Teaching Writing

I don’t make such comments on student writing. If I did, some students would complain to higher-ups, and I’d probably have to explain and to apologize. A record of my “insult” and my reprimand would remain in my personnel file. In relations between teacher and student, the social scientists remain ascendant at my institution. Students are considered half child, half customer, and faculty are regularly exhorted to be always half parent, half sales clerk. “We don’t want to hurt their feelings, lose their business, or provoke a lawsuit. But my professors in the English department at Iowa State regularly made such comments on my papers and on the papers of my friends: “Gibberish!” “Drivel!” “Nonsense!” “Think!” “Incoherent!” “Baloney!” “Huh?” We laughed, sheepishly perhaps, but we laughed. No one stayed mad or hurt for very long. We all knew how bitchy both artists and academics could be in professional journals. Such expressions of incomprehension and incredulity were the coin of the realm. They were no big deal. Indeed, they were amusing, entertaining, more than anything else. It wasn’t personal; it was intellectual. My friends and I, though, were all majoring in English, history, or philosophy, and all earning all A’s and B’s. I don’t know how non-majors and struggling students might have felt about such remarks or if the professors my friends and I loved made such comments on the papers of students who were having real difficulty. I miss those days, though, and that hardy spirit. “Higher education now uses a Pass/Fail system. If you pass, you get A; if you fail, you get B.” That’s a joke, I think.

Bob Schenck, at 7:55 am EDT on October 5, 2007

On the money, Bob

Long ago and far away, I took a political science course from a professor who had a rubber “bullshit” stamp. When a student wrote bullshit, the prof called it as he saw it and stamped “bullshit” on the paper. I got the stamp once, and he was right — what I wrote was bs and we both knew it. I was shovelling it like crazy, got caught, and laughed about it. My classmates also laughed when caught writing bs. Many (many) years later I wrote B.S. on a student paper and the next thing I knew I was summoned to the Dean’s office and told never do that again or we could be sued. At least my Dean said I was right, it was B.S., but we can no longer “call ‘em as we sees ‘em".

Robert, at 10:15 am EDT on October 5, 2007

Dissertation Criticism

Writing the dissertation requires the student to be both humble and objective. I was lucky knowing that my advisor wanted my finished work to reflect the time and work put into the research. I wanted to be represented by a work that could be viewed by anyone as presenting me in the best possible way. I wanted to be proud of the finished product (and I am).I remember good days writing and I remember desperate days when I could not string together a cohesive thought. Persevere and jump through the hoops, just as your advisor did. Those dissertation directors who let drivel pass through because of a fear of a law suit, are failing their charge.

Doc, Dr., at 10:40 am EDT on October 5, 2007

Why Sociologists Should Not Marry Mathematicians

As we all know, a great deal of personal development occurs within the first three to five years of life. Indeed, it is often suggested that our school years didn’t stand a chance because we were who we were even before we arrived on the academic scene. I tend to discount that theory ... although you will not miss the fact that my comments are completely based on personal experience ... not on serious scientific studies.

Many of the readers of Inside Higher Ed have Ph.D.s (or perhaps are ABD ... it’s all the same). For most of us that process will have occupied up to one-tenth of our entire lives (frightening thought, isn’t it?). What I can say without equivocation is that the culture for learning in mathematics is entirely different from the cultures for learning in the social sciences, business, and education. My “credentials” – such as they are – for making that statement are (1) I am ABD in mathematics, (2) I am ABD in ed research and evaluation, (3) I have a Ph.D. in statistics, and (4) I have spent most of my professional career working with scholars (including students) in the social sciences, business, and education.

The culture for learning in mathematics is very aggressive, very competitive, and borders on being intellectually vicious. For the most part, an attack on one’s intellect is an attack on one’s person, but if a student of mathematics felt that way, s/he would not last a week. A mathematics’ student who interpreted an attack on hir “ideas” as a personal attack would find the learning process so personally demeaning that only the most neurotic could survive. Indeed, survival as a Ph.D. student in mathematics necessitates the ability to separate “idea” from “person” in a way that most social scientists of my acquaintance can’t appreciate. Strange as this may seem, being right (in mathematics) will not suffice. The student who is right may come under heavy criticism for presenting an argument that is not sufficiently clever ... not parsimonious ... not wonderfully sophisticated, etc.

I should mention, however, that this intellectual hostility was fully integrated into the learning culture. We accepted it, we practiced it, and, for the most part, we thrived on it. It colored our lives and, unfortunately, for many of us it colored our ability to communicate with non-mathematicians.

By contrast – and even as an outside observer — I have found a very large number of social scientists who interpret attacks on their ideas as personal attacks. It is the nature of the disciplines that constitute the social sciences that two scholars on opposite sides of a concept could sit down together at 8:00 a.m., “argue” for the better part of the day, and walk away at 5:00 p.m. with no conclusion other than the other has impaired intellectual or logical skills ... and probably with “hurt feelings” as well. The probability of that happening to two mathematicians is very close to zero.

