Sunday, October 30, 2005

11th graders write

What are the ethics of posting samples of atrocious writing by students on weblogs? Should there be ethical concerns if the names of the producers of the hideous writing samples are not disclosed and the samples are otherwise slightly redacted to make identification difficult?

One of the sharpest education writers in the edusphere has done just that and now has convinced herself that posting such samples is unethical and will take down her post.

Here is a tiny snippet from these samples from 11th graders:

"in [title]. will has to deal with alot of racism bieng that she is a nigga during slavery. she sees her father get killed and then have to go home and find out that her mother is tooken buy the british. then will y goes to her aunt besty house and captian ivers try to put her back into slavery."
My view is that any lingering ethical concerns are far outweighed by the public service rendered by exposing this appalling state of affairs.

Read the rest of the samples before they disappear into electronic heaven.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

boy that is bad

She probably should take the essays down, or else get permission to post them.

Her other alternative is to write a composite, and post that. People complain about psych writers using composites, but there's a reason why we do, and this is it.

All she needs to do is write composites and say these are composites.