6/29/05
A CALL FOR
A RETURN TO TERM PAPERS
It's hard
to imagine how secondary schools justify the fact that students are expected to
do so much less serious research and report-writing these days.
It's pretty
sad to contemplate the valid complaints of most secondary-level teachers, that
they don't have time to teach students how to write a solid, lengthy thesis any
more. No time, eh? Yet somehow or another, their administrations believe they
have time to coach swimming for more than 20 hours a week, or fulfill other
extracurricular functions that no one would dare say are more important than
the traditional curricular ones, including expository writing.
When is
this going to change? When enough people demand that writing be taken more
seriously from 7th grade on up.
You don't
have to take hours and hours, and write thousands of words, to express this
point. A courteous note to your school board will do.
Kids Don't Write As Much Today – So What?
Q.
What's all the fuss about kids not knowing how to write more than a few words
at a time any more? Can't they express themselves even more with all the other
media they use today?
Despite
the advantages of computers and other technology that make written expression
far easier than the days of the inkwell, mimeos and white-out paint, the
average word count produced in assignments by a typical high school student
today is minuscule compared to yesteryear.
Consequently,
students aren't getting the deep, analytical, quality thinking skills that are
polished with term paper assignments any more.
In 2002,
with a grant from the Albert Shanker Institute, The Concord Review commissioned a study of the state of the history
term paper in United States high schools. According to that group's website,
95% of the teachers interviewed said term papers were important or very
important, 82% never assign a 5,000-word paper, and 63% never assign a
3,000-word research paper.
Taken
together with studies that show high school students spending less than three
hours a week on homework, it seems most probable that the majority of high
school students in this country now leave without having done a serious
research paper, and perhaps without having read one nonfiction book.
But the
reason isn't that today's students don't need the skills that come with serious
report-writing, including how to narrow down your hypothesis, choose the best
evidence, organize a lot of material, achieve perfection in the use of writing
conventions, and create a conclusion fully supported by the research.
The
reason is that teachers say they do not have enough time to assign, coach and
evaluate research papers, even though it takes a lot less time than varsity
sports participation.
Quality
private schools do expect their students to learn to write research papers and
teachers are given small classes so that they can work on papers with students,
and have the time to assess them. But that's a relatively small number across
the U.S.
Homework: Read
The Concord Review's study, "The
State of the Term Paper," on www.tcr.org/tcr/institute/stateofthetermpaper.pdf
