Anybody care to predict the grade this paper will receive?

[Skald the Rhymer]

One of my many sisters came to my house this morning, accompanied by 15-year-old daughter, one of my many nieces. They wanted to borrow a copy of Beowulf. The conversation went something like this:

SIS: Do you have a copy of Beowulf? The Kid here has to do a report on it for school.

ME: Which one do you want? I have at least three. I have one in a Norton anthology in modern English prose, and one just in Old English, and one edition which has both the Old English on one page and a modern English translation in verse on the opposite page. That one's probably best.

KID: Oh, none of those. Do you have a copy of the movie?

ME: Um, no. You realize I only own three DVDs, right? But I think my stepdaughter does. Anyway, if she has to write a report on the poem, she should probably read it. The movie's not all all that faithful.

SIS: Never mind. I'll just borrow Cinderella the Rhymer's version. Kid, run to your cousin's room and see if you can find it and make sure you leave her a note.

ME: Wait! What's the exact assightment?

KID: (checking assignment sheet) It can be either on the use of poetic devices in Beowulf or on the tension between Christian and pagan influences on the poem. I'll just watch the movie! (runs to Cinderella's room)

ME: Okay, seriously, sis, y'all need to borrow the parallel translation, or at least get the Spark notes. She's not going to get what she needs from the movie, unless you need another reason to hate Angelina Jolie.

SIS: We don't have time to read it, and it's hard anyway. I just want the short version.

ME: The movie isn't the short version. It's the version crafted by someone who spent the entire movie-making process under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.

SIS: Oh, stop being so snobbish. We doesn't have time to read all that crap, and who cares about it anyway? It's just about old dead vikings. Is there any real difference?

ME: (goggling) Well, um, basically everything except for the name of the main characters. And as the dialogue in the movie is not delivered in poetic form, she can't get information on kennings and such.

SIS: Why do you ALWAYS exaggerate?

KId: (returning from Cinderella's bedroom with copy of Beowulf and, for mysterious reasons, illegal copies of Wolverine & Star Trek). Got 'em. I'm ready to go!

ME: Wait! Baby, you know, I DO have a mostly useless degree in English literature, and I've written my senior paper on poetry of that period when I was an undergrad, and I've read Beowulf at least twenty times. I can help you with your paper tomorrow afternoon.

SIS: No, that won't work. You don't know how to write like a child. Never mind. We'll just watch this and do the paper from that.

ME: But...

SIS: It'll be fine.

KID: Thanks, Uncle Dude!

I'm willing to bet this paper will get a grade other than A.

[Cisco]

I like how your stepdaughter gets the doper name of a famous stepdaughter .

Unfortunately, while your niece and her mom have awful attitudes about education, the fact that she's gotten this far and it's worked out for her tells me that the paper will do just fine. She's really going to struggle if she goes to college, though, and I blame her mom.

[Enginerd]

G-.

[ITR champion]

If it's a public school then she'll get an A.

[Lynn Bodoni]

I'm willing to bet this paper will get a grade other than A.

Wow, you're a real risk-taker, aren't you?

If there is any justice in the class, then Kid will get an F. If the teacher is not allowed to give a failing grade (this is seriously being proposed here in some Texas school districts, but that's a whole nother subject), and there is justice, she'll get a D-.

[Claire Beauchamp]

That just makes me very, very sad. Not because of the kid, kids always try to pull crap like that. Because of the mom.

*sigh*

[chappachula]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

ME: What's the exact assightment?

KID: (checking assignment sheet) It can be either on the use of poetic devices in Beowulf or on the tension between Christian and pagan influences on the poem. .

umm...it seems to me that,actually, those 2 choices are both pretty sophisticated issues for a 15 year old to write about.*
And it seems like the teacher must have spent a semester or more doing some actual teaching (and not just summarizing the plot) ,trying to get the kids to learn abstract concepts.

so what I'm wondering is: how the heck has the kid not read even one line of the poem yet?