And how does all of that “intellectual hostility” affect personal relations amongst mathematicians. Perhaps it’s nothing more than affection amongst inmates at the insane asylum, but when we all gathered at the Greeks for pizza and beer on Fridays (along with our spouses and children) you would never have imagined you were sitting amongst individuals who had spent the week practicing what every social scientist would interpret as a very nasty form of academic hostility.

Frizbane Manley, at 11:25 am EDT on October 5, 2007

it isn’t about the lawsuits

Folks, a few attempts at law suits make the news, but most are not successful. So long as you run your departments evenhandedly and fairly (which isn’t rocketscience), you will not lose a lawsuit. (There will always be a few nuts suing over anything, but there is absolutely nothing you can do about this, and I can’t believe some faculty members let the fear of lawsuits that can be easily dismissed rule their lives.)

Instead, I think the greatest threat to academic integrity is simple laziness. There are many professors out there that only help their favorites. This means that they treat people unfairly and essentially invite trouble.

To me, the simple solution is to make all student-written work public. If you hand it in, it goes on the server. Once students know that their “insights” will be subject to scrutiny, they will cut the BS. (And no, this does not violate the FERPA.)

Larry, at 4:20 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

There’s an important difference between comments on a dissertation and comments on undergraduate writing or even graduate coursework. Ideally, an advisor should be treating an ABD student as a junior colleague. Like the author of this piece, the student should feel confident that the advisor respects his or her ideas and abilities enough to offer unvarnished criticism where appropriate (obviously, if the student does not feel confident of the advisor’s respect, the relationship has bigger problems). Undergrads and more junior students are not, and should not, be seen in this light, and are not expected to already know better. As the gulf of power and authority between the advisor and the student increases, the less this kind of straight-talking familiarity accomplishes. If nothing else, such students can’t be expected to immediately recognize why their writing is drivel or BS, and in all likelihood they will simply be hurt, offended, and confused by such a comment.

MDB, at 4:20 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

I agree with Doc

Sometimes you need to point out the drivel. A dissertation advisor has this obligation — it is, indeed, a mark of respect and professionalism to let a student know when they are not doing as well as they should or could, and while I myself could not be so heartless as to write “drivel” on a grad student paper, I have refused to give credit for work that was, indeed drivel. A dissertation isn’t going to get an “end of semester” grade, so well-chosen words of critique are probably more appropriate in that context than in a typical graduate classroom situation.

But a graduate student is not the equivalent of an undergraduate student, and it is something I am reminded of every time I put comments on student papers.

I have written some version of “this is a disaster... there’s no underlying argument, I can’t tell that you’ve read the poems you were to discuss from what you’ve written, and I can’t give you any credit for this” on several student midterms this week, and then I followed it up with, “if this is your first time doing this kind of work, if you are feeling baffled by why this was unacceptable, or if you simply want to talk about how to do better work in the future or about anything else related to our class, please take the time to see me soon. I can help you improve if you let me.” I never simply write “drivel” and leave it at that... I feel like we have the responsibility to explain WHY it is drivel and then to teach the student how to move beyond it. I’m teaching them content and skills, and some of those skills are about academic conventions that the typical undergrad has not been taught in high school.

Students usually know why they’ve done poorly, in my experience — they usually know that they didn’t do what needed to be done, and generally they accept responsibility by taking the “F” or “D” or whatever with good grace and moving on with it (or dropping the class). But others are genuinely horrified and confused, and often excessively intimidated, by what professors write on their papers. I’m a scary beast to some of them, and many of them are not used to being evaluated by real standards of academic achievement. The tremendous diversity of preparation our entering undergrads have received is disheartening, but it means that sometimes we must be remedial, especially in the first half of fall semester. We need better retention rates to keep the U up and running, I suppose, but to be less cynical, we need better retention rates to keep society up and running. We need them to stay if they are to learn, and harsh comments on their first round of papers and tests need to be measured with practical solutions for improvement.

We must be honest but we must also teach. What would be the point of being in a classroom otherwise?

I don’t think you can sue a professor for writing that something is drivel. You can, apparently, be sued for suggesting that your undergrad student was too high or too drunk to synthesize the classroom experience, something I learned the hard way my first semester as a TA. No lawsuit in the end, but getting called on the carpet for suggesting my bleary-eyed stoner was a bleary-eyed stoner (hence the poor grade) was just the sort of education *I* needed as a graduate student.

Not that you can tell from this post, but I guess I have learned that “less is more” when it comes to student comments. Honest critique followed by suggestions for how to improve and offers of some individualized help.

Tenure Year Prof, at 4:25 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

Right on, Friz!

Friz! Remember the clarion call!

” .. You’ve gotta tell them! Soylent Green is people! We’ve gotta stop them somehow!”

Exams. That ought to frighten them. Such as the third-tier/fourth-tier honors crowd that wonders why the GRE outcome was in the 45th percentile.

