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February 19, 2009 |
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Book Burning
FOUND by James Freeman
in Unknown
As I left for work this morning I noticed a triple hole punched piece of paper in the grass near my car. After reading it I think it is someones homework from the junior high a few blocks away.
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
+ You did it! Congrats to our FOUND friends involved in the Best Picture of 2009, The Hurt Locker!
+ FOUND #7 coverboy Willis Earl Beal, now in t-shirt form!
Lame conclusion. I would burn this, too.
I'd give that report an F-.
"Book burning is a cultures thing, some regions do it and some don't." No, honey--some Governments do it while others don't. The "paper" makes it sound like this is an annual thing, sort of like Oktoberfest or the Tour de France. Granted, in Valencia (Spain) they burn paper mache statues around Easter time, but they are purpose-built for burning--for some reason.
The sad thing is I see "commentaries" like this from university students all the time. You can usually tell if the person has actually read the book or not. With this one, I'd say the kid did some minimum Internet surfing and left it at that.
Don't you mean an F-451?
Repeating the assignment as your introduction--classic move. I'm sure the teacher won't notice.
What does our little essayist mean by "book burning is dam"? Dumb? Damned?
. . . You can't flunk someone out of life.
Dammit.
I was smarter than this in GRADE SCHOOL.
This is the best load of crap I've ever heard about a really good book, with the exception of the Twilight series.
This student is why they burn books in the novel; People get the wrong ideas and so it's just easier to go without and have conversations with the tv instead.
I sincerely hope that the author doesn't 'think their smart'.
I am scared for the future.
But wait; get this: the second case on the docket was this guy who got busted for shoplifting a paper doll cutout book from the magazine rack at Rite-Aid. It looked like he was in his 70's. He told the judge he planned......
....Oh. Wait a minute.....
Never mind.
Who are the nacas? It's been a long time since I read Fahrenheit 451.
Read it and weep, my friends.
I know that comments here are expected to be light-hearted and witty, but this particular find strikes a nerve with me because it exemplifies everything that I find wrong with education today. In my day, this would have been acceptable as a rough draft only. It would have been returned, covered in notations instructing the student to correct the errors in spelling and grammar. And most certainly it would have included directives to demonstrate a fuller grasp of the material.
I have three children, all of whom survived the public school system. One son has a university degree and is now in grad school. Another son has two community college degrees (earned while he worked full-time). My daughter is currently working and attending community college. They all read before starting kindergarten because I taught them myself; I didn't want to trust such a precious and crucial skill to a stranger. I also gave them feedback on spelling and grammatical errors in the same manner as I received it from my mother, who was so skilled in the use of the long pause and raised eyebrow that no words were necessary. The recipient always knew that self-correction was called for, and was always rewarded with a nod and a smile.
In my opinion, allowing students to graduate from high school when so many of them are unable to spell, read, and/or write adequately is a sin. There is no doubt that standards in education have fallen over the past forty decades. Now, I understand how class size issues can impact a teacher's workload. But aside from that, what is keeping teachers from doing their job properly? I'm not asking this idly; I really want to know.
Back to your regularly-scheduled witty comments.
Good thing this got lost.
I don't know when your day was, Trish, but I went to grade school in the Sixties and don't remember things being much better. I wrote essays like this, and why not? I graduated. Maybe you went to a better school, which is as much an advantage today as it ever was.
Nacas???
NACAS National Association of College Auxiliary Services
NACAS National Advisory Committee on Accounting Standards (India)
NACAS North Ayrshire Citizens Advice Service (UK charity)
Perhaps lowland cousins of the Incas?
My guess: it was the Nazis. They destroyed "decadent art," so books they didn't approve of probably went on the bonfire too.
@Wendel in China ... I'm with you on this one; it really bothers me when people 'think their smart' and clearly don't know how to speak and write clearly.
Maybe this WAS a rough draft.
(Spam question: How many minutes are in an hour? Is the answer going to be "60" or "sixty"? Or will it make a difference?)
I'm weeping for the future. Again.
That child has special needs.
This paper reminds me that I would be a terrible, terrible teacher. I would rip this kid a new one, and that's probably out of line. I really don't think he read the book; its certainly obvious he didn't read his own paper. I remember various teachers spending a lot of time teaching us how to write an essay.
"In conclusion, all that stuff I said above."
Nice. F.
"what is keeping teachers from doing their job properly?"
Teachers today are "teaching to the test". They spend so much of their year going over the questions that are going to be on the standardized test, so they can get their funding, that they don't have time to teach anything that actually matters. I'm sad to say that although things were slightly better when I was in grammar school (they actually taught spelling and phonics), I graduated with people who could barely write a sentence at all.
Nacas...I hate these guys.
