Moved from D1 forum

[--Pete]

Hi,

When I say high school level stuff, I'm talking about the lack of clarity in that paper.

Indeed. I read through that paper. I copied it into Word and tried to outline it. I played around with it. I was not able to determine the focus of that paper, the point it was trying to make.

It's a whole other thread and can of worms of why I think that method of assigning x amount of pages is rote checklist teaching at best, and idiotic at worst when misapplied. Which seems to be most of the time.

I agree. There are times when a word count or a page count makes sense (for instance when the assignment is a creative writing exercise -- "No, I will not accept a five line sonnet!"). Most of the time, the length of a paper should be long enough to clearly present the issue and no longer. Whether that's a five volume opus on the nature of reality, or a simple "What chair" should be left to the student. The determination, after the fact, of whether the student was too terse or too verbose is the teacher's prerogative.

Now if you think that's an elitist attitude, I got some sobering news for you. This is how a large part of the world works. If you (not just you specifically) can't communicate clearly and quickly, I will tune you out.

Or, if you are the boss and cannot tune him out, you probably would demand rewrites until the task is done, according to you, correctly.

... I strongly disagree with the way [Pete] started this thread, ...

This thread or this discussion (going back to the exchange on the D1 forum)? I can understand disagreeing with what I said, but don't understand what you mean about disagreeing with how I said it.

Because in the real world, a correction is valuable.

There are people who, when corrected, say "Thank you", consider the correction, and either incorporate the correction, use it as a basis for a better discussion, or reject it for a valid reason. There are other people who, when corrected, hit the "Ignore" button.

--Pete