<p>Writing center services are free at all of the universities that I’m familiar with.</p>
<p>I can imagine being tempted to edit my kid’s high school work that I happened upon on a computer. I can’t imagine doing that editing. It would feel very intrusive, and I’m surprised that your D didn’t complain immediately when she realized that a parent had edited her work.</p>
<p>I just redrafted my essays about 6 times and had it read by a friend for critique once. My mother and teachers never saw any of my essays and I did fine. I read a lot of “successful essays” online, so I caught on to the drift of what a good essay looked like. Perhaps that contributed to my essay-sheltering. But that’s just a personal perspective. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend taking the route I did and now that I’m looking back at the process, it would’ve been nice to have an adult read my essays for feedback.</p>
<p>I think the very process of editing can help sharpen insights and thought processes. I know I have one kid who tends to just make declarative statements and think he’s proven his thesis. He responds well (IMO) to being challenged on the whys – they are always there, beneath the surface, but he doesn’t always think about producing those whys. It clarifies and shapes his own thinking to have someone say, “This isn’t clear or specific enough.” That doesn’t mean the editor is necessarily saying, “And here’s why you believe X to be true, I’ll spoon-feed you the reasons.”</p>
<p>“I think the very process of editing can help sharpen insights and thought processes.”</p>
<p>No one is disputing this. Some of us think, however, that by the time a student is in college, instead of helping edit students’ papers, it would be best for parents to suggest that students use their professors, writing center and peers for such help.</p>
<p>My parents - or rather, my mother, since my father’s English was not really all that great - stopped helping me with my writing after the third grade. A copy of Strunk and White was provided, and they urged me to adopt writing styles of some of the authors I read. Questions were directed towards our thesauri or the dictionary.</p>
<p>I think that such a method works quite well and urges independence early on. </p>
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<p>I agree with NSM - a college student should not need hand holding.</p>
<p>Can I edit this discussion ;)</p>
<p>I think there are two different questions or groups of questions.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How much editing/proofing by a third party is appropriate/ethical/useful for A. Anything you write B. An essay in a college course C. An essay in a college course at a college with a particular honor code, etc ?</p></li>
<li><p>When a college student needs help of various kinds, how desirable/undesirable is it for them to turn to their parents first, before seeking out help of other kinds on their own?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think there is more disagreement on this latter. Which makes sense, as its less to do with the nature of writing, than with the nature of individual students, their family relations, etc.</p>
<p>Some kids are never going to want parents help if there is any alternative. Some can ask for help in one area, but you know they are completely independent autonomous healthy in general. Some need lots of help, cause of an LD or whatever, and you may accept that their movement to autonomy is going to be very slow.</p>
<p>But some kids (many kids??) are able to increase autonomy, but need to turn less to mom and dad precisely at this point in order to make that jump. So its all a matter of knowing the individual, IMO.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with a little proof-reading. Often we miss our own mistakes, especially if we have just written the paper. We can catch some things, but may miss others. It is good to have anyone, a friend, a family member, a professor, etc. take a look over a paper. And actually, many professors are willing to help you go over a paper to make sure you understand and are so far writing the paper clearly enough. Some colleges even have writing centers, like at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and they will not edit the paper, but they will go over parts of it and help you learn how to take care of the issues throughout the paper on your own. This type of resource is especially helpful when a student does not understand how to use certain types of paper structures or citation formats. There can be no autonomy if the student has no idea what they’re doing and simply gets frustrated and gives up. If they have a resource to teach them these skills, they should utilize it, though I still think having someone proof-read your paper is always a good idea so that little mistakes you don’t catch can be found, so long as you’re the one who fixes them (though suggestions are usually helpful, especially with word structuring when sometimes you simply hit a mind block).</p>
