There is something wrong when you take a day off from work to work. As the pile of essays and short stories that I have to grade were glaring at me angrily all weekend, I got more and more anxious, so I decided to skip the day and attend to these monsters.
I don't know if it's just me, but when I have to grade writing, I get infinitely exhausted. I need naps, or long walks. It's the only way I can get through this. I tried alcohol, but it skews my perspective to the detriment of those I'm grading. My comments get snarkier and decidely less helpful.
Why is it that educators insist on putting students through this torture when they are so mentally unprepared? In order to develop a consistent and well thought-out argument, one must have some cultural, literary, philosophical, or political foundation. In other words, they have to have read something other than manga or msn conversations. It's distressing for them, and incredibly disconcerting for us to sift through a thousand words that say nothing, or worse, the same thing over and over.
Teaching teenagers how to write an essay is like teaching giraffes the grand-plié. Yet, educators persist, insist and desist.
Do not even get me started on the vocabulary. As I scrape my mind against the edges of their instant messaging grammar, their pre-school adjectives, and their convoluted syntax, I wonder.
What have they and I done to be punished so?
We need to quit this archaic methodology and provide these young ones with fodder on which to base their thoughts. They need to read more and learn to express thought, build argument, and develop ideas logically. Why are we asking them to do the intellectual equivalent of skydiving without a parachute?
Ok. I had to vent, now back to grading their grand écart en l'air.
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