Teaching my kids writing has to be one of the hardest topics to teach them. As my tribe mate, Carolann from Sassy Townhouse Living put it, “writing is a very personal thing.” I tend to agree with her completely. I believe that is why it’s so hard to teach someone else how to write essays. I can teach them the proper form for writing sentences and word usage, but I can’t give them the ideas that come to mind for me when writing prompts are thrown at us.
It was like pulling teeth to get Jimmy and Delbert both to do their writing essays this past year. I fear looking at Jimmy’s writing grades from his standardized tests because he always stares at his paper/computer screen for hours on end until I give him the ideas that come to mind when I see his prompts. In a nutshell, both of my boys end up writing my ideas on their papers.
Although, I see the importance behind requiring students to write essays, I don’t feel it should be something that is mandatory. I feel that students lose the ability to be creative with writing when they are restrained to writing with a certain number of words and within a certain range of topic.
Obviously, I’m not alone with this train of thought because there is a service that offers parents and students the chance to BUY essays online for high school students and beyond. Thankfully there are many essay writing services for students in high school and beyond. This service will come in handy for high school and beyond students when they are faced with an essay topic that they just can’t get a topic to come to mind for them.
I know some people will be quick to say that this cheating and shouldn’t be allowed. However, in the society with which we live in now, it’s far better for someone to outsource the tasks they can’t stand doing and spend their time doing things they are passionate about. Honestly, that is something I feel my kids need to learn early on in life. Many productive high officials within companies practice this mentality. So why shouldn’t high school and college students do it too?
I personally would have loved to have this kind of service available for me for Calculus homework when I was in high school and college. I could have avoided spending extra tuition money on a class that I just couldn’t wrap my head around, but yet when I did finally land in my Statistics class I excelled at it with great ease. Imagine the money and time I could have saved myself (and my family) had I been able to invest in having someone else do a part of my assignments that I was struggling with to get a passing grade?
I’m not saying that we should go invest in having someone do our assignments for all courses or even all assignments within a course. I’m talking about one or two assignments that we know is going to kill us if we have to do them. This is a VERY gray area topic!
If I were to actually take advantage of a service like this, I would be the type to tell my professors I did it and why I did it. Of course, all of my professors always knew when I was struggling with something because I bugged them to death until I got it or I passed enough to get through the class. Not every student has those kinds of teachers available to them nor does every student feel comfortable with asking for help.
What are your thoughts on this type of service and using it?
Actually when writing a formal, college-level essay using appropriate grammar and punctuation is WHAT the professor will grade on. Watch those contractions and use college-level writing.