<p>"And actually, many professors are willing to help you go over a paper to make sure you understand and are so far writing the paper clearly enough. "</p>
<p>In fact, most professors would consider this part of their job.</p>
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I’m hoping that’s the case for D2. She’s been told by the honors people that it is and that all the students should get in the habit of speaking first with their professors if they need clarity. I’m going to remind her.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, D1 is at a CUNY. There is no professorial assistance and the writing center is overwhelmed by non-English speakers and can’t help those who only need polishing assistance.</p>
<p>While in college, I think parents would like to feel as if they are still needed and therefore, even though I think of myself as a young adult and ready to take on the world, I may still call my mother and ask her her perspective on an issue or discuss with her the content of the essays I’ll be working on in school, even though I may not necessarily need it.</p>
<p>During the college application process, I would suggest parents to read and such, but I would give students a lot of leeway when writing essays. It’s a time for them to self-reflect and have their unique voices projected outward to adcoms. If the student has done well in high school, trust them to form genuine, well-structured essays that are compelling and passionate.</p>
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<p>Ditto for my colleagues and myself. Colleagues. No grades. Team work. Collaboration. </p>
<p>The team is all working toward a goal. The authenticity of the authorship is not of issue. I just see an important, albeit technical, difference.</p>
<p>I also could not agree more that writing is a process, that it is difficult – particularly when not an accomplished writer – to “hear” how one’s writing really “sounds.” I agree also that the give and take of critiquing by others is itself a learning experience. Nevertheless, I see a difference between providing solicited feedback in general (“Your introduction is confusing, as it seems to state two opposing theses”), and routinely, physically editing college assignments.</p>
<p>If general give-and-take results in a student independently producing a terrific in-class test essay at the end of the course, then I’m sure most profs would agree that his or her end has been achieved, particularly if that last essay is the most heavily weighted part of the grade. But if the earlier, edited assignments figure equally into the grade, I guess I have a personal problem with that.</p>
<p>I would like to post here my agreement with post #134. I’d also like to add to the discussion that just because certain kinds of activities are OK in a professional setting, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are OK in the educational setting. </p>
<p>Each writing occasion has a different purpose, and in the educational setting part of the purpose is to make sure that a student has a grasp of those elements which make for good writing. In addition, they are given an evaluation of their individual ability in this regard.</p>
<p>This post is not directly related to the topic under discussion but to a larger question, so I’ll apologize in advance for being OT.</p>
<p>This area is a black hole to me. </p>
<p>I have (mostly unsuccessfully) tried over the years to engage posters on the use of “aids” in college. My kid was and is somebody who is very good at using all available resources in her coursework. Time with the prof, writing center, on-line resources, editing software that comes with the WP program, spell-checkers, on-line resources in general, and many other variations on that theme. </p>
<p>Going to college when we scratched our answers in the dirt with a stick, many of these things seem very …uhhh…foreign to me. Maybe the egalitarian in me wonders : does my advantaged daughter has an edge over some of her less advantaged classmates, and , if so, is that advantage unfair? Conversely does some other even more advantaged student have available “aids” greater than those my D has? And is that advantage unfair? </p>
<p>Some of the language translation resources are supposedly pretty good. Is it fair that one student has access to those and the majority doesn’t? What about separate study materials like Rosetta Stone? Or, how about a parent who is a native speaker to practice conversational language? </p>
<p>I recall how I felt when my D was taking a Chinese Literature course (taught in English by a native speaker of Chinese) with Chinese native speakers in the class who could read the source materials in their original form. Then I thought about those students felt in …oh…all the other classes they had with my D. 
