see more Failbook
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Who died and made you editor?
Yesterday, I had a piece that I had written rejected because...well, I am not exactly sure. The form rejection said that it did not exhibit correct grammar, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation, which is like saying that something is not orange; it really does not narrow the actual problem down.
Looking over the piece, I could only find one sentence that was awkward. The rest of it would have gotten by the harshest of my university professors.
So I am left with wondering why it was rejected. Could it be that they did not want to pay for the piece and that was a handy reason. Or could it be that online editors are not necessarily qualified to do the job in the first place.
Yes, it was an online rejection.
I miss the days of the print market. At least there, you would occassionally get your article back with a sentence circled, so you would know where to look. But online rejections are even more cryptic than the form letters of the print market.
Looking over the piece, I noticed that I was writing at a college level; I was using complex and compound sentences, and some colons and semicolons.
And that is why I think the piece got bounced.
Call me paranoid. But there is one thing I have noticed from college class peer reviews and writing circles: if a person does not know why something is being done grammar-wise, they will say that it is wrong.
And a lot of online editors are not editors by trade. They are business people, computer people, and other people who did not have to suffer beyond eighth grade English (as in they never needed to prove that they knew what a semicolon was good for). These are the type of people that would prefer you to commit the crime of creating a comma splice, rather than use a semicolon.
Maybe I am wrong in this case. But the nagging voice in the back of my head tells me that I just encountered another editor who should not actually be an editor.
Looking over the piece, I could only find one sentence that was awkward. The rest of it would have gotten by the harshest of my university professors.
So I am left with wondering why it was rejected. Could it be that they did not want to pay for the piece and that was a handy reason. Or could it be that online editors are not necessarily qualified to do the job in the first place.
Yes, it was an online rejection.
I miss the days of the print market. At least there, you would occassionally get your article back with a sentence circled, so you would know where to look. But online rejections are even more cryptic than the form letters of the print market.
Looking over the piece, I noticed that I was writing at a college level; I was using complex and compound sentences, and some colons and semicolons.
And that is why I think the piece got bounced.
Call me paranoid. But there is one thing I have noticed from college class peer reviews and writing circles: if a person does not know why something is being done grammar-wise, they will say that it is wrong.
And a lot of online editors are not editors by trade. They are business people, computer people, and other people who did not have to suffer beyond eighth grade English (as in they never needed to prove that they knew what a semicolon was good for). These are the type of people that would prefer you to commit the crime of creating a comma splice, rather than use a semicolon.
Maybe I am wrong in this case. But the nagging voice in the back of my head tells me that I just encountered another editor who should not actually be an editor.
Friday, December 14, 2007
No Child Left Behind
I have been uneducated most of my life, at least by the formal standards of the education system. I had more of an education than my dad did (he did not finish Junior High), but not by much. I became a High School dropout, being short one class, and deciding to leave town rather than do summer school (not that I would have passed the class--Freshman Composition on the third pass--my home life was pretty bad).
Because of this I ended up working for twenty years in food service, along with the occasional side job that required a warm body and no piece of paper. The fact that I did not have a piece of paper, and that it was a writing class that I was short, always came to be a surprise to many of the people I worked with. I was always writing something, or reading a book; at the job, I was normally the best educated person there.
Ironically, this included college students (the Burger King I worked at was across the street from the campus). This puzzled me for some time. Ok, it still does. I sit in the classroom today, a forty-two year old college student, and am amazed that some of my fellow classmates actually managed to get into college. Maybe, it is because it is a community college; nevertheless, there are still times where I am the most educated person among my peers (my fellow students).
It was in philosophy that I finally figured out the reason for me being appalled by the education and general lack of knowledge exhibited by my classmates. Or rather, I was outright told by the professor. It is the "No child left behind" act.
No child left behind was a wonderful idea, maybe, on paper; if you are willing to ignore the fact that you can't force kids to learn and school districts to increase funding. Lack of interest on the part of students, and on the lack funds on the part of the schools, is the coffin of the no kid left behind act. In the end, all the no child left behind act has done is to cause school districts to rewrite the tests in such a way that any monkey, randoming filling in circles, could pass the test and earn a diploma. In essence, the no child left behind act has resulted in lower standards; it hasn't helped anyone.
Because of this I ended up working for twenty years in food service, along with the occasional side job that required a warm body and no piece of paper. The fact that I did not have a piece of paper, and that it was a writing class that I was short, always came to be a surprise to many of the people I worked with. I was always writing something, or reading a book; at the job, I was normally the best educated person there.
Ironically, this included college students (the Burger King I worked at was across the street from the campus). This puzzled me for some time. Ok, it still does. I sit in the classroom today, a forty-two year old college student, and am amazed that some of my fellow classmates actually managed to get into college. Maybe, it is because it is a community college; nevertheless, there are still times where I am the most educated person among my peers (my fellow students).
It was in philosophy that I finally figured out the reason for me being appalled by the education and general lack of knowledge exhibited by my classmates. Or rather, I was outright told by the professor. It is the "No child left behind" act.
No child left behind was a wonderful idea, maybe, on paper; if you are willing to ignore the fact that you can't force kids to learn and school districts to increase funding. Lack of interest on the part of students, and on the lack funds on the part of the schools, is the coffin of the no kid left behind act. In the end, all the no child left behind act has done is to cause school districts to rewrite the tests in such a way that any monkey, randoming filling in circles, could pass the test and earn a diploma. In essence, the no child left behind act has resulted in lower standards; it hasn't helped anyone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
