Note: Right click to view image at full size

She didn’t mark me ‘High Distinction’,” my daughter explained to me as we drove to her school this morning. I tried to stay awake. I’m not a morning person and, apparently, she inherited that trait from her mom.
“But, she’s not your friend, is she? Doesn’t that make her critique more valid?” I responded. Simply, her eighth grade classmates–mostly her friends–had rated her essay (who knows what it was about) at the “high” level. However, it was because of that bias that I was ready to dismiss their comments–gee, how things have changed. Trust and authenticity should play a factor in assessment.

“So,” I started in, having figured out it was better to ask questions that sutain another barrage of words from a middle schooler, “what was her critique?”
“That my vocabulary was too advanced and that no one could understand me.”
“Huh? You’re writing about Shakespeare and you used fancy words?”

That’s how the conversation went. I’m not sure I understood it, but I seized upon an idea, like a water-saturated log hovering just beneath the surface of the rough-n-tumble sea.
“Maybe you need to rethink your vocabulary usage. Instead of using sophisticated vocabulary to convey your ideas, you just need to use short, simple words to make your meaning clear.”

Paused at a red light, I drew upon the back of an old bill statement that had arrived in the mail. The diagram looked a lot worse than the one at the top of the blog entry here. In the image above, I suggest that essay writing she was doing–about concepts in Shakespeare–should fall into the quadrant where Simple word choice is used to convey complex concepts. . .I told her the writing is tough but you reach a wider audience.

The question is, while a drawing may have been convincing in a 10 minute conversation on the way to school for an 8th grader, I’m afraid it’s just so much crud. Thoughts?