Considering that there isn't one single mark on this paper that appears to have been made by a teacher, I don't think anyone should presume that the author of this essay even turned it in, much less received a passing grade that exemplifies the foibles of the education system. It's possible, but there's no way of knowing from this.
I have a friend who's a high school English teacher in a rural area nearby. Most of her students aren't planning on going to college, and their parents often don't put a lot of pressure on them to pay attention and succeed in school, and by the time she gets them as sophomores through seniors, she has to deal with the fact that many of them can't write a coherent sentence or recognize the parts of speech. I've seen some of the work she grades, and that's not an exaggeration.
There are new statewide requirements being put in place for a senior-year research project that students have to get a certain score on before they can graduate, and we've had a discussion about the requirements and the fact that she *knows* most of her students simply can't or won't be able to write a paper with a clearly-defined thesis and well-reasoned supporting evidence. They won't turn in assignments half the time, even if they know they're important. If a student doesn't care about the grade they'll get in a class, it's very difficult to motivate them to work harder.
I think the question of why schools aren't working is way too thorny to answer easily. Standardized tests and state-wide requirements sound great but don't take into consideration what the needs of individual schools and students are. I agree that seniors should be able to write a coherent paper to graduate from high school, but having seen the work that gets handed in to my friend, I also realize that it's not realistic to expect of some of her students. The basics weren't there when they went through elementary and middle school.
Sorry for the long comment; this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately.
This kid needs to spend less time in the strip club next door to the school and more time reading the book. He or she is one of the nacas, and their all dam.
Even if this is a rough draft, which I pray it is, and even if it's from a younger kid, which I pray it is, I'd still give it an F-.
An additional explanation for why teachers aren't able to teach English successfully is mainstreaming, which means that kids of varying intellectual abilities are lumped together in the same classrooms, so that teachers inevitably have to pitch their teaching to the slowest students. In my day (yes, yes, I'm a geezer), they had a system known as tracking, in which students like the one who wrote this paper would be grouped with others of more or less equal ability; while the class of bright kids down the hall was reading Bradbury, this kid and his classmates would be dealing with something far less challenging but, to them, more meaningful and useful.
This looks exactly like the kind of school papers my kid was notorious for. His philosophy was: a "D" is just as good as an "A." It means I passed. (with no effort on his part)
One lit teacher in his high school told the class they didn't need to actually read the books/stories/plays. Just look over the Spark Notes. That's why he's not in college. We refuse to waste any more money on his so-called education.
This kid has half-digested some things he heard he teacher say in class, which is better than nothing I suppose. But he shouldn't be let anywhere near a computer -- if this is a draft, write it by hand!! And READ what you have written, as a series of grammatical constructions, not as a transcription of misheard or misunderstood vocal sounds.
I blame mobile phones and television... In a way, culture is reverting to where it was in the 17th century, when the sudden expansion of literacy and printing (as part of the 'coffee-house' culture) meant that lots more people were trying to write things down than had ever done before; hence all the 'variant spellings' and oddities in the written and printed English of the period.
Er... end of rant.
Burn this paper, burn this kid (and burn his teacher, whose priorities are evidently not right). Don't burn books -- read them! If you want to know how to write good English, just look at what you're reading and try to do likewise.
Aargh.
heard *the* teacher
Phooey
I almost can't comment on this because I'm shaking my head in frustration. Someone should burn that kid.
I agree with so many of the opinions here.
*The rest of my comment has been deleted because I almost broke my hip stepping down off my soapbox. At my age, a broken hip is a death sentence.*
I hope this kid writes a book someday, so I can burn it. It's too bad he lost the DVD cover - if he hadn't, he might have been able to spell the word "Fahrenheit."
Trish, you are by far the most amaaaazing mother I have ever encountered. And I never would have known it if you didn't like talking about it soooooooo much.
@ Michelle in the Office ... you and Indiana Jones!
On the other hand, I'm thinking that "nacas" might actually be "Incas". I mean, with all the Inca ruins excavated and artifacts unearthed, just how many books have you ever heard of? Either hardbacks OR paperbacks. The only cogent explanation has to be that they burned their books!
Those Incas, boy they thought they were so smart. And look what happened to their culture.
People didn't get there nacas knowledge past down and now pepul cant reed or no what there rock ritings meen. This conclusion concludes what I wrot above as a summery of my mane points.
I'm a public high school English teacher and a former law school student with a master's in education. You have no idea what this job is like but are all too happy to judge anyway. I could defend myself and other teachers, but it's really not worth it. The blame should be on the parents, the bureaucracy, the government, and (as always) the Patriarchy. We are doing our best with limited resources, constant testing, and students who are so behind in basic skills they cannot write a coherent sentence. We do our best with what we have. I'd love to come into all of your jobs (especially if you work with people who are severly underqualified, whom you can't fire) and judge your performance.
