Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy a parent editing college papers?

I saw my dentist yesterday and we talked about our kids who are in college. He is a very friendly guy and went on at length about his son, who is a freshman. He also has a daughter in med school. I was a bit shocked to hear that his wife actually edits the papers for both children- and has always done so. They email their work to her and she corrects it and sends it back. My husband calls it cheating. What do you think? To make it even weirder, the dentist wanted to take his wife away for a week. She refused, saying that the kids would need her help with homework!

Sheesh! I don't even go that far for GS8! By the time a child is in high school I see no reason for the parent to edit a paper.

If I recall correctly, people used to charge to edit other's papers. I never thought of it as cheating. I made some pocket change editing papers for graduate students when I was an undergrad. I thought it was a legitimate service, but maybe I'm just a big undercover cheater!!!!!

Not going on vacation with hubby to stay home in case the kids need help with homework, that's just pathetic.

CUT THOSE APRON STRINGS ALREADY LADY!!!!!!!!!!

cheeesh

Incog

I agree that this situation seems extreme and it does sound as though the mother may be going too far. Though I do believe students should always have someone edit their papers. Ideally the editing process is also a learning process. I will always encourage my children to have someone edit their papers. I would have never turned in a paper without having someone edit it. Professional authors have people who do this. They are called editors.

I suspect behaviors such as what this mother displays is why this recent generation of parents is called "helicopter parents."

Maybe I'd be less surprised if I was accustomed to having someone edit my school work. However, it is an honor code violation for someone to edit some of my papers. I'm crazy about my son, but I can't imagine contributing to his college assignments and delaying a vacation b/c of it.

LOL! I don't think you were a cheater. Just an enabler, keeping your clients addicted to you.

When I was in grad school for English, I worked as a tutor in a position provided by the university itself. Generally speaking, we didn't just mark up a paper and hand it back to a student, since that would make the student reliant upon our service (Hint, hint, dentist's wife!). However, we were never instructed that doing such editing was cheating. Professors who place significant weight on spelling and grammatical errors rather than on content are around, but I'm a former English teacher, and I'd say that those who give an F for one error (or such extremities) are asking--begging!--for editors to pop up. I don't think that's cheating. It's just good sense.

Having other readers look at your work before you turn in a paper is smart. If you have to pay for that reader, then so much the better for the reader. I don't think that's cheating, as long as the content is not rewritten by the editor. It must be sentence-level editing, not idea-level revision. It's a fine line sometimes--how do you edit a paper that has no thesis statement, for example? (Correct answer: you don't! You tell the person that there is no thesis statement and return the paper to him/her!)--but as long as the ideas and examples remain those of the original writer, editing at the sentence-level is not cheating.

Still, I would argue that the mom's time would be FAR better used if she taught her kids how to edit their OWN work. Are they going to be sending their memos and reports from work to her to edit, too? If not (and I really hope not!), then I'm with 'Neato:

PATHETIC! CUT THOSE APRON STRINGS ALREADY LADY!!!!!!!!!!

So is the mother going to be editing daughter's chart notes when DD is in her residency? Yikes--she'll be busy then, won't she?

One can hope! I mean, how shortsighted is this mom, anyway?!

LOL, I fully second the cut the apron strings I do remember having my sister who is a writer by profession edit some of my college work. However, she never suggested changes to content, just spelling and grammer.

Now, for my almost 9 year old, I do review his writing assignments for neatness (ie, can I read what he wrote?) and spelling and grammer. However, I tell him I saw at least x number of mistakes and make him try to find them. If he can't find the last couple I try to talk him through what he is missing so he still finds them himself. For content he is on his own. If I feel he hasn't quite hit the mark, I will make a copy of it and after he has turned in his work, we will go over it with some suggestions on things he can think about for the next assignment.

I also make a point of letting him read some of my writing to find my errors so he knows that this is just a part of the writing process. Since I am lousy at spelling, he can usually tell me I have x errors to find as well :P.

I'd take the vacation over editing papers anyday

WOW. I hope that mom allows her children to fail at some point in life. The real world will be a harsh reality.