My son hates to write English essays. He took English standard level for IB as opposed to his sister who took Higher Level English and got a 7 (highest grade) without even reading any of the required books. (She read spark notes instead of the actual books and wrote her exams)

As a general rule, I never go through any of my kids school work and don’t help them either. Usually I only get to see their work at the end of school year when they bring all their stuff back home. Even that doesn’t happen in High school as all their work in done online. So I am usually clueless.

I met my son’s English teacher during a function at his school. She mentioned that she was really impressed with his latest essay.

“Ah” I said for I had no idea what to tell her. I didn’t know that he had an assignment to do, let alone what he wrote.

“That comparison with Trump and Stalin was brilliant” She said

“Ah” I said

She looked at me as if I just landed from Mars. So I had to finally tell her

“I am sorry, I have no idea what he wrote because I don’t usually go through his work” I admitted.

She was a bit taken back. I guess I probably have looked like a really irresponsible parent.

It turns out that the assignment was about Media and how language is used to manipulate the mass. My son wrote about Trump and his Freedom kids and compared that to Stalin using young kids (Young pioneers/ youth group etc) as a propaganda tool. My son got the highest mark because his Grammar was excellent and he wrote about the current event and linked it to something really interesting.

I do remember talking to the kids couple of years about Stalin’s propaganda. Other than that my contribution to this particular essay is Zilch. However, I can assure you one of the reason my kids do well in school is because from the time they were young, I refused to help them. They have had years of practice honing their writing skills and it has helped them tremendously.