Passing the (Young) Buck

Music: Dirty Vegas: One I've almost finished grading a batch of one to two-page student papers that I received last week. These are papers in which the students are to find an argument and describe: (1) the advocate; (2) the primary audience addressed; (3) the central claim; and (4) the support the advocate marshals for the central claim. It is, I think, a very basic assignment that most of the students managed fairly well.

As they should. This class is an upper division undergraduate/graduate hybrid course designed to explore "advanced argumentation theory." Frankly, I thought the assignment would be beneath the capabilities of the class. This is not true.

Indeed, over half of the papers submitted are so rife with basic subject-verb agreement problems, incorrectly documented sources, and mechanical snafus that it has taken me over eight hours to mark them up. I've found myself writing on a number of them, "you have serious writing problems that you need help with before you graduate. This is not college level work." I've written this before on student papers, but never on this many.

I'm feeling both guilty and angry. I'm feeling guilty because over the past two years here I think I have taught mostly the kind of upper-division courses that provided a buffer, as it were, from working on these kind of writing issues with students. One of the major shifts from graduate studies to the professoriate concerns precisely this new layer of buffering: once faculty, we are no longer "in the trenches" working with students on basic skills. It is widely known collegse, especially state colleges, are now training students in basic, often rudimentary competencies, as this training is no longer possible in many high school programs (and don't get me started on Louisiana public schools . . . .).

I'm feeling angry too, angry that my colleagues in other courses--all those who have had my students previously--have let the student get to the point of graduation virtually illiterate. I'm angered that no one before me has ever told a student, "this is not college level work." Whenever I write this on a student’s paper, for the most part, I expect to see them in my office quite unnerved. They usually explain they've never had a problem writing, that they've soared through classes at LSU and in high school without ever encountering resistance, and that I am the first one to ever bring it to their attention. One student last semester told me I was insane, and that I simply misunderstood "creativity."

And—I don’t even consider myself a great writer either! I’m a “B” writer at best myself.

[sigh] I know this is a tired conversation among my commrades in English Composition. I know they take a lot of shit from their self-proclaimed betters who are free to examine the purity of literature (from a Marxist vantage, of course, a vantage that masks the true party affiliation . . . ).

I'm ambivalent about this. I don't fault the student.

So I am guilty, for not having assigned more writing, for not doing what apparently only a handful of others are willing to do. And I'm angry that I have the perception (hopefully, unfounded) that there is only a handful of the professoriate who are willing to say to a student, "this is unacceptable and you need help."

Ok, I need to get to school. Big day today, and a panel response to write tomorrow.