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<p>I assume that there are high-powered math and science-y computer programs, too. I just wouldn’t know as I don’t live anywhere near there. </p>
<p>Then there is this whole “co-operative” learning group environment thing that further confuddles me. Like the “editing” thing being discussed here. I don’t even understand the whole writing center thing. How is that wholly independent work? </p>
<p>I had many conversations with my D that ended with “Talk to the prof. Ask for specific guidance. Don’t assume that this plan that you and your classmates have is O.K…”</p>
<p>Like I said, it’s a black hole to me. I understood it much better when we were scratching in the dirt . I wish someone would just scratch a line in the dirt that says “Don’t go past here.”</p>
<p>Again, sorry for the Off-Topic.</p>
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You may not realize this (collectively), but despite the disagreement on the thread, a real service has been done for people like me who have no frame of reference to know that it actually is ok to go to the professor for guidance. I can’t tell D2 to do so because I didn’t go to college and D1’s situation doesn’t allow for that. D2’s high school experience was wonderful but fairly hands-off from the teaching standpoint. I can’t tell you how many times she has been told (as have I) “you have to learn to do this yourself because when you get to college your professors won’t hold your hand.” In hindsight, I wonder what the motivation is there because it does seem that it is more often the case than not that a respectful student will get guidance from a professor, so being forced to sink or swim in high school may have even left her with some missing skills. So even if consensus isn’t reached, I would bet there are others like me who have learned something.</p>
<p>How would your daughter be “advantaged” if she is using the resources available to everyone? Maybe I misunderstood, but it seems to me that things like the writing center and online resources are available to all the students, particularly if the campus offers computers for student use as mine does and has free writing center, math lab, and tutoring services.</p>
<p>The Internet has changed the world. Thirty years ago it would have been pretty hard to have a parent take a look at something, but today it’s easy. </p>
<p>Life isn’t fair. Everyone has something that makes them different. Being born in certain areas of the country can be advantageous–who controls that? The way I figure, I grew up fairly poor in a one-parent household with very little direction. Lucky me, I have made good decisions that worked out well and now my kids have lots of advantages I did not have. Good for them; their dad and I have worked hard. And I can spend my summers gaining even more knowledge on CC!</p>
<p>I have not even looked at a college paper for my daughter although I think the only ones she had this year were for Russian lit and DD knows I could not do a thing for her there. I don’t think she has any interest in my help. I think she thinks she is smarter than I am anyway. </p>
<p>To me, one of the greatest advantages a kid today can have is understanding the resources available and using them.</p>
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<p>I’d see no reason for a student not to leverage a parent or grandparent who is a native speaker of a language. I guess I’m pretty pragmatic. I don’t really have an objection to leveraging available resources and to me, leveraging resources is part of the very definition of being “smart.” Yes, it’s unfair that I might be able to do some things or have a H who can advise my D in areas of science that are beyond me. OTOH, there are also families who have the resources to do amazing things with their kids that I can’t (exclusive prep schools, intensive tutoring / coaching, extensive foreign travel) and that ain’t fair either, but such is life.</p>
<p>XU, I’ll make something up that never happened but may be illustrative. I’m a lawyer. I have online access to legal research resources that most college kids don’t have (or at least assume that is true for our discussion). If my D was taking a Con Law course , that resource could be made available to her by me giving her my password.</p>
<p>Is it information the other students could not find elsewhere, though? My mom is a physician, so I often ask her medical questions pertaining to a biology class, but it is information I (or anyone else) could easily look up in a book at the library, plus having grown up around it I usually have a good idea of what questions to be asking anyways, whereas some of my classmates may not have a clue where to begin because they were not raised around it. Likewise, if your D was taking a course in law and grew up around you, wouldn’t she also have a better idea of what questions to be asking and where to find the answers anyways? Life gives everyone their own advantages, and we can’t all be brought up in sterile, neutral, even playing-field environments. Therefore, as I began, as long as it isn’t super-secret confidential information the other students couldn’t find elsewhere, say, on a database subscribed to by the school or local public library, I don’t see that it would be wrong.</p>
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<p>Whether it did any good or not, I don’t know, but back when my kids were starting languages (7th or 8th grade - don’t recall), I bought them Rosetta Stone in their languages (Fr and Sp) to play around with before starting the course. I didn’t and don’t see anything unethical or wrong with that. I also gave my S one of my old French textbooks that is (IMO) an excellent resource for many grammar issues - far more clear and to the point than many French textbooks of today. H and I would both speak conversational French to him at times to help him improve. I can’t imagine what’s wrong with that.</p>