My daughter is an 8 year-old third-grader. They recently had an assignment to write an essay for a little class contest. No big deal, the winner got to be line-leader and other little class privileges. So my daughter wrote her heart out. Her handwriting was a bit messy, and some of the words were spelled wrong, but then again, she’s in THIRD GRADE.
So my daughter came home fairly pleased to have gotten second place in the class for her essay, and all the top essays were posted on the classroom wall. When I saw the ‘winning essay,’ I was pissed.
It was perfect. Typed. No misspelled words. No run on sentences. It was well thought-out and well organized. In short, it was nothing like a third grader would do.
It was so obviously the parent’s work!
Are these parents so obsessed with their child winning everything that they are will to fudge an essay in third grade so their child will get to be line leader? Do they not value their child doing her own work?
Can the teacher not see that no third-grader produces this level of work? How can she turn a blind eye and reward this essay that the child most probably had very little to do with?
Grrrrr. These kinds of parents annoy the crap out of mee!
Would you please bring this up with the teacher and post back with the response you receive? I’d be very suspicious in your position, as well. But there’s always the possibility that this other kid is a genius. You could also ask your daughter about it in a roundabout way (hey honey, you know the kid who won that essay contest? what’s he like?). Find out if he’s a booger-eater or a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is.
Parents doing their children’s homework is pretty pathetic.
But how long were these essays? What sort of topic(s)? I wouldn’t discount the possibility that an eight year old child could write a simple, well constructed, narrative/descriptive style composition without any spelling mistakes.
Well if my daughter asked for help spelling words I would give it. If she asked me to proof read I would also point out which words were mis-spelt (but expect her to go check them)
Why wasn’t your daughter’s essay typed? Also I see no issue with a parent correcting the spelling or proof reading an essay at any level, its a great way to teach children how to use a dictionary and thesaurus. Obviously it seems like the winning essay goes beyond that in which case I’m sure the teacher is aware of it, they will notice a difference between class work and an essay that comes from home that’s mysteriously perfect.
At my 20th high school reunion last month I talked to a woman who had been in my physics class. I found out that her dad had built all of her projects for her–she did literally nothing but hand him the requirements sheet. That kind of thing just pisses me off.
I think my kid was in third grade, but it might have been second, when he did his first science project for the school science fair. I went to the first round, and I felt kind of sick. There was my kid, who had stuck celery in food coloring, observed the result at 10-minute intervals, drawn pictures of it, and written a simple explanation of why it happened.
And then there was the kid who had replicas of all the planets, perfectly painted, hanging from a black sky.
And the kid who had done something about teeth, illustrated with perfect plaster casts of teeth (her father was an orthodontist, big surprise).
And the kid who did an experiment to see if cats had a preferred paw, which he did by videotaping cats at a local shelter playing with a toy that they had to stick their paw through a hole to reach.
And then a few other obvious kid-done projects like my kid’s–a messy exploration of whether you could dye Easter eggs using Kool-Aid, for instance. And the usual baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano.
They picked two projects from each grade to go on to the next level. And I was surprised as hell when one was my kid and the other was Kool-Aid egg. Those teachers were on the ball enough to figure out whose project had been done by parents (okay, the orthodontist was easy).
I will say, though, that I judged a writing contest when they were in third grade. Some of those kids’ writing skills were quite impressive, and they did the project in class so there was no question.
The essay topic was whether or not Silly Bandz should be banned from the classroom. In case you don’t have small children, Silly Bandz are all the rage in the pre-teen set (and even older), they are just rubber bands in the shape of something, say a dolphin. Toysrus.com, The Official Toys”R”Us Site - Toys, Games, & More The kids wear them on their wrist like a bracelet, when when you take them off, they pop back into their original shape. The kids are always trading them, comparing them, playing with them, etc and it’s quite distracting at school. My daughter wrote that they should be banned, but you could take either side of the argument, as long as you argued it well.