*I dunno---but I would think a less-demanding teacher would just assign something like " define the Christian and pagan influences in the poem, and give 3 examples of each". Not "discusss the tension between.....", which assumes the kid had read the poem carefully, and knows the themes well.


And, please, please tell us what grade she receives!

[Sampiro]

I wonder how many students have flunked assignments based on SCARLET LETTER due to the Demi Moore movie by now.

I have no problem with students using Sparknotes, which are mostly online full-text and have some side-by-side [original/translation] versions for ancient/medieval/Renaissance works. It would be ridiculous to expect a high school student to be up on the ways of the Dark Age Anglo-Saxon customs and cadence. BUT, anybody who's ever seen the movie and read the book should know one tain't the other; Harry Potter's about as close as it comes and even they have major omissions.

A professor here had an ingenious thing going for a couple of years until word got out. She assigned the book The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and always had an essay question on Miss Jane's motivations and actions in the final scene of the book.

Anyone who's seen the incredible TV movie with Cicely Tyson knows the super powerful final scene in which Miss Jane, a 110 year old ex slave, drinks from a WHITE'S ONLY water fountain. Well, that scene's not in the book; the filmmakers added it because they felt while the final scene in the book works just fine

SPOILER:

Miss Jane boards a bus to go to the March on Washington

it would be too expensive to re-create the actual historical event and too anti-climactic if it was just people waving bye-bye, so they rescripted it for a great film (and inexpensive) film piece.

Anyway, she said that in the two years she asked this question, in which she told students up front "You will not do well on this test if you only watch the movie", every year at least half and usually more of the students told about the water fountain as the final scene.

[Fretful Porpentine]

I predict a C-. Sadly, I suspect half the class will attempt something equally stupid, and the teacher will give up on flunking them in exhaustion.

One of the few redeeming features of that movie is that it functions so well as a trap for lazy students.

[Mosier]

Originally Posted by Fretful Porpentine

I predict a C-. Sadly, I suspect half the class will attempt something equally stupid, and the teacher will give up on flunking them in exhaustion.

One of the few redeeming features of that movie is that it functions so well as a trap for lazy students.

I think the assignment would have been more seriously approached by the students if there WASN'T a movie version.

The movie isn't all that completely different from the poem, though. The order he fights the monsters in is pretty much the same.

[nikonikosuru]

Ahahahaha, oh geez.

Well you did the best you could. You can't say you didn't warn them! I'm curious as to what grade she'll get and I won't be able to rest until you post a follow up. Was it a normal English class or AP English?

[Neverender]

Originally Posted by chappachula

umm...it seems to me that,actually, those 2 choices are both pretty sophisticated issues for a 15 year old to write about.*
And it seems like the teacher must have spent a semester or more doing some actual teaching (and not just summarizing the plot) ,trying to get the kids to learn abstract concepts.

so what I'm wondering is: how the heck has the kid not read even one line of the poem yet?




*I dunno---but I would think a less-demanding teacher would just assign something like " define the Christian and pagan influences in the poem, and give 3 examples of each". Not "discusss the tension between.....", which assumes the kid had read the poem carefully, and knows the themes well.


And, please, please tell us what grade she receives!

Maybe in the US, but it's pretty standard, if not perhaps a little harder* than the kind of questions you'd get at GCSE English in England, though Shakespeare is FAR more likely to be the focus than any other topic.

*maybe a bit closer to A level English.

At both levels, good identification of the themes would be required though.

(No cite, but I only finsished my GCSE's 4 years ago, and the curriculum isn't likely to have dumbed down that much in the mean time).

You located in the US, Skald?

[Boyo Jim]

The teacher only watched to movie too.

A+

[Sampiro]

You should have volunteered just to tell her the story, starting with the part where Beo is first bitten by the wolf and has until the Full Moon to find a cure.

[ToeJam]

She'll get a B.

If that was my sister though, I'd be chastising the crap outta her for putting up with that stuff. Though I did that from an early age- I forced her always to do her work the right way- just develop the love of reading in the child and keep it there to avoid these sorts of problems down the road. It meant lots of taunting and telling her how much cooler X was in the Book than the Movie and then giving her good books and all to read.... But that's when we were both kids....
So thankfully this scene will never happen for me.... Because if it does... my sister's going to get a good verbal beatdown on academia.

