[SUBMITTED] A for Effort

[Orgrua]

Title: A for Effort

Description: After a news story surfaced about a home-schooled student's acceptance into the nation's top school, @@CAPITAL@@ University with supposedly near perfect grades in all classes, questions are being tossed around regarding the legitimacy of his grades.

But why was this suspicious? There needs to be an event that throws doubt on his grades, like him flunking his first term or something. Maybe he got a massive scholarship because of these supposedly false scores and so part of the issue is of academic and financial fraud.

Plenty of brilliant kids are homeschooled. There was a family that lived only a few miles from me who homeschooled all of their kids and 3 of them got perfect scores on the ACT (a college entrance exam here in the States). And mind you, this was in a rural farming community in the west, so there are bound to be plenty of examples similar to that one.

Validity: All

There may or may not be a flag for banning formal education, but that's an editorial call and not particularly important.

Option: "I don't understand why my son can't do well in school without being called a liar for it," shouts @@RANDOMNAMEFEMALE@@, the home-schooling mother of @@RANDOMNAMEMALE@@, a future student at @@CAPITAL@@ University. "My son has worked extremely hard throughout these past four years. I gave him the grades I think he deserved; the idea of me not doing as such is absurd. His admittance to such a prestigious university is enough proof of his excellence, so I think the government should ban all entrance exams for colleges; he already proved himself.

Effect: Regular high school students try to bribe their teachers for extra points, in order to keep up with the the grades of home-schooling students.

Stats: Increases: Authoritarianism, Charmlessness, Corruption, Government Size, Industry: Arms Manufacturing, Industry: Automobile Manufacturing, Industry: Basket Weaving, Industry: Pizza Delivery, Obesity, Recreational Drug Use, Wealth Gaps, Youth Rebelliousness; Decreases: Economy, Average Income, Ignorance, Industry: Book Publishing, Industry: Information Technology, Public Education, Scientific Advancement, Tourism

Again, I don't get why people doubt this one kid without any reason for it.

Option: "You'd have better luck having Pinocchio try to convince me of those grades," disagrees @@RANDOMNAME@@, Superintendent of @@CAPITAL@@ Secondary Schools. "If this student has no disabilities and resides in a house that has access to several major modes of public transportation, there is no reason why he should even be able to be home-schooled. This great country offers free education through high school, and it makes no sense to continue to allow home-schooling. I say we ban it for the greater good of @@NAME@@!"

Effect: Socially awkward children used to a home environment don't fit in their giant classes.

Stats: Increases: Authoritarianism, Government Size, Public Education, Public Transport, Scientific Advancement, Social Conservatism, Taxation; Decreases: Averageness, Cheerfulness, Freedom from Taxation, Inclusiveness, Obesity

This is a better option idea. It'd be interesting if you banned homeschooling, though as it stands the case isn't very compelling. Once again, there needs to be that event that makes it seem like there's some sort of fraud or something going. The line about free school I think will prove to be a validity problem.

Option: "I think I've got the perfect solution for this situation," declares @@RANDOMNAME@@, CEO of Home-Skool Inc. "With the new LearningLab 9000 platform, home-schooled students can now take all their classes online and prepackaged. Each student must enroll in six classes per year at just 200 @@CURRENCYPLIRAL@@ each. There would be no debate about validity, since all assessments are graded automatically and personally verified by our staff, for the low price of 149.97 @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@, per course verification. Just sign here, and we can roll the LearningLab 9000 into every home-school in @@NAME@@!

Effect: Only the parents who can afford the LearningLab 9000 can secure a high school education for their children.

Stats: Increases: Average Income of Rich, Business Subsidization, Economic Output, Industry: Information Technology, Public Education, Recreational Drug Use, Taxation; Decreases: Averageness, Economic Freedom, Public Transport, Social Conservatism

Not a fan of hard-coded costs. It'd be funnier if this guy spoke like "For just a nominal fee™, you can purchase our LearningLab9000©" and "declares @@RANDOMNAME@@, CEO of Home-Skool Inc.©®℠™"

Thanks, I made those changes. I changed around the Superintendent option, by incorporating the ban home-schooling into the end of the CEO option.

I think hard coded costs are fine.

