The Essay Has Landed, Part II

I am quite sure that my last blog entry created international suspense—how close to the edges of your collective seats you must be—what were the results of these first major essays by the young historians at KA???

While it is not quite the anticipation that the Academy Awards generates every year—I was very excited to see how my English-as-a-second-language writers would handle the assignment of compare/contrast attitudes toward women over 2000 years. After our intense discussions in class, I hoped their interest, their insight—dare I say it—their enthusiasm, might translate to the written page. Could their bubbling in class amount to more than a page of prose? We had never gone beyond a single page of writing. I had suggested that this essay could not be tackled in under three pages.

Very few whines at that pronouncement!

Would they remember to use the documents? I had sternly said, “If you fail to use the documents, to quote from the documents, it would certainly amount to a failure of an essay, right?” I went around the room and each student nodded in a follow-the-leader agreement.

No frantic calls over the weekend.

No harried emails of the “Mr.-John-what-are-you-talking-about” variety.

Instead—smiles and satisfied looks greeted me as I collected the papers from them on that Sunday a month ago. One student, the lovely Maya, said as she turned in her work: “I know you have high standards and I hope my work is up to the standards you want from us.”

Okay—let’s get the most depressing news out of the way first. Two students did not write the paper. Not that weekend. Not ever. Three students did not heed the warning about the absence of quotations: their papers were easy to grade since I had given my word that a quotation-free essay would earn a failing grade.

Let’s bask in a success. There is a student who had never quite gotten the hang of homework or quizzes or tests or taking notes or journal entries or absorbing material…you see the landscape, don’t you? Well, this young woman, who normally feared most assignments, smiled broadly as she submitted her paper, and revealed, “I really worked on this, and I think it rocks.” I hoped it might rock…and on page 1 I read this sentence she wrote: “Men thought they were superior, but in the eyes of the ancient world, there was not thought at all of women gaining something like rights…not only does the husband have the right to misconduct his wife, but gives her no agency whatsoever.” Did this student use the word agency? In such a sophisticated way?? Later that week I went over that paper with her and we looked at how strong her thoughts were, and she explained how she used “agency” and why she did (!) and yes, while she is test-phobic, sitting at home, mulling over her thoughts, she acquitted herself quite well in this first essay.

Here are some of the sentences that leapt off the page, exciting me as I graded in the next week:
1. “The role of woman was not only lower class but they were thought of as objects to be controlled.”

2. “These gradual changes were not only affected by time, but also by religion, politics, ideology, and mentality.”

3. “The bad treatment of women came from laws, and the laws came from the gods; these were guidelines to treat women as objects. No one would disobey their god.”

4. “The laws didn’t really see marriage as a relationship.”

5. “Women between 1792 BCE and 242 CE got the most unusual, savage treatment—from dolls in men’s hands to guilt on their lands.”

6. One writer used the word odious in describing the laws about the treatment of women.

7. One writer asked, “what then, in a society, does promote change?”

8. One writer characterized the Roman historian Plutarch as a “calm, sincere, a poetic historian.”

9. “We can conclude and know that women faced many ways of oppression and faced many obstacles during their history. But striving for dignity and seeking excellence is what made them an easy goal to achieve from a woman’s eyes.”


Four writers had no dates used at all in the entire essay. So there was no sense of time, or change of time throughout the entire essay. Hmmm…One writer, I guess a little lazy to look at the documents, persisted in referring to anything historical as, “Now back in the day…” ARGH!

In spite of our dramatic Thesis Statement Beauty Pageant, several students still thought these counted as viable thesis statements (a.k.a. arguments):
1. “In my essay I am going to use all the documents to prove my thesis except Document 4.”

2. “There were many changes over the attitudes toward women.”

3. “We were given 5 wonderful documents to read compare and contrast.”

4. “Documents 1-5 help support my thesis, so I will be using them to do so.”

5. “The common thing of the documents is that they discuss attitudes toward women in the past.”

6. “Here is my thesis—women weren’t treated equally!”


Then here were some of the howlers that I encountered:
1. “I just want to end my essay with 3 words: God bless women!”

2. “The female race is supposed to please, satisfy and serve the man.”

3. “In this document they practically have the same rights as today, and that’s what I call an improvement!”

4. “Can you please tell me where is the justice in this document?”

5. “Long ago men were the controllers of any and every civilization except women.”

6. “While reading my essay, please keep women’s mistreatment in mind.”


Here are a few moments that qualify as Lost In Translation moments perhaps:
1. “She wanted to gain the trust of men and world slowly until it was normal for men and women to be equal.”

2. “Each document give say what they mean for a reason.”

3. “It is wrong to divorce a woman for unlikeness, the document didn’t even mention if she is guilty or not.”

4. “Attitudes always play a major role in our life and that’s because attitudes are everything and all documents discuss this indirectly the first document definitely shows the fights and the problems.”

5. “However, now things has changed!”

While I did not make eloquence a graded criterion, I admired these writers, reaching for a sense of poetry:
1. “As times went by, rules fluctuated between harsh terms and not so harsh ones.”

2. “Inequality fills the earth.”

3. “Woman make everyday life beautiful. Their beauty and intelligence has never been changed over the years. They have only made the world a better place. Men, however, have been like directors assigning women to specific roles in their household.”

On one of the days we dissected the documents, a cheeky young man said, “Why are we doing all this talking about women’s rights anyway? All women should be just wives and mothers.” If this were a scene from a Norman Lear-1970s-sitcom, some character would have told that “male chauvinist pig” to shut up. Interestingly, no other boy joined in the carousing that this student expected from his comment. As several female students fumed, I simply commented, “And I guess if I said all Arabs are terrorists—that’s okay to perpetuate that stereotype too, right?” My friend got the point.

All in all—I count their essays a great success. They had labored (well, all but those lazy two!) at all the elements of essay-writing you hope a student will encounter and explore. They had worked to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, connect, and reflect. They had left the point of summary behind, never again settling for a mindless re-hashing of the topic.

I think we are reaching for a new plateau. Any ideas what to call this “brave, new world”??

We started in Scratch. We spent time in Itch. What is this next phase? Stephanie, any bright ideas, my dear?

Next week we will embark on our next essay. There is optimism abounding, and if I may quote former Vice-President Dan Quayle, “The future will be better tomorrow.”