Yes!
I love the whole redundancy thing in middle school essays.
Lead off with a question and then answer it....
What were the underlying cause of the Johnstown flood? The underlying causes of a Johnston flood was a flood in which Johnstown was flooded. The flood which flooded Johnstown was the underlying cause in which Johnstown
was flooded.
In closing Johnstown was then flooded by a flood which had many underlying causes.
Parents let schools turn out stupid kids. I'm sure there are lots of stupid home school kids, and in passing I've meet lots of dummies that were farmed out to privated schools.
This is a good thing as most of the nonsense on this website wouldn not be as amusing if everyone spellt correctedly as well as hazzing enexcellent grammars.
LOL at work Hiplainsdrifter! That's exactly what I was thinking. Your conclusion sentence is actually way more coherent than the find's.
How important was burning the Beatles albums in the 1960's? Why did people burn Beatles Albums, and how does it relate to the 1960's era?
First, burning Beatles (or Disco albums in the 1970's) was not something everyone did. Lots of people still have original Beatles record albums. Beatles album burning is dumb, and was
only done by people because John Lennon said that the Beatles were more popular than God. This too is dumb as everyone knows that God is more popular than the Beatles. It's just that he can't create a stone so big that not even he can lift it.
Next! Burning record albums is dumb, because no one plays records very much anymore, and people probably already had them on their IPOD classics.
The last one! Is these people didn't even need to burn the Beatles albums. It was August. No one was cold - and hot dogs do not taste good with records smoke on them.
In conclusions, I have listed all my facts on burning Beatles albums. I have in fact included some good reasons too.
@Erp: Being a geezer myself, I remember being educated under the tracking system: it made sense, and it worked. I think the reason they did away with it was because they were worried it would harm the self-esteem of the children who were placed in the "slower" classes (known in kid-speak as the "dumb classes"). What they didn't get was that when you throw a bunch of underachievers, trouble-makers, and the unfortunate children with learning disabilities into the mix, teachers are saddled with overwhelming, demoralizing challenges to their ability to teach anyone effectively.
I think it's high time we revisit the tracking system. Large populations of students in all grades need to be brought along slowly and be made to learn the basics. Instead of learning that mediocrity is good enough for those with "don't give a shit" attitudes.
WOW talk about ignorance! All of you who left comments are the ones who are "dam". This is obviously not a native english speaker. This person is most likely much more intelligent and cultured than all of you. At least he/she is trying to learn a different language and culture. I'm sure you wouldn't write any better of a paper after reading literature in a different language, and then trying to interpret it, and then write about it in a different language. I actually think this is a good paper for someone who doesn't know english very well.
I don't blame the teacher. What's the teacher supposed to do about a kid who just won't put in any effort? That's how my daughter is, she's really smart, in the gifted program, and she gets half A's and half F's. It's incredibly frustrating.
I don't think this student tried at all. And that's all there is to it.
To give you all hope for the future: My teens (I have 5 of them) have all actually read Fahrenheit 451, just for the joy of reading. Which would be the point of book, really. Hence no essay requirement. But if they HAD been required to write an essay on this particular book, it would have actually made sense.
Hiplainsdrifter: Thanks for a good laugh.
If this were California, the paper would not even get a grade. After all, our learning objective is to have kids "feel good" about their work. Not actually learn anything. By correcting this porr chld, we might seriously damage his self-esteem forever. That's how serial killers are born, apparently. I'm sure the teacher made sure this kid felt good about his thought-provoking paper! This is called holistic education.The participatory exercise in class was to gather all the papers and burn them in a bonfire, representing that paper cannot hold knowledge--only human brains.
WOW- My Knowledge is burning away reading that. I feel it. Can you feel it?
Maybe the essayist meant the Naca Naca, Amazonian Tribe in Tom Robbins's's* Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates...
(I should remember the particulars, having just re read it this past year.. but I'm drawing a blank. Are they the ones with Fer de Lance as their fearless leader? Or was it the Kandakandero? Today IS Tomorrow. Send in the Clowns.)
(*never quite sure where and how to place possessive apostrophes and esses when the person's last name ends with s. But did you know that now I can spell palindrome backwards without even looking?)
@ Smarties: WTF! Where in the found essay do you find any evidence that this is not a native English-speaking student?
This is an obvious piece of lazy-ass B.S. that some (most likely, average American)kid plans to hand in just so he/she can say that he/she did the assignment. Vasily, up there, hit the nail on the head. Even if it's just a first draft, it's very doubtful by the content that the student read the book, gave it any serious thought, or that future revisions will improve the paper any.
Hey France... suck my Florida!
Wow. HPD made me laugh. Who knew that could happen?
Villager: We have found a book, may we burn it?