[Baker]

It isn't as if this sort of thing is new. My mother, who attended high school in the latter 1940's, tells the story of a student who tried to do a book presentation on Bambi. He based his report on the Disney movie.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Sampiro

You should have volunteered just to tell her the story, starting with the part where Beo is first bitten by the wolf and has until the Full Moon to find a cure.

No, that would be too actively dickish. 'Sides, I love Beowulf too much to accomplish that. "Then in the mist over the moor-hills Grendel came walking, bearing God's anger. This was not the first time he had come to the hall of Hrothgar...."

I'd end up writing the paper just for kicks. It's BEOWULF, without which we would have no Lord of the Rings, after all.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by chappachula

umm...it seems to me that,actually, those 2 choices are both pretty sophisticated issues for a 15 year old to write about.*
And it seems like the teacher must have spent a semester or more doing some actual teaching (and not just summarizing the plot) ,trying to get the kids to learn abstract concepts.

so what I'm wondering is: how the heck has the kid not read even one line of the poem yet?

It's an advanced class, I think, though I don't really know. But I expect the assignment is tailored as to ferret out movie-only watchers.

[Rigamarole]

Originally Posted by Lynn Bodoni

Wow, you're a real risk-taker, aren't you?

If there is any justice in the class, then Kid will get an F. If the teacher is not allowed to give a failing grade (this is seriously being proposed here in some Texas school districts, but that's a whole nother subject), and there is justice, she'll get a D-.

Um, she's 15 years old. What world did you go to high school in?

If she completes the assignment and at least attempts to address the topic and follow the assignment directions she'll do fine.

[tr0psn4j]

SIS: No, that won't work. You don't know how to write like a child. Never mind. We'll just watch this and do the paper from that.

Yep, it's all too common but the quoted part was by far the worst. It's bad enough the kid didn't read it now your sister assumes you would write it for her (if you could write like a child). Sadly, that's the reason why my cousins stopped coming to me for homework help. I would refuse to do it for them.

For what it's worth, I passed my pre-Beowulf, The Movie English class without reading the book or some cliff notes or cheating. I'm not sure how I pulled it off but it did happen.

So this Beowulf is worth reading huh?

[Boyo Jim]

Originally Posted by Sampiro

You should have volunteered just to tell her the story, starting with the part where Beo is first bitten by the wolf and has until the Full Moon to find a cure.

And then they had to kill him with a silver bullet, which someone decided was a great Band Name!

[slalexan]

I graduated from high school two years ago and I remember that my AP English classes had very similar questions. In all of my English classes I can't remember anyone watching a movie for a report. Personally, I loved Beowulf. My English teacher had us read it aloud and we spent many weeks deciphering the strange Old English.

As said before, the mom is what really gets me. I would have never gotten away with that. My mom and dad would have grounded my butt. She'll probably get a D and be upset about it.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by slalexan

I graduated from high school two years ago and I remember that my AP English classes had very similar questions. In all of my English classes I can't remember anyone watching a movie for a report. Personally, I loved Beowulf. My English teacher had us read it aloud and we spent many weeks deciphering the strange Old English.

As said before, the mom is what really gets me. I would have never gotten away with that. My mom and dad would have grounded my butt. She'll probably get a D and be upset about it.

Two of my sisters are definite helicopter moms. My favorite niece (elder cousin to this one) recently came close to getting an F on a paper she clearly phoned in, as she disregarded a specific instruction from the teacher which would have been trivial to avoid and in so doing exposed the fact that she hadn't read the source materials she was citing. Even though the teacher gave her the opportunity to recoup the lost points, her mother still raised hell.

But the sister in this story is worse. She does my niece's science fair project every year (and is always bugging me and our baby sister to explain statistics and such to her). Her daughter is going to have a hard time of it in college, as her straight As don't come close to representing her own work.

