Save the Voice

Save the Voice! Not, the TV show which I think is doing fine, but rather the voice of each emerging writer.

Late one night, I met with a student of mine who presented me a problem -- a pile of work and a few hours to do it. Now, take it from me, this young woman is a worker. She does all her schoolwork, extra credit as well. An aspiring artist, she spends five hours a day after school working on her art portfolio and takes courses on the weekends when she's not volunteering at her school or her church. In between all of that, she filled out about a dozen applications accompanied by various and sundry essays all for college admissions. So when she presented me with one of her brother's old papers as a way to save some time on an English assignment, I was a little surprised.

Kids, sometimes they just don't think, right? Wrong. The problems that kids get into, particularly the ethical ones, happen when kids think very practically, almost utilitarian.

Problem: Homework is boring.
Solution: Don't do it.

Problem: School is hard.
Solution: Stay home, watch TV, play games, listen to music, and have fun.
(My strategy of choice as a lad, but in all fairness, I learned a lot from the $25,000 Pyramid).

Problem: Need a good grade, but can't seem to get one with your own work.
Solution: Take work from someone else.

And I learned that was the true motivation to the scheme. Sure time was short, but she really wanted to pull up that English grade. After I read the paper, I made a face that elicited an "Oh God!" from my student. She feared the paper was bad. It wasn't. She feared I was disappointed in her plan. Nope.

"This doesn't sound anything like you," I explained.

Over the past year, this young woman has made phenomenal strides in her writing. Her early work was redundant. Now she got to the point. Once, she wrote vague statements. Now she supported her ideas with clear and coherent examples. Grammar and spelling were not ever problems. However, what excited me the most was the emergence of her voice: her observations, her comparisons, her choice of words, and a little of her humor. None of that was present in the paper that she borrowed.

She had re-written a bit and as I read through it, I could see her expressions (phrases and clauses) as sure as fingerprints. Would a teacher notice? Possibly, but maybe not. Teachers have a lot to read. So, maybe she would get away with it, but that's not the point.

I feel strongly that in the teaching of writing, one of the primary goals should be the protection of the individual's voice. I don't want to read the same written work over and over again. I want to hear the unique observations that people have to offer. So that was what I communicated to my student; no judgements, fully understanding her reasoning.

My student re-wrote her paper because she cares about her work. She's not a cheat in any sense of the word. She was just being practical. However, she was cheating herself, an opportunity to voice her own identity, and cheating the world, pluralism and individuality are the strengths to a society.

Overstating it, am I? I don't think so. Save the voice and save the world! (Maybe that's overstating it a bit, and lifting from the TV show Heroes).