BTW, you may not be doing yourself any favours by taking up too much submission text with stat effects. The game engine doesn't work in that we pick those stats and click an up or down slider on it. Rather, the [stats] line is either best left blank, or used for narrative clarifications / communication of authorial intent.

It's very, very rare that the line has any meaningful information of use to editors, and often it makes a submission unwieldy and hard to read, so focus on the narrative instead.

Understood, I took those parts out.

Thanks for the help thus far! How else can I improve it?

[Orgrua]

Second page bump

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Title: A for Effort

Description: After a student with nearly perfect grades in high school flunked out in his first semester in the nation's top school, @@CAPITAL@@ University, questions are being tossed around regarding the legitimacy of his grades.

Maybe "those grades". Otherwise, nice and concise. It's not the most colourful or humourous set-up, but its competent.

Option: "I don't understand why my son should be kicked out because of one bad semester," shouts @@RANDOMNAMEFEMALE@@, the mother that home-schooled @@RANDOMNAMEMALE@@, a former student at @@CAPITAL@@ University. "My son has worked extremely hard throughout his high school years. I gave him the grades that he earned within those four years. Since my son already proved himself in high school, his college shouldn't be able to be able to kick him out if he had a bad semester. I think, for the good of this @@TYPE@@, of course, we should make it a law that colleges cannot kick students out after they have enrolled!"

The red bits here show redundancy from repetition. Try to slim this option down by removing the redundancy, and then use the line gained to inject some humour back in.

Effect: Prestigious universities have become semi-mediocre universities.

So, for reference, effect lines always start with a lower case letter, as they're used by the game macros to build a nation's front page.

Also, they should generally represent interesting consequences, not just the obvious outcome. I know old issues did obvious outcomes a lot, but we've moved on since then.

Can we find a witty way of saying that university standards are dropping?

Option: "We had justification for kicking him out of our school,"

Again, echoing previous phrasing. While this happens a lot in real life speech, the stylised nature of fiction is such that people tend not to echo each other's phrasing.

says @@RANDOMNAME@@ admissions counselor of @@CAPITAL@@ University, as @@HE@@ slams a giant stack of papers on your desk, knocking your cup of coffee over.

We almost always change "slamming onto desks" now, as it's been a heavily used thing in the last 200 issues.

"Do you see all those papers? Those are copies of all the letters we sent to students that were declined to our school. We simply don't have room for students like him, students that don't give their best effort all the time; there are too many other students trying to get into our school.

Too repetitive. This, for example, could have been?

"Do you see this stack of papers? Copies of rejection letters, sent to applicants who were declined a space because of this subpar student!"

Same information, half the words, twice the variety in the vocabulary - that's what you should be aiming for.

I think that we need to restore the meaning of getting into colleges; the only viable solution is to pass a law requiring any graduating high school student whose grades are not up to perfection to go directly into the workforce or the military."

Misses the point of the issue, as this student had good grades. This speaker shouldn't be arguing for judgments to be made off a system which currently is giving him bad information. He should be arguing for checks, measures and standardisation.

Effect: A tiny fraction of the population has a college education.

Why is someone running a college arguing for an option with this outcome?

Option: "I think I've got the perfect solution for this grade validity problem," declares @@RANDOMNAME@@, CEO of Home-Skool Inc.©® "With the new LearningLab 9000 platform, all students can now take all their classes online and prepackaged. Each student must enroll in six classes per year at an astronomical--er.. reasonable fee. There would be no debate about validity, since all assessments are graded automatically and personally verified by our staff, for another gin-- er.. fair price. Just sign here, and we can roll the LearningLab 9000 into every home in @@NAME@@ by banning all forms of schooling that don't use the platform!
Effect: Only the parents who can afford the LearningLab 9000 can secure a high school education for their children.

This option is far less wacky and funny than you might hope it is. Maybe scrap it, make option 2 the pro-standardisation option, and find a more creative and unique "third way". For example, allocating university places by lottery, or using EEGs and MRIs to measure electrocognitive potential to measure intelligence without exams, or making it so that everybody goes to university and education is compulsory till the age of 25.

[Orgrua]

I've incorporated everything you mentioned in that last reply. Take a look at the first page, where everything is edited.