[Cisco]

We did Beowulf in 9th grade, complete with similar questions, and I went to, pretty much, a school for ants.

[tomndebb]

I'd have handed the kid my copy of Gardner's [u]Grendel[/i], told her it was the edited version, and that we had already loaned out the movie to another kid with the same quest for mendacious mediocrity.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

Two of my sisters are definite helicopter moms. My favorite niece (elder cousin to this one) recently came close to getting an F on a paper she clearly phoned in, as she disregarded a specific instruction from the teacher which would have been trivial to avoid and in so doing exposed the fact that she hadn't read the source materials she was citing. Even though the teacher gave her the opportunity to recoup the lost points, her mother still raised hell.

Heh--the only paper I nearly failed in high school was *because* I'd read the source material. We were supposed to write a research paper on an author and quote from at least three sources about the author. I reluctantly dug up three critics' takes on Vonnegut and put their quotes in, but the bulk of the paper was my (adolescent) analysis of themes in Vonnegut.

The teacher called me in for a conference explaining that I hadn't really fulfilled the assignment. It wasn't until she realized that I'd never read Vonnegut before and had read 10 of his novels in the course of researching him that she relented.

She wasn't my favorite teacher.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by tomndebb

I'd have handed the kid my copy of Gardner's [u]Grendel[/i], told her it was the edited version, and that we had already loaned out the movie to another kid with the same quest for mendacious mediocrity.

Ordinarily I'm way eviller than you, Tom, but I can't lie about Beowulf. It is the greatest of all epic poems.

'Cept for Gilgamesh, of course. And the Odyssey. And The Iliad and --

Okay, it's the greatest of all ENGLISH LANGUAGE epic poems.

[Cisco]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

Ordinarily I'm way eviller than you, Tom, but I can't lie about Beowulf. It is the greatest of all epic poems.

'Cept for Gilgamesh, of course. And the Odyssey. And The Iliad and --

Okay, it's the greatest of all ENGLISH LANGUAGE epic poems.

Am I a street urchin for thinking The Song of Hiawatha is way better?

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Cisco

Am I a street urchin for thinking The Song of Hiawatha is way better?

No. You are, however, a filthy Communist atheist devil-worshipping Muslim for doing so. And you probably eat puppies without even killing them first, starting at the hind feet so as to maximum their suffering.

[Kobal2]

Heh, reminds me of one trick I pulled back in high school (I was, I think, 14). The assignment was to read any two books from a very long list during the holidays, and do either a 10 minute presentation of either of them for the rest of the class, or two 5 minutes ones.

On the last day of the holidays, around bedtime, I realized I had hum... forgotten, yes, that's it, forgotten to read a single line. And, in my defense, in my panic, I still did set out to pull an all nighter to speed-read through the short one. Only I fell asleep after about three chapters. So, on the next day, I came up with a cunning plan. As my turn to present my book came, I confidently walked to the front of the class, and spent a good chunk of time detailing, in laborious detail, what happened in those three chapters. Only it turned out "a good chunk of time" amounted to about 90 seconds. The teacher still seemed to expect something of me.

So, switching to plan B : I improvised. The book was apparently about pirates, boats and stuff, and all those books are the same. Scurvy, treasure, cannon, betrayal over treasure, rum, lost appendages and tragic fate to those consumed by greed. String any of those in any order and you're bound to come pretty close, right ? So I closed my eyes, clenched my butt cheeks and made it all up. And it went... perfectly fine. The teacher took notes and everything. I could believe neither my luck, nor the obvious, world-shattering truth : the teacher hadn't read the book either.

And I would have gone away with it, too. If that bitch hadn't done her stupid presentation on the same stupid book.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

Heh, reminds me of one trick I pulled back in high school (I was, I think, 14). The assignment was to read any two books from a very long list during the holidays, and do either a 10 minute presentation of either of them for the rest of the class, or two 5 minutes ones.

