<p>Pg and XU, I guess I’m not asking what’s wrong with it, or what should be or should not be O.K… </p>
<p>My confusion doesn’t really come from moral or ethical considerations but practical ones. </p>
<p>I just can’t find the line not to cross. It appears to me that it is sometimes here, sometimes there…except on a Tuesday, or at Hopkins, or in Prof. Jones class at Hopkins. </p>
<p>I don’t like lines I can’t see or aren’t uniformly applied or …well, maybe it comes from what I do but to be “academic dishonesty” I think the standards have to be a lot better defined and a lot better “published” to the students. And I don’t like the idea that a savvy advantaged kid can run it right up to line whereas a kid without that skill-set and knowledge base is stuck curing her academic ills with herbs and maybe a sharpened stick.</p>
<p>To be blunt, a lot of what goes on in college today doesn’t pass my test of “independent” work and iirc it wouldn’t have passed when I went to college.</p>
<p>As long as there is no plagarism, I think everything is fair game anymore. You can usually find the same information from multiple sources, so as long as the work is your own, I think academic honesty is being upheld.</p>
<p>I mean, I believe we have prof’s and teachers on this thread disagreeing about where the “fair editing” line is. Is it that much of a stretch to think some prof might disagree with the line you’ve drawn? The results could be devastating.</p>
<p>Most schools have it posted in their Handbook. I know at Xavier, plagarism is the biggest thing that gets focused on, and it is in every professor’s syllabi, cut and pasted from the handbook itself (and properly cited as coming from the handbook, of course). Unless a specific professor from a specific class outlines which resources are to be used for an assignment, anything is up for grabs in my opinion, so long as it is a credible source and/or backed up by a credible source and is properly cited. (For instance, I know of zero professors who will accept anything coming from Wikipedia as a resource.)</p>
<p>How about this…and I’m not picking on you, so let’s make it randomdude with a MD mom.
What if it was a question he was asking for a graded assignment, like a research paper (or maybe take home test or whatever) ? “Mom, what the heck is the etiology of this disease and where can I find the latest greatest research?”</p>
<p>Again, depending on if the professor specified that only particular resources were eligible for finding the information, and the information used is something other students could access somewhere as well, I don’t think it’s a violation to ask a parent to help guide you to resources. Even outside of school we often ask our parents where to find, for example, the best deals on furniture, or the best way to fix this or that, when we move into our first place of our own. It would be no different, I think, than going to the professor during office hours and asking which resources he/she would recommend as a starting point, a tip which many professors I have had usually give in the paper/project introduction and details.</p>
<p>The problem would be, to me, if the student was asked to explain the etiology of this disease, asked the parent to write a paragraph explaining it, and then submitted the parent’s paragraph (as is, or with minor changes) as his answer on a take-home quiz. If, however, parent is able to explain it, and now the student gets in, and can now write his own paragraph explaining it, I think all is pretty much good – because the student has learned, which was the objective.</p>
<p>Let me ask the question a different way. What if instead of asking parent for the explanation of the etiology of the disease, the student happens to note that Discovery Channel is hosting a show on that disease, watches the show and now understands the disease better?</p>
<p>If I hired a college graduate, I would expect that person to be independently capable of writing a reasonably clear, grammatically correct document with no spelling errors. I would not expect that my new hire would have to forward his written work or e-mails to a third party for editing or proof-reading–especially if that third party were a parent or someone outside the company. Cooperative writing might work well in academia, journalism, or family life, but wouldn’t it be too slow, cumbersome, and lacking in confidentiality for a business environment? Even in an educational environment there would be issues. For example, I know I wouldn’t want my D’s case manager to forward her IEP to another colleague or worse, a family member, for proof-reading. My girlfriend has to write all of her husband’s work e-mail for him because he doesn’t trust himself to do it well. As you can imagine, that leads to stress and delays. It has held him back professionally. Also, doesn’t everyone else have their own work to do? How do you all have so much time to read people’s writing? I’m a stay-at-home-mom and although I’m not stupid, I don’t think I’d have the time or expertise to edit my children’s papers. I have enough to do and that is their job, not mine. </p>
<p>The reason there’s a difference between a parent editing a college paper, versus a classmate or someone in the writing center, is that the parent has a much greater personal and financial interest in the student doing well. That can lead to a crossing of the line between proof-reading and editing, between editing and re-writing, and re-writing and writing the whole thing. It would also lead to the type of insecurity which would cause an adult to forward all his work e-mails to his wife.</p>
