What you learn on trains . . .

I was travelling by train the other day -- something I don't do that often because I love driving -- when I heard two teenagers or early twenty-somethings talking about their university courses. As a TAFE teacher, my ears instantly pricked. I'm always interested in what's going on in the trenches -- even if they're not exactly our trenches.

So, one of the students was talking about having to do a compulsory online subject. Seeing as I teach (or, rather, moderate) online subjects sometimes and am involved in their design, my ears pricked further. This I wanted to hear.

The main thing I picked up was that the student thought his online subject was great because he was paying his sister $10 to do all his assignments for him. Hmm. Apart from the fact that she was charging far too little in my opinion, I was also struck that this was one of my great fears in online teaching. How can we verify that a student's work is their own -- how do we know they're even engaging with the content?

Well, we can tell that they've been online -- how long exactly, how many files they've looked at, how many sessions they've had, when the first and last time they logged in was -- all sorts of stuff. (And don't I love the student tracking device!) What we can't ascertain is that it's actually them on the other end of the computer. Maybe they should have their webcams on -- might make for some interesting viewing of those who like working at midnight in their PJs!

Ultimately, though, university (and TAFE) students are supposed to be doing a course because they want to do it -- places are competitive. Not everyone gets in. Of course, it would be naive to think that that means they all do want to be there -- some are there because of parental pressure and for all sorts of other reasons.

What I wanted to ask this student was whether he had thought about why he was doing this subject. Most probably he would have told me it was compulsory, and that he didn't particularly like it, and that's why he was paying his sister, in which case I would have asked him why he thought it was compulsory. Subjects usually are for a reason, and that reason has to do with skills -- essential skills.

As well as novel writing, I teach editing. Novel writing is not a compulsory subject, and generally I know my students enjoy it. Editing, which involves the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation -- before they get onto the more exciting stuff -- is what lies under good writing. I'm not saying all good writing has to be grammatical -- it doesn't -- but if someone's going to break the rules, they'd better understand them first. Many of my students don't enjoy the subject -- well, not at first, anyway. Some grind their teeth all through the year, whereas others learn to appreciate it, or even to love it. (I was one of those.) By the end of the year, even those who haven't particularly enjoyed it have learnt a grudging respect. They understand why they have had to do the subject. I've even had a few who haven't enjoyed it but who have sacrificed a Pass to do the subject again because they know they haven't yet quite mastered it. (After all, if you score 50%, realistically you know about half of what you should know.)

So those students who cheat, ultimately cheat themselves. They might think they've come out on top, they might feel they've outsmarted their teachers and the system, but the only person they've truly outsmarted is themselves. Kind of sad, really.

How much help is enough?

Last night, Sherryl and Margaret (two Western Women Writers) and I attended the FAW awards night. FAW, for anyone who doesn't know it, is the Fellowship of Australian Writers. Sherryl and Margaret were both judges in this years awards (and have been for the last several years). The FAW awards cover a broad range of categories from unpublished manuscripts, to manuscripts by a writers' group to short stories and poems and screenplays. They also include a number of children's awards.

I'm always amazed at the poise and confidence of some of the children who win awards at these kinds of things. I suppose I remember my own adolescent awkwardness, the shyness that made me dread public speaking. But a lot of these children look as though they were born in front of a crowd.

Speeches are optional at the FAW awards, so some people make them and some don't. And this is true of the child as well as the adult recipients. Last night was interesting because one of the children who got up to speak thanked her mother and father for helping her to write the story. I started musing about this, wondering exactly what this meant. Did it mean they offered editorial advice -- looked at commas, spelling etc? Did it mean they offered structural advice? Or did they help shape the piece in some more substantive way?

My son recently entered a competition and asked me to look over his work. I was loath to do this because I worried that that might give him an unfair advantage over those who don't have parents for writers. But what about those whose teachers help them with their stories? What about workshopping that those of us in writing groups do?

Over summer, I do shortlisting for a children's writing competition, and there are invariably entries that don't feel like they've been written by children -- they show a sophistication not just of language but of ideas far beyond the child's age in years. Sometimes I've raised concerns with Margaret, who organises the competition, and who runs several children's writing groups. Sometimes she'll look over a story and say that, yes, she's seen kids do amazing things. So, ultimately, we have to take these stories on trust, but I'm still sometimes left wondering whether one particular child hasn't had a whole lot more help than the other children have had.

Perhaps I'm super sensitive because when my daughter was in Year 7 I got a rap over the knuckles from her English teacher for helping too much with a poetry assignment. My daughter had no idea how to do the assignment, how to write a poem. I spent more than twenty hours instructing her, going through all the different forms. In the end I did help shape the poems by leading her with questions. For example, she wrote a poem about anger, and I said things like: "If anger were an animal, what sort of animal would it be?" She gave an answer, and I told her to write it down. The actual ideas and words were her own. It wasn't about cheating, or getting a better mark, it was about my trying to teach her something. I told this to the teacher, and said I didn't care if she only got a D for the assignment, as long as she'd learnt something. The teacher marked her down because I'd helped her, and I thought that was fair enough. I'm still uncomfortable with what I did, but it was the educator in me stepping in. I don't know if I was right or wrong, but I've backed off from giving that kind of help ever since, and especially wouldn't do it in a competition where there is a monetary prize at stake.

So how much should parents help with writing for competitions or assignments? I guess we all have to find our own line here, and it will be different for each of us. I've had teachers suggest I help my kids with their work. I've been horrified at times to hear friends confess they do their children's assignments for them. What do their children learn from this approach? And as any kind of judge for a writing competition for children, I have to hope that I really am judging that child's work and not the work of their older brother or sister, or mother or father, or teacher or tutor.