On the last day of the holidays, around bedtime, I realized I had hum... forgotten, yes, that's it, forgotten to read a single line. And, in my defense, in my panic, I still did set out to pull an all nighter to speed-read through the short one. Only I fell asleep after about three chapters. So, on the next day, I came up with a cunning plan. As my turn to present my book came, I confidently walked to the front of the class, and spent a good chunk of time detailing, in laborious detail, what happened in those three chapters. Only it turned out "a good chunk of time" amounted to about 90 seconds. The teacher still seemed to expect something of me.

So, switching to plan B : I improvised. The book was apparently about pirates, boats and stuff, and all those books are the same. Scurvy, treasure, cannon, betrayal over treasure, rum, lost appendages and tragic fate to those consumed by greed. String any of those in any order and you're bound to come pretty close, right ? So I closed my eyes, clenched my butt cheeks and made it all up. And it went... perfectly fine. The teacher took notes and everything. I could believe neither my luck, nor the obvious, world-shattering truth : the teacher hadn't read the book either.

And I would have gone away with it, too. If that bitch hadn't done her stupid presentation on the same stupid book.

If we're going to get all confessional..

I went to a college that did not use blue books, at least not in the liberal arts section; all exams were done on the student's notepaper. Because of this, and because the English department was very small, I had began preparing a cunning plan my first semester; basically, it consisted of always numbering the pages of an exam I was turning in. This proved useful when I was a senior and taking a class on-- oh, let's say Cooper. The exam had 3 sections, the middle of which was 10 short answer questions. Reading the entire exam through before I wrote down anything, I realized I had no idea what the answer to question #2 was. So I stretched out the answers to the previous questions so I was able to begin that item at the end of the page--probably page 2. I then deliberately skipped to page 4 and started writing what looked like the second sentence of #3 and turned it in.

Two days later, the teacher (also my advisor and mentor!) returned the exam. Looking embarrassed, she said that she'd somehow lost a page of my test and had decided, after consulting with another teacher, that she might as well give me full credit for that question, since I was a A student and this was clearly her fault.

Another confession. The same year--hell, the same semester--I was taking a a physics class One exam in that class was quite brutal. There were 3 questions, of which you had to pick 2 to answer. As you may have already guessed I had been slacking off that term. Looking at question 1, I saw that I didn't know the answer; looking at question 2, I saw that I didn't even understand the question. Thankfully I knew #3. On question 1 I wrote "omit." On #2 I wrote, "I do not know the answer and will not waste your time by bullshitting." I wrote a perfectly brilliant answer to question 3, as I didn't have to waste time on anything else.

I got a B. The teacher gave me partial credit for the No BS answer, as he found my honesty refreshing.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

Okay, it's the greatest of all ENGLISH LANGUAGE epic poems.

Beowulf is only in English if you perform a bit of linguistic stretching. Anglo-Saxon is a better term for the language, given that "Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon." is not going to be understood by even the most priggish of the traditionalist prescriptivist English teachers.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Derleth

Beowulf is only in English if you perform a bit of linguistic stretching. Anglo-Saxon is a better term for the language, given that "Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon." is not going to be understood by even the most priggish of the traditionalist prescriptivist English teachers.

You are over-analyzing my rambling, man. You might wishto follow my favorite sister's policy, which is, she said recently, to ignore every other sentence I utter.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

You are over-analyzing my rambling, man. You might wishto follow my favorite sister's policy, which is, she said recently, to ignore every other sentence I utter.

Or your niece's, which is to maximize her intake of Angelina Jolie.

( :: ducks and runs really fucking fast :: )

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Derleth

Or your niece's, which is to maximize her intake of Angelina Jolie.

( :: ducks and runs really fucking fast :: )

Too late. I've already released the gerbils, and they have your scent.

[Typo Knig]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Heh--the only paper I nearly failed in high school was *because* I'd read the source material. We were supposed to write a research paper on an author and quote from at least three sources about the author. I reluctantly dug up three critics' takes on Vonnegut and put their quotes in, but the bulk of the paper was my (adolescent) analysis of themes in Vonnegut.

