In light of recent discussions here regarding the consumerist impulse among students, a very different development suggests another kind of accountability we now face regarding writing assessment.
Steve Geluso, a high school student, has blogged his objections to being failed on an exit exam and posts a facsimile of his paper and of the scorer's ratings of the paper. Since he's developed an argument that online piracy of music is of a different order than stealing an actual CD, his paper contributes to other controversies often discussed here.
His blog is found at http://steve.mathcaddy.com/
I have commented as well at http://faculty.deanza.fhda.edu/jocalo. I'll be surprised if this doesn't get a lot of web discussion.
Stupid teacher tricks
Irrespective of one's notions about filesharing or theft of IP, the teacher here is in the wrong. Issuing an imprimatur that says "There's no difference between filesharing and theft" and therefore failing a student just stinks of intellectually lazy, moralizing horsepucky. The issue (and the only one) is whether the student effectively differentiates the two and writes a good, coherent piece of work. I've not read Geluso's paper; it doesn't even seem necessary, really.
Logic chopping all around
Geluso does have his share of logical fallacies (the Wilco example, imho, is a false analogy--they're not posting their song so that it can be pirated), but considering that the essay's a 3 hr. impromptu, these (and other) weaknesses don't seem sufficient to merit a failing grade. What's disturbing is that the comments from teachers are just as poorly constructed and far less informed.
Equally distressing, it looks as though the exit essay is graded by only one person (some who believe that writing evaluation can be objective maintain that 5 raters are necessary for objectivity; our state colleges use 3).
Putting such power in the hands of one person conveys the real message that the student seems to have learned the hard way: "The teacher may not always be right but--oh, hell, the teacher is always right and who are you to question the status quo?" Me, I don't mind owning up to a little fallibility every now and then, and certainly I'm not getting paid enough to act as copyright police for the recording industry. Wearing the Junior G-Man badge must be exciting enough for some folks to justify failing a student who exhibits the slightest bit of anti-establishment thought. And questioning the original decision seems to have pulled in the other wagons in the department as well. To put a positive spin on things, perhaps these "academics" fell prey to the Ashcroft "copyright infringement = terrorism" syllogism, and they're just trying to save the world from Osama, one essay at a time.