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?

Yanbu.
DD has produced a couple of pieces of persuasive writing that contained made up stats. I was a bit .

VivienneHolt: "Referencing is a necessary part of literally any university subject, not just STEM"

You don't need a university degree to write an influential blog or run a campaign page on Facebook. It should be taught in school do that nobody has any excuse and everyone has an alarm bell going off in their head when they read an unreferenced stat, not just those with a higher education.

You don't need a university degree to write an influential blog or run a campaign page on Facebook. It should be taught in school do that nobody has any excuse and everyone has an alarm bell going off in their head when they read an unreferenced stat, not just those with a higher education

I made that point specifically in response to OP suggesting that, unlike some other students, her child might be specifically disadvantaged by not having to reference real statistics in her persuasive writing lesson because one day she was going to do a stem subject.

OP, and you, are acting like children don't get taught how to research and correctly cite sources. They do. The fact that they aren't always required to in lessons teaching them a different set of skills doesn't mean they aren't being taught at all.

Most people don't need to do referencing but are still capable of critical thinking and reading critically.

That'll be why we got a majority for Brexit and have BoJo as PM .

I'm not quite sure why the OP is getting such a hard time here, seems to me the school holiday trolls are teachers rather than the kids. How dare we consumers criticize your work and point out the flaws in making piecework of the curriculum, I mean, we don't have to employ these young adults you churn out after all and teach them the difference between passing an exam and acting in a principled and professional way.

It sounds like a pretty classic example of the dumming down of the curriculum where you are taught to write persuasively by including made up 'facts' but the teaching of how to research the facts is taught separately. Those two skills are linked and in an exam surely you just need to have a list of facts that the kids can use for either side of the argument and then get them to write their persuasive piece based on the facts. It's not hard and I've yet to see a coherent argument against it.

It sounds like a pretty classic example of the dumming down of the curriculum

Oh, the irony.

I knew someone would find a spelling mistake but if you want to play educational top trumps I will warn you I have a winning hand.

in an exam surely you just need to have a list of facts that the kids can use for either side of the argument

Which has nothing to do with research skills...

What is wrong with teaching to research being one lesson, writing techniques being another? Shakespeare one lesson, An Inspector Calls another. Maths one lesson, History another.

I'm really not understanding this insistence that if you teach a particular writing technique (using stats to enhance your argument) you are therefore never going to teach research, critical thinking or referencing and kids will therefore spend the rest of their lives making up random facts. At least until they do a Science degree.

I don't pretend to be educated. I do have a degree (in music) but it was completed many, many moons ago.

But what I do have a knowledge of, (due to haveing teenage kids) is the current GCSE syllabus including how to help a child with ASD navigate it with the help of teachers & tutors and I know that it is better for my child to be able to skew a piece of persuasive writing to his/her interests than have to do a futher comprehension excercise with facts as that isn't part of the writing paper.

YABVU

I learnt to write persuasively using made up facts and figures.

After school I landed in a high profile legal job and didn’t make up any of the facts or figures ...still wrote persuasively though.

Your issue surrounds children’s understandings of right and wrong, and it’s appropriate application dependant on setting. But rather than say ‘we should teach our children decent common sense’ you’re saying ‘let’s completely dumb down teaching styles to stop our kids facing any sort of complexity 🙄

Those two skills are linked and in an exam surely you just need to have a list of facts that the kids can use for either side of the argument and then get them to write their persuasive piece based on the facts. It's not hard and I've yet to see a coherent argument against it.
You mean like an exam paper that has a transactional writing section on any possible unseen topic.
Please enlighten us as to how we can prepare students with a list of correctly referenced facts to use for any potential unseen non fiction topic.

I'm not quite sure why the OP is getting such a hard time here, seems to me the school holiday trolls are teachers rather than the kids.
Teachers pointing out ridiculous comments from non teachers is not trolling.
How dare we consumers criticize your work and point out the flaws in making piecework of the curriculum,

1. You are not consumers
2. It's not a curriculum flaw. The OP has proven repeatedly they haven't really got a clue about how reading and writing skills are taught and has offered nothing constructive.

Now there are many elements of curriculum I'd be interested in debating and many areas I think could be improved. I'd just simply choose to discuss and debate them with people who know what they are talking about, and even if we disagree I could respect their different viewpoint as being informed. In contrast to the OP who despite their obsession with referencing has yet to offer any comment backed up with educational research. It's all 'my opinion is...so I'm right...'

Those two skills are linked and in an exam surely you just need to have a list of facts that the kids can use for either side of the argument and then get them to write their persuasive piece based on the facts. It's not hard and I've yet to see a coherent argument against it.

Please tell me what skills this would teach? Certainly not research. Not how to find a correct reference, either. At best you would be showing an examiner that a child knows how to copy something from one sheet of paper to another. I truly cannot see how this is more beneficial or helpful than just allowing kids to make up statistics for the purposes of an essay which is not testing their research skills.

Researching and referencing is a much wider subject than you're giving it credit for. Children should be (and are) taught these skills as part of a much wider lesson on how to think critically about their sources, and the comparative value of different information. It's too big a lesson, and too important, to be tacked onto the end of a totally different lesson on persuasive writing.

Talking of made up facts in dd's French GCSE exam she and her friends were horrified to discover that the best way to improve your pirouettes whilst dancing is to eat more salt and practice balancing on one leg.

So all the hours and hours they spent practising their spotting and releves was wasting.

But it was done so that children with a technical knowledge of advanced ballet techniqes and terminology didn't have an advantage over those without.

I actually work for one of the world largest employers in Continious Improvement. I work with teams across the world to get that fresh perspective. A huge part of my teams role, is persuasive writing. It's a skill, and is very helpful if you can already do it before you enter the work place. I employee every person who comes on to my team and heavily involved in recruitment. So I know what employers want. And it's not made up facts.