Crowd: BURN!! BUUUURN IT!
Bedevere: But how do you *know* it is a book?
Villager: It looks like one!
Other Villagers: Yeah! It looks like one!!!
Bedevere: Bring it forward.
On a similar note- how many of you approve of giving trophies to every participant of every team in youth sports? When the team mom or coach asked around for what we wanted to do at the end of each soccer/teeball/baseball/indoor hockey season, we always agreed with the pizza party, but never with the participation trophies. One time the team mom basically sent a bill to each family for the party and trophy, without any prior survey or coordination. We asked her to break it down to party cost and trophy cost so we could pay for the party and not the trophy. She was very confused as to why we wouldn't want our 7-year-old to get a trophy for participation. She asked how he would feel when all the other kids get a trophy and he didn't, and we told her he'd feel just as indifferent then as he did when we threw away his other participation awards shortly after getting home from each party. His team earned a trophy in a tournament at age 5 and that's the only one he ever cared about.
It was the Nacas. They did it. I was just a soldier, following orders.
@Chrome-I think when a person's name ends in "s", you put the apostrophe after the "s". Like, "Mr. Curtis' class continually disappointed him with their essay efforts". But, if you are signifying plural, you add the "es". Like, "The Curtises went away on vacation to get away from the ignorant masses."
(I think)
@Geek- Participation trophies are ridiculous! Kids should be taught that there are winners and losers in every competition, and that if they participate, there's a chance they will be the loser. Teach them how to lose graciously and maybe then, they will turn into good winners.
As for the essay, there's an excellent chance that it was NOT plagarized.
@mlm ... yeah, but now the "essay" is posted on the Internet. It'll be copied and re-copied ad infinitum.
doubtful, Librarian, since the text in the image cannot simply be copied and pasted.
I read this and I thought of my visit to the Holocaust museum in D.C. and the beginning of the exhibit, which shows the German government piling up books gathered from the libraries and schools burning them.
It doesn't take much to control a society.
my stepdaughter brought home a ribbon for "c-honor roll" (she's a junior) HOW is there HONOR in getting cee's???? this whole 'no child left behind' and teaching to the tests is going to destroy our children. well, i think it's a little late for her anyway...hee..hee...teenagerrrrrs.*that was me gritting my teeth*
"Good gravy. I've got two words for the children raised on that crap: HELD BACK. REPEATING THE THIRD GRADE. LOW STANDARDIZED TEST SCOARES. I GUESS THIS WAS MORE THAN TWO WORDS. THE PAPER, PLEASE TAKE US HOME.
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail110.html&
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail110.html *
To be honest with y'all, this is exactly the way I would have written an essay or report in middle school. Probably in high school, too. I was just, umm, unmotivated? Uninspired?
But, I got better. Bunny is right (I am a teacher, too). Although, back in the days I was in school, it didn't matter...we were moved through....no NCLB.
I read this freshman year of high school, so they probably are around 15 years old. Poor kid, they haven't quite got the hang of writing yet. Perhaps also reading.
I go to a University in a smaller town than I did for high school, and the difference between students who went to college in my city in comparison to students who went to college in small town is ridiculous. I rarely let other people edit my paper, because I know that they didn't have the same education as I did. I'm not saying all small-town education is bad education, but there is not as much opportunity. I was in High Ability Learners for english since elementary school, and was able to take college-credit english courses my junior year of high school. They also had classes for kids who were slower in English classes, which one of my brothers took, and it helped him a lot. This was all within public schools too, just to set straight that not all public schools fail children.
*in a small town. darn!
mlm in texas,
Actually, it would be Mr. Curtis's class. You still add an s to names that end in s.
Wow. That's got to be the worst essay I've ever seen. My head hurts now. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm glad the kid lost it -- maybe he'll try harder on his second try.
@Born in Texas--Actually, it can be either way, according to this:
http://www.english-zone.com/spelling/possessiv
And another sad story to go with all the rest: My son goes to a preschool/daycare and the class did cut-outs of fall leaves. Then, the "teacher" wrote the child's name on each leaf. On my son's, she wrote, "Chrises's leave". (His name is Chris) WTF?!?! My son wrote "Mom" on the back, and my husband said how sad it was that out of the 3 things written on this leaf, the only correct one was written by our 4 year old!
Do they really think they can just use the "First..." "Next..." and "In conclusion" stuff and just fill it in with bullshit? They probably just had the movie playing while they were doing homework for another class or braiding their friend's hair or something.
I thik this writer's native language is not English. Judging from the sentence structure, it's probably Spanish.
Let's have a discussion about socioeconomic disadvantages for certain ethnic groups when it comes to education.
Dude this is a dud. Other then that the good news is the person who wrote it was still doing school work and attending school so maybe just maybe the person will learn and do better in the future.