<p>See, I disagree. I don’t think it’s any different to have a parent proof-read as opposed to a friend, or perhaps my parents are just different? With regards to the work example, an e-mail is entirely different than a research paper. Even in the sciences, there are peer reviews of research papers on professional levels. And even at the college level, I can proof-read my own e-mails and still am expected to have peer reviews of my research papers in many courses.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t you want something huge and important like a research document to be checked and double checked by multiple eyes before being representative of you and your business? It seems logical to me not to want to look like a fool because you miss-spelled that one word on the ten page document and didn’t notice it yourself for whatever reason. I know I have made plenty of power points in which I noticed too late that, oops, I misspelled that, because I was too close to it until there were other eyes looking at it, if that makes any sense. Similar philosophy as with all mistakes in life, don’t you think?</p>
I work for a law firm and much of what goes out has a second set of eyes, whether it’s the proofreader, an associate, a secretary, whomever. Someone usually takes a look.</p>
<p>In the old days, we were taught to let a written piece sit for a few days after completing it before re-reading for correction. That way your own eyes are fresh and will catch what you might not have before due to over-familiarity. And while a big project like a thesis or term paper might need mom to look it over, does every essay?</p>
<p>As for the etiology example, it fails to take into account the importance of incidental learning. When a student searches for hard-to-find information, along the way he learns what can and what can’t be found in various types of source materials. At a later time he will recall that such-and-such a journal was a great source for information on x,y,z topics. Along the way he also reads a lot of information marginally related and unrelated to the data he is looking for. In that process, he accumulates information. While I don’t think a student always needs to punish himself by deliberately choosing the long way to an answer, at the same time just asking Dr. Mom instead of searching himself first could cheat him out of some learning.</p>
<p>These are not the old days. Things are now, here’s the assignment, the deadline is in a few days, have it ready. And especially in college, a lot of writing happens at midnight to 4am.</p>
<p>We had lots of work and short deadlines in the old days too, without the benefit of word processors. If we managed without spell-check and the ability to cut and paste, you all should be even better writers than we were and should finish your work even quicker, leaving plenty of time for self-editing.</p>
I am convinced that spell-check has stunted this generation’s ability to proofread. And I am equally convinced that its prevalence has caused at least my own kids’ teachers to forego teaching them how to proofread.</p>
<p>If that was the case, you would be violating the terms of your database subscription. Which would then not only muddy the ethical area of your child accessing a resource that other students couldn’t, but could put your law firm at risk of having the resource license pulled. </p>
<p>It happens. Schools have had database subscriptions pulled because their students who are doing internships over the summer do research and hand it over to their employers when the agreements specifically say they are for academic use only. </p>
<p>I know you haven’t/won’t done this Curm, and it’s a tangent to the discussion going on, but things like this are in school Honor Codes. It’s specifically mentioned at the school I work at.</p>
</i>
<p>Both of my older children scored an 800 on the SAT verbal section and both did very well in two years of AP English in high school. The limited amount of correcting I’d have to do on their college papers would be very unlikely to change the quality of their work significantly. Also, since their colleges are highly competitive (Ivy and elite), the level of their work would be such that I, as a parent, would be of limited value to them from an idea standpoint either. Therefore, my parental editing would be like peer editing at best, or the type of minimal correction done by a secretary or assistant. </p>
<p>However, I am thinking of a number of cases I know where bright, professional parents are helping below average or average children with their high school and college work. In those cases the improvement rendered by parental assistance is substantial. That type of editing is not peer level, but that of an intellectual superior. </p>
<p>Most of us on here probably can identify more with the first scenario, and perhaps that is why so many parents on CC don’t see much of a problem with this. But there are kids who couldn’t pass college if their parents didn’t help them with their papers. That’s wrong.</p>
<p>TheGFG–I agree with your analysis. As you say, I think a lot of parents here are on a peer level with our kids from a writing perspective, and what is provided is another pair of trusted, accurate eyes, not re-writing or correcting deficiencies.</p>
<p>The latter scenario you describe is certainly a problem, from both an academic point of view, and for the development of the student. I think a lot of the disconnect in this thread is that some people are supporting the *first *stance, others are deploring the second, and we’re talking past each other.</p>
<p>I again go back to my original statement that proofreading is not the same as editing, and that it is always good to get a second pair of eyes to proofread. Even when I set things aside for days I will sometimes miss a few mistakes, because I happen to be human.</p>