When I saw the essays posted on the wall, I saw the perfect one in first place and I asked the teacher, “Samantha did that one?” The teacher kind of humphed and said, “Well I have my suspicions, but who’s to say for sure?”
If you are correcting, or letting the spell-checker correct, your child’s homework, then you are cheating them and the other students. Part of the point of third grade is to teach children about spelling, so you have to let them actually spell and not take that away for them. It’s like everything else: one tries something, fails, has a disadvantage, tries to do better next time, learns the skill. You have to let someone fail in order to allow them to succeed.
10 years or so ago, when I worked at a different branch in my library system, there was a mom who came in and did all her college-age daughter’s homework for her. The daughter was an athlete, and apparently the mother felt it was more important that her daughter get a degree than an education.
One could argue that since computers are pretty well-established as the direction of our future barring some sort of apocaylpse - in which case, we all have bigger problems - then it’s more important for future generations to be highly computer-literate than to have good handwriting and be able to spell correctly. In which case, Leaffan has a point: if a kid types out the essay, MS Word will suggest how to correct misspellings. (One does, of course, have to know which of the suggestions is correct.)
Concur with OP about parents doing their kid’s homework, though … and I say that as one of those kids whose parents did exactly that. (My 5th grade science project involved a copper coil and electromagnetism - which, incidentally, I still don’t understand! Any bets on whether or not my engineer dad got involved?) I got really good grades in school, and it only occurred to me years’n’years later to wonder how much of that I actually, truly deserved.
There’s a huge difference between doing the homework and helping them out. We proof our kids’ spelling and have them make changes, and we point out run-on sentences, poor word choice, overuse of adjectives - but then they rewrite or retype…
When I was a third grader I went to a private school for various reasons where most of the kids had families FAR wealthier than mine. We did science projects, and some of the projects had been done by people the parents HIRED. My mother was furious and spoke to the teacher, who laughed and told her that she could tell which had been done by a third grader and not to sweat it.
I’m a public librarian and I see every goddamned DAY some parent or grandparent in here doing research for their kids. Drives me up a wall.
My kid is in French Immersion School, Grade 2 and the amount of work is quite high. On my part, I will create conditions for work to be done, I’ll talk to him about the work, and I will challenge him and argue with him but would never actually do his work for him nor dictate to him. On his part he does get frustrated sometimes when he has to write 20 sentences in French using set of 10 new words they learned that day. My job is to smooth out these reactions to the homework and mould them into understanding that whining about it is the time taken away from actually finishing homework. My belief is that it`s all about the attitude.
I think parents who do work for their children actually want to get over with it as soon as possible and surely writing homework for the kid is the shortest form of engagement.
Exactly. I can’t even see allowing my daughter to turn in an assignment with spelling errors. I point them out, she looks them up, corrects them and rewrites if need be.
Our school encourages this of the parents. To help with homework. Helping is pointing out errors in my opinion.
I believe it is my responsibility to provide my kids with what they need to do their homework: desk, light, paper, a dictionary, etc. They are responsible for the final product of the homework, I am not. They are asked to turn in the best they can do… not the best they can do with their parent’s help. I’ve had 4 kids at many different schools and they have all advised the parent to back off on helping kids with their assignments.
I can’t even imagine not being asked for help with a math problem or with how to spell a word. I certainly would never say “honey, you have a desk and a light, it is the teacher’s job to educate you and help you with any mistakes”. I wouldn’t imagine the teacher would appreciate that attitude much either. As I said, they encourage the parents to get involved with the children’s lessons and help out as needed. That clearly doesn’t mean DOING the actual assignment but proof reading? Sure.
These kids will get it in the end. Had a girl in my class who cheated with reckless abandon. She’d be sly about it - can you help me with this? - then copy down exactly what you had. She did this for years until she was punished by an AP teacher in high school. I wonder what happened to her in college.
My brother has a sadistic streak in him. He gives people all the wrong answers, so he appears affable and avoids confrontation.