The teacher called me in for a conference explaining that I hadn't really fulfilled the assignment. It wasn't until she realized that I'd never read Vonnegut before and had read 10 of his novels in the course of researching him that she relented.

She wasn't my favorite teacher.

Reminds me of the movie Back to School

[after Diane gives Thornton an 'F' for his report, which was actually written by Kurt Vonnegut]
Diane: Whoever *did* write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!

[Baker]

Another off topic confession:

In eighth grade we had an assignment to do a dramatic reading in front of the rest of the class. Now, I was a good student, got good grades, but somehow had totally forgotten this assignment. The teacher is calling us up, one by one, in alphabetical order and my name is, naturally, my name will be soon. The only book I have with me is our textbook, so I'm pretending to listen while surreptitiously flipping through the book, looking for ANYTHIN suitable.

I settle on the final segment of Longfellow's Evangeline. The throb in my voice as I read the poorhouse scene, with the graves at the end, is from pure fear. The teacher sits in the back, making notes as we read.

I got an A-, with the comment "obviously well prepared". How I faked it I'll never know, the teacher was no fool.

[Freudian Slit]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

Two days later, the teacher (also my advisor and mentor!) returned the exam. Looking embarrassed, she said that she'd somehow lost a page of my test and had decided, after consulting with another teacher, that she might as well give me full credit for that question, since I was a A student and this was clearly her fault.

Did you get your idea from snopes?

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Freudian Slit

Did you get your idea from snopes?

Nope. This was long ere Snopes--1991 or so. I had been keeping that idea in reserve for years. Anyway, it only works once per person, and only if the teacher will be inclined to believe you would have gotten a good answer anyway. I'd never have dared it in Physics.

[Cisco]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

No. You are, however, a filthy Communist atheist devil-worshipping Muslim for doing so. And you probably eat puppies without even killing them first, starting at the hind feet so as to maximum their suffering.

You know, you went into the wrong field. You really should've been a psychic.

[appleciders]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

I got a B. The teacher gave me partial credit for the No BS answer, as he found my honesty refreshing.

My father is a college professor, and he has a policy of doing this. He figures that he's teaching in the business department, and he's supposed to be preparing students to be businesspeople. And he also figures that your boss would, in the end, greatly prefer someone who simple says "I don't know the answer to that question," to someone who makes an answer up and wastes his time. So Dad's policy is that if you don't know the answer to a question and you draw a little picture of a cow to show that you don't know the answer, he'll give you 40% of the possible credit for that question. (All the tests organized around questions worth 5%, 10%, or 20%, so the math is easy.)

He has a lot of talented amateur margin-scribblers and art minors, so he posts the best ones on his bulletin board in his office. I make a point of checking them out when I visit him.

[Zoe]

To Skald the Rhymer:

Charles "Ray-Ray" Raylington! Is that you? Fifth row, next to the last desk in third period Honors? I thought I had recognized your style of writing. Still doodling action figures? Still leaving teeth marks on your pencils? Still wishing you had lived in the time of Mods and Rockers? Pity.

Glad to see you are doing so well.

But there is that little matter of the cheating you've now admitted to. I look forward to seeing you again.

Phithian-Thayer

[Spezza]

Why are people deriding a 15 y/o high school student for watching a movie to complete her assignment?! Heck, many of my peers in undergrad did the exact same thing. Just right now I have recalled one very poignant moment from undergrad...

I was walking down the stairs out of the library with a friend. We ran into a mutual acquiantance from high school and stopped to chat. I was leaving with a massive handful of books to skim through as a prelude to beginning an essay due in a few weeks. Alternatively, he was going up to the fourth floor to get a DVD to complete an essay due tomorrow morning.

Most people just don't put the effort in these days. The sad part is they don't have to. I'm interested in the mark she'll receive because, for all intents and purposes, having not read the poem she should receive an F. The disturbing part is, even though she hasn't done any of the work, she'll still pass the assignment. And if she keeps up with it, one day she'll have a university degree. She might not graduate cum laude, but she'll graduate.

