Comment by nfw2
5 days ago
Coincidentally I was thinking about this topic earlier today. It seems that we train students to write in the worst way possible, by giving arbitrary word counts as benchmark for completeness.
I suppose letting students turn in 3 sentence essays may not be a better option, but it at least it doesn't encourage students who engage with the assignment in good faith to turn a high-quality six paragraphs into six pages.
Having a well-defined rubric is better than having a minimum word count or page count. If they can meet all the rubric's requirements in 3 sentences then so be it.
The alternative is to "turn in a good paper" which is not quantifiable and thus anathema to the modern Taylorism inspired world of education. If the student can't agree, it's a problem and so word count it is - can't argue with basic math.
There are still unquantifiable aspects of grading. Just turning in 1000 words or whatever doesn't guarantee an A, it's a bare minimum in a still-mostly-unquantifiable grading system.
Grading in writing has always felt nonsensical to me. When I didn't get a perfect score in math, the teacher could point out what I did wrong and how I would have been able to do it right.
None of the people grading my writing ever even attempted to do that. The grade existed separately from my writing and served no purpose of education.
I once turned in a five sentence essay that covered about a single page. The person next to me in class turned in five pages, but ultimately got the same grade as me. That's when I realized how stupid it all was.
Agreed. I scored a 4/6 and 8/12 on my SAT and GRE essay sections, barely above average, despite:
- 99+ percentile scores on the multiple choice sections
- winning multiple essay contests in middle school and high school
I have the worst handwriting of anyone I know and sometimes wonder if that influenced the scores.
Most of the time the benchmark word count isn't any more than six paragraphs to begin with. And putting out more words means more practice, which is valuable in a school setting.