not surprising. after the first few paragraphs i was already irritated by this repulsive, snide arsehole. he's writing this article to garner the attention he would have achieved if his name were on the actual papers. why else bring this to the forefront? glorified attention w****. while reading all of this i kept hearing the voice of that allstate "mayhem" guy. worse than the offenders, imo. edit: see nothing "amazing" about this essay considering it's what he's paid to do. of course he'll paint a pretty portrait of himself as some sort of whistle blower. the sky is blue. water is wet.
It's only made it easier for the cheaters to get help. People have written papers for other people for awhile. A buddy of mine used to do this at UH back in the early 90's. He wasn't doing theses', but he was knocking out 10 page papers for folks several times a semester.
Essay writing was the only thing I excelled at in school, both high school and college. Even if I had cheated in my business calculus classes, I still would have failed. So glad I decided to change my major to Creative Writing. If you're even a tad bit good at writing, you can ace every English class at schools like UH. Many students just don't know how to form a coherent sentence nowadays. I knew people who used paid services like this. If I sucked at writing and had the money, I probably would too. The methods of teaching and grading largely are a joke. You bust your ass to get those grade points, not to actually enrich yourself with learning. Make no mistake, I was after that piece of paper. And, that piece of paper has given me a reasonably comfortable life. If I want to learn something or really develop and hone my skills, I work on my own, not for a grade.
essay writing and critiquing essays is essential to critical thinking, something lacking in the populace of the country
What about people who actually do their work but just need grammatical errors? I'm in an English class and I make B's on my essays but everytime my professor docks my grade by two letters because of grammatical errors and the format of my paper he even says I'm a good writer but need improvement. I try and ask him and the tutors at school but the tutors are not helpful and the teacher has conference times during class time he doesn't check emails either so I'm kinda in a hole Anybody know where I can get some help whether it's online or in person?
This makes me sick. I mean I use the internet and just reword things to avoid plagiarism like everyone else does these days, but at least I know I was actually doing all the work. On second thought, maybe I should start writing papers for other people. UH has quite a lot of imbeciles incapable of grasping the simplest principles. Not to mention most of the females are quite unattractive.
This is absolutely true. So often those who are deficient in writing are also deficient in thinking - when we think, we think (for the most part) in words. Writing is the act of organizing words into meaningful patterns. If you cannot organize your own words, you cannot organize your own thoughts - and if you cannot organize your own thoughts, you cannot think for yourself. If you cannot think for yourself, you cannot think critically. Learning to write is about much more than just learning how to write - it's also about learning how to think. In relation to this article this critique doesn't necessarily apply to ESL students. Check to see if your university has a writing center. Most universities have them, and they're designed specifically to help students become competent writers.
rhad as always, I pretty much agree with everything you say. My son is 13 and is one of the seriously deficient kids. This is why my wife and I obtained custody and also the reason why we pulled him from public school and began homeschooling. I cannot tell you how much it pains me to see how completely inept he is at critical thinking and writing. It has been ridiculously difficult trying to right this ship and we still have a very long way to get to where we feel he needs to be. What we have found is that he is far from the only kid that is severely lacking. It is an epidemic of stupid that our schools are spreading. The US is going to one day reap what they have sown with education and it is not going to be pretty.
It was a good read, in general, but for all the guy's "whistle-blowing" he never really suggests any solutions to the problem. I think most of us knew that this sort of thing was a problem. All this Shadow Scholar really did was point it out poignantly and bring to light that he had some part in it.
My wife and I are already struggling with whether or not to go public or private for our kids schooling. I'm leaning towards private but goddam it's expensive. The alternative is just to move wherever the best public schools are.
We live in Klein and they are supposed to have great schools. No dice man. They all suck. If you can swing private I would do it. I have ZERO faith with the current public school system.
seriously...how did that person get into college???? i mean yah we all have typos, and when we're not writing formally it can sound a little strange, but seriously that person sounded like a moron. i knew a guy who did the same thing after he graduated, he was an english and govt major, and needed money to pay off loans while he looked for a job. i think he got caught, but they just made him shut down the site. also, i dunno about yall, but i don't cheat on anything. in fact, the last time i cheated was in 2nd grade on a spelling tests. ah wait, not true, totally cheated in highschool math i would copy the formulas into my calculator, but just the formulas, they weren't programmed or anything. still, that's cheating i guess, but for the most part i am too much of a puss to cheat, its just not worth it.
I hear this a lot, and it's probably true. It's depressing. Do you think it's all strictly school related or is a good part of it now cultural apathy and poor parenting (not meant in any way, shape, or form as a dig at you or your son)? I went through public school and did quite well - what changed? Do you think a top tier public school with parental involvement and extracurricular reinforcement is still capable of providing a good education (I loathe, for example, summer vacation - I fully intend to make my kids go to extra classes during these stupid breaks).
