" style pitch for a product. They have to design a product; create some sort of advertising (poster/TV advert skit etc) explain what it does/how it works and explain their finance plan including the investment they want. They then present their idea to the "Dragons" (staff team) and their fellow campers.

We do not give a damn about the product or whether it is realistic, nor do we question their bullshit science claims or their questionable profit margins because they aren't the point of the task (though if I want someone to get €5m investment for a machine that can turn pine cones into cheesecakes for 10% of my business then I'd hire some of the teens in a heartbeat).

What we are interested in is their ability to work as a team, manage their time, speak in front of a group, structure a presentation appropriately and their English vocabulary/pronunciation and grammar.

I would rather they spent 10 minutes refining their presentation and fixing their grammar mistakes than spend 10 minutes looking up a realistic figure to use for their projected profit margin graph.

Yeah, Lola you can present that to my dept at the start of term.

They would give me a look.

I'm giving this whole thread a look

is my department emoji 😂😂😂

Just hopping back on this thread to make the point that it's not kids being taken in by fake news online - the worst offenders for that are over 65s (www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/10/older-people-more-likely-to-share-fake-news-on-facebook - not a stat I made up!)

Which might suggest that telling kids they're allowed to write in a persuasive essay that 8 out of 10 cats prefer not to be swung around by their toenails isn't the harbinger of complete societal meltdown some on this thread seem to think it is.

I just knew you'd be up for it. This thread has opened my eyes to the error of my ways.

is probably the emoji for me and my work friends when we sit in pointless meetings. Or my face when a meeting has already finished late and someone asks a question that only applies to them.

Or when there is a “new initiative” that involves filling in paperwork that won’t actually make T&L any more effective.

Quite! The paperwork must be in 2 different colours and asking for data at such a frequency that renders it useless.

For a second you had me most concerned. I was worried you were going to say was your face when someone presents a radical new way to teach writing skills with 102 Harvard referenced sources for students to learn. I was about to say 'how dare you, this initiative is giving skills for life' 😂

God no, Lola, I know a completely sensible solution to a problem which definitely exists when I see one.

Our ways have been changed forever because of this thread's wisdom.

Just so pleased to have been enlightened after 20 years of doing it wrong.

It's just beautiful how this thread has united English teachers from far and wide. I'm welling up!

My only concern moving forward, is that of the 1500 GCSE papers I marked this summer, I didn't pick anyone up on their referencing skills in the writing tasks. I feel I've failed society.

LittleAndOften

I think you should donate your payment from that to Harvard (referencing dept).

@SmileEachDay I can only aspire to be that altruistic! I obviously have some work to do on myself.

😂

'If you get stuff off the internet, put it in quotes and copy & paste the address onto a separate sheet - that way you aren't cheating' has always worked for me for KS3.

Where somebody gives a quote without referencing 'Who said that? The cat? Your Mum? Donald Trump?' (that usually gets a smirk) 'Tell me who said it'.

'You know when you image search for [x artist] you get about 20 photos of [y artist of vaguely similar ethnicity] and it really annoys you? Don't be that person. Check your images'. (Sometimes changed to something like Spiderman and Venom or whatever YT/IG person is famous - know your audience).

Not taught specifically for the persuasive writing - just as a general thing for other subjects. I leave teaching English to the experts in teaching English.

By the way, L1 and L2 courses require referencing of sorts for portfolio/presentations. Hence the conversations above.

Did OP say what she did for a living so we can all jump in and tell her how to do her job?