(Not that I'm condoning this behaviour! However, I am pointing out the reality that success in today's world in not as highly correlated with effort as it used to be.)

[Freudian Slit]

Originally Posted by Rigamarole

Um, she's 15 years old. What world did you go to high school in?

If she completes the assignment and at least attempts to address the topic and follow the assignment directions she'll do fine.

But she's not following the assignment directions if she's watching the film, since the film doesn't even use the language of the poem.

[Dr. Drake]

Originally Posted by Spezza

Most people just don't put the effort in these days. The sad part is they don't have to. I'm interested in the mark she'll receive because, for all intents and purposes, having not read the poem she should receive an F. The disturbing part is, even though she hasn't done any of the work, she'll still pass the assignment. And if she keeps up with it, one day she'll have a university degree. She might not graduate cum laude, but she'll graduate.

I could start a thread on students like this. Most of them are more upset by the fact that their transparent, well-used manipulation techniques don't work on me than they are by the well-deserved F. My two favorites this semester were: 1. The guy who, having exhausted his bag of excuses, pulled junior high out of the bottom of the bag and said, "I'm sorry, but most of the other professors are just more cool than you." 2. The woman who came into my office with the well-rehearsed line, "I take full responsibility for my work ethic this semester." I said, "Good." She was not expecting that!

You can get a decent summary Beowulf online in far less time than it takes to watch the movie. I couldn't have gotten through the poem in high school, either (insufficient attention span), but how hard is it to skim and BS? I would hope that this sort of aggressive ignorance was rewarded with an F. Keep us posted.

[Johnny L.A.]

Bay-O!
Bay-O!
Grendel's coming, and I wan' go home!

Bay!
Is a Bay
Is a Bay
Is a Bay
Is a Bay
Is a Beowulf
Grendel's coming and I wan' go home.

A monster attacks while we drink our mead
(Grendel's coming, and I wan' go home.)
Look! The future King of the Geats!
(Grendel's coming, and I wan' go home.)

[Enderw24]

Next up: learning about the Sermo Lupi from a recording of Peter and the Wolf and the consultation of a Risk board.

[Malleus, Incus, Stapes!]

Originally Posted by Johnny L.A.

Bay-O!
Bay-O!
Grendel's coming, and I wan' go home!

Bay!
Is a Bay
Is a Bay
Is a Bay
Is a Bay
Is a Beowulf
Grendel's coming and I wan' go home.

A monster attacks while we drink our mead
(Grendel's coming, and I wan' go home.)
Look! The future King of the Geats!
(Grendel's coming, and I wan' go home.)

*clap* *clap*

[Moirai]

Originally Posted by Rigamarole

Um, she's 15 years old. What world did you go to high school in?

If she completes the assignment and at least attempts to address the topic and follow the assignment directions she'll do fine.

Well, let's see- if she isn't going to READ THE POEM, then she cannot complete the assignment, as she is ignoring both the topic and assignment directions.

And people wonder why public education is so fucked up. Her mom should be fucking shot for fostering this kind of thinking & behavior in her kids. Pathetic.

[DiggitCamara]

Originally Posted by Spezza

Why are people deriding a 15 y/o high school student for watching a movie to complete her assignment?! Heck, many of my peers in undergrad did the exact same thing. Just right now I have recalled one very poignant moment from undergrad...

(snipped)
Most people just don't put the effort in these days. The sad part is they don't have to. I'm interested in the mark she'll receive because, for all intents and purposes, having not read the poem she should receive an F.
(snipped)

(Not that I'm condoning this behaviour! However, I am pointing out the reality that success in today's world in not as highly correlated with effort as it used to be.)

These days? Really?

I'm currently reading a book by Pierre Bayard, called "How to talk about books you haven't read". Fascinating stuff.

In one of the chapters he quotes extensive passages from Balzac's "Lost Illusions" (second book) where both a literary critic and a bookseller openly admit (and/or are caught) not reading books they are reviewing/publishing. The book was written, or rather published, in the first half of the 19th century.

It's just a bit easier to fake it via a movie nowadays.