BTW: this is not —

http://m-w.com/dictionary/drivel

Buzz, at 6:15 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

Drivel

Dear Jason:

I was actually trying to pull up Matthew Hall’s cartoon and stumbled onto your article. No one said anything about your article. It was was well-written, funny, and accurate.

I teach a professional communication course. 75 % of my students are supposedly p.r. minors. Can they write coherently? No. How do you choose a career focus for which you have no talent or aptitude? Poor academic advisement?

I would agree with those who said you have to at least lead the horses to water. My students don’t know—what they don’t know. However, once they’ve been given the chance to remediate, I tend to get far crankier with their ineptitude at proofreading and editing.

I guess I’m a lawsuit waiting to happen. I have written comments such as, “you need to call Rescue 911 to save this sentence.” However, I try to always balance the sarcasm with something positive about the content.

Here’s the reality: if or when they ever send anything out to be published, they will be edited, or of course, summarily rejected. Writers need to get used to being corrected, critiqued, told to rewrite, told to simplify, whatever the case may be. If we don’t do it in the classroom, little Johnny is going to be in for a rude awakening when it comes time for employment or dreams of publishing. Even my proficient writers can be pushed to a higher degree of excellence.

In context of dissertation writing, it is a collaborative process between the student and his or her committee. It’s like the 10 blind men and the elephant. Each person sees something different, and they don’t always call it correctly. There is little encouragement to be had. I wanted to jump off a cliff for the number of times I had to rewrite that paper. Am I glad, now, that I did what they told me to? Absolutely. I was too close to the versions and too ego-invested to see how much of it was truly drivel.

In summary, I think you can “get away with” a few sharp comments if the students comprehend it is an impetus toward excellence, you lower yourself to explain what the problems are, you exhibit some semblance of compassion, and you do make the effort to point out and praise them when they get it right. While my name might not be on anyone’s dissertation, my integrity relies on assisting Johnny in learning the differences between a semi-colon and a colonoscopy.

Dr. Jodi Decker, Dr. at ASU, at 5:15 am EDT on October 6, 2007

USA Today: Bob right about drivel

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/...eu;_ylt=AokgulNPSv.C3EBJ7tuqA8es0NUE

” .. Below the top ranks, there are reasons to suspect more tolerance for mediocrity than an assault on it. A 2006 study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts found shockingly low literacy among students at four-year colleges ..”

L.L., at 4:40 pm EDT on October 7, 2007

Sorry Kate, But Here Goes ...

Your story is reminiscent of something that happened to me several years ago. I may be wrong, but I think it is simultaneously very, very sad and outrageously hilarious.

I had a student who came to the first class of the semester and then disappeared until after mid term. I sent him three e-mail messages asking “what’s up,” but no response. Then, after the mid-term exam, I received the following message from him ...

“This e-mail is in regards to my absence today. My roommate who is part of the National Guard has recently be activated and is due to ship out in the next few days. There are many issues he and I need to address before he goes and the main one is the lease that we are bound to. I have spent most of the morning getting paper work together then we are meeting with a our Land Lady today who is also an attorney. She is going to help protect the both of us with a rewritting of the lease. This was the only day that it work out for both of them, but unfourtenately not for me. Really bad timing considering this is the class before mid-terms. I just wanted to give you a heads up on why I was not present today. Also to ask if there is anything I need to know before the exam, could you e-mail it to me or leave it in your mail box so that I may be able to come by and get it after the meeting. If you want me to contact someone else in the class could I get a contact list so that I may do so. Sorry for the inconvince, this semester has been pretty much full of them for me.”

I checked his schedule and, sure enough, he had not attended any of his classes that term after the first week, and he sent the same message to all of his teachers.

I was the only faculty member who responded to his letter – my colleagues just laughed about it and went about their business — and part of my letter was used as evidence against me when the VPAA presented her case substantiating that I was insensitive to students needs and expectations. Here is that part of my letter that was used as evidence by the VPAA ...

“This has got to be the most irrelevant – not to mention the most inarticulate – e-mail message I have received this term. You are explaining to me why you are missing class on 2/19/04, after having missed all of the classes for the past month ... and on the basis of some trumped up excuse about your roommate ‘shipping out’ because of his obligation to the National Guard.

Drop the course (BA 302). There is no possibility I would demean the time and effort the other students in this class have invested in learning the material by accommodating your quite pathetic excuse for not participating. I will be more than happy to reinforce the withdrawal process by giving you a WF.”

Kate, you will be interested to know that the remained of the letter – it was not included in the VPAA’s case against me — was ..,

“Perhaps when you are prepared to take BA 302 once again – and understanding that you will not be ‘passed through’ – I will be willing to invest time and effort of my own to help you through a program of studies in business. Otherwise, find another major.”

I was fired by the “university,” and the VPAA – an individual with neither administrative nor scholarly credentials for leading a university (her dissertation is a book that is #5,187,107 on the Amazon.com “best seller” list) except that she can be manipulated by the Board of Visitors – will assume the presidency of the university in the fall of 2008.

Frizbane Manley, at 4:35 pm EDT on October 9, 2007