I'd put money on it that your employer would prefer it if you could actually spell the name of the department you work in correctly - continuous not continious, employ not employee, and also use punctuation accurately - team's role without a comma not teams role followed by a comma.
If you're smug enough to come on MN criticising the way a certain topic is taught in English, be prepared to be called out on your own poor grammar and punctuation.

In primary school, I would teach any genre of writing in a similar way. First immerse the children in lots of texts of that genre, then identify the specific text features. For any non fiction genre, I would then have a couple of lessons where children have to research facts about whatever they will be expected to write about. They would use online sources, books, interview people and have fact sheets I pre prepared. Then they would plan and write each section before putting it all together using cohesive devices, editing the final version and finally producing a final piece.

In the days when Y6 had to do a writing SAT paper, they would be expected to use their imagination, with a basic prompt to help get them started, in order to produce a piece of writing. As a marker of those exams, creativity per se was not the main thing to look for. Features of the genre, organising a text, cohesion and a range of sentence types would be the focus.

It's too big a lesson, and too important, to be tacked onto the end of a totally different lesson on persuasive writing.
I totally agree.
In a lesson we're teaching individual skills or specific elements of a text.

When I used to teach EPQ I'd spend 3 hours or more looking at research skills, critical reading etc and then another hour on referencing, quoting and paraphrasing. The idea of tagging that onto a lesson with a totally different focus is really quite silly (and not one that would come from a strong, qualified teacher).

That's why people deciding they know best on how to teach X Y Z is rarely very helpful.

From a teachers perspective I think there is no harm in making up statistics in this sort of task. Occasionally I will prepare statistics in advance if the persuasive writing is on a certain topic.

Otherwise if they are choosing their own topic, or are taking an unusual stance on the topic I have given them, then I will ask them to make it up. The alternative is having thirty students coming up to use my computer rather than just getting on with the work, and the true skills I want to see are the countless other persuasive devices.

I would however expect them to use real stats if it was a homework or if I had asked them to research their topic ready for the persuasive writing lesson.

Ps footnotes at GCSE level is completely unnecessary and I would not even mention them.

in an exam surely you just need to have a list of facts that the kids can use for either side of the argument and then get them to write their persuasive piece based on the facts. It's not hard and I've yet to see a coherent argument against it

The topic on the exam paper could be anything. Since the new spec came in, including resit papers, we have had: sport, cyclists, education, parenting. Sample papers from the exam boards have covered topics such as festivals and homework.

We get no indication from the exam board about what the theme of the paper is likely to be.

Having a pre learned list of statistics is about as much use as a chocolate teapot to the child sitting the exam. Knowing that saying things like “a recent Harvard study showed just over 87% of parents felt anxious when watching their child doing a risky activity” or “The organisers of Glastonbury would like us to believe that they only received 7 complaints from local residents last year, however..” makes their writing more convincing IS useful. Like a china teapot.

jmp2: "footnotes at GCSE level is completely unnecessary and I would not even mention them."

So those students who never get beyond GCSE are never told they should reference any stats/facts they use, or to look for references in texts they read online. That's the problem.

Lolasmiles: "When I used to teach EPQ I'd spend 3 hours or more looking at research skills, critical reading etc and then another hour on referencing"

The world has moved on. I'm not talking about Harvard referencing - in many contexts a hyperlink will do the trick.

You can’t use hyperlinks in exams or essays.

Considering education is compulsory until 18 including those on apprentiships those students who never get beyond GCSE will be very low ability children doing Functional Skills courses. Referencing is part of most Level 3 (A Levels/Btec etc) courses including of course The aforementioned EPQ.

How on Earth do you think that:
footnotes at GCSE level is completely unnecessary

is the same as:

So those students who never get beyond GCSE are never told they should reference any stats/facts they use, or to look for references in texts they read online. That's the problem.

Foot notes and Harvard referencing aren't needed at GCSE. Secondary school kids are still taught about research, the difference between a good source and a poor source, critical skills etc FFS. Formal referencing is needed for academic writing at A level onwards.

Oh and just a hyperlink isn't enough if you want to accurately reference a website.

The more I think about it the more the notion of using a hyperlink as a reference is laughable.

The world has moved on. I'm not talking about Harvard referencing - in many contexts a hyperlink will do the trick.
EPQ guidelines and almost all university courses say otherwise.
There is a time and a place for referencing and where it is required it should be done appropriately in the correct format.

There are times it's not needed: like when you're teaching persuasive writing skills or students are sitting a GCSE exam assessing transactional writing.

The more you make claims then backtrack, then make more claims without an ounce of professional experience (and more amusingly without a single reference to support your claims that you know best on teaching English), the more this thread becomes hilarious.

I love the
Please tell the exam board that students should have access to the internet in their exams so they can Google.
Please also enlighten us mere mortals as to how they can possibly find all appropriate sources, fact check them, assess the reliability of their sources (because whilst you claim a hyperlink would do, most sites aren't always accurate), plan and write a piece of persuasive writing in 45 mins.

😂😂When I last checked (a few weeks ago) candidates accessing the internet contravened all exam regulations. So how is this radical plan feasible?! Do explain.

This thread gets more and more bonkers. Why is it so hard for some pps to grasp the concept of theory vs practice? Students learn the theory behind the principles of persuasive writing, then later apply it in real life situations. It's hardly some radical, new approach.

You know what - the OP asked a question. Many, many teachers have taken the time to carefully explain. All we are getting back is wilful ignorance, goadiness or insults. So OP is either unable to understand, or is just fucking about. I suspect the latter.