August 28, 2008

Herding the 'Escape Goats': Contest Sends Up Epidemic of Student Howlers

Gone are the days when careless students are humiliated only in front of their professors, or their classmates. Nowadays British students who don’t double-check their writing risk seeing their slip-ups circulated everywhere online.

The students can thank the Times Higher Education’s recently revived annual “exam howlers” competition, in which merciless professors submit their students’ dumbest — and most unintentionally amusing — writing flubs to the magazine. At least the anonymous students can wallow in their shame unrecognized.

Some of the honored blunders of the year:

• A research student’s assertion that “tackling climate change will require an unpresidented response.”

• An English student’s literary interpretation: “The Handmaid’s Tale shows how patriarchy treats women as escape goats.”

• An economics student who bemoaned a regulator’s “laxative enforcement policies.”
  

Comments

1. In our conceit to mock our students, please note that “scape goat” means “escape goat.” According to the OED, “in the Mosaic ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi), that one of two goats that was chosen by lot to be sent alive into the wilderness, the sins of the people having been symbolically laid upon it . . . .” In other words, the scapegoat was the goat that was allowed to escape.

   — elf    Aug 28, 04:03 PM    #

2. Are we sure that “unpresidented response” wasn’t a subtle political statement?

   — JCWT    Aug 28, 04:37 PM    #

3. or an oblique reference to George Bush who numerous times during the 2000 election campaign stated that CO2 was a pollutant that needed emission controls – only to disavow all that as soon as the election was over?

   and don’t forget that the only reason Kyoto wasn’t sent to the Senate was because the Republicans controlling that chamber were extremely vocal in promising it would never be passed (after all, it might take a few cents from the pockets of their multi-billion dollar donors!)

   — Gary    Aug 28, 06:07 PM    #

4. I’ve been collecting these for years, under the heading misspelled cliches. The altered spelling illustrates that the metaphorical value has been lost through decades and even centuries of overuse. Some of the more memorable:

   A flare for the dramatic

   Take an active roll

   A flee trap

   It’s a doggy-dog world.

   — Peter    Aug 28, 07:33 PM    #

5. Then there was the student who stated that we needed to get tough on terrierism.

   Woof

   — Maria    Aug 28, 09:37 PM    #

6. My two personal favorites: “Antisemitism in Nazi Germany was difficult, especially for the Jews.” And what can only be said to impart zen-like “woah” to its reader: “Beowulf is an anonymous medieval poem written in the 18th century by Robert Cotton.” It’s beautiful, but oh so wrong.

   HJ

   — Bing Mcghandi    Aug 29, 12:39 AM    #

7. Some (like doggy-dog) fit the loss Peter mentions in #6. Some (like academic/epidemic) seem more likely a function of spell “checkers”. In either case, the revived competition may strengthen some metaphors, as the howls re-ignite their dramatic flare.

   — Ellis Godard    Aug 29, 01:07 AM    #

8. “The Iliad and the Odyssey were written not by Homer but by another man of that name.”

   The thing is, crazy as this is, I understand exactly what is meant.

   — Dan    Aug 29, 08:27 AM    #

9. When I did matching (words to definitions) on tests, I would often use the answers to spell out goofy phrases. During the Harry Potter zanies, I spelled out Hogwarts. More than one student got the definitions wrong, and spelled out Hogfarts.

   Proving teachers can set up their own howl fests.

   — Muap Conners    Aug 29, 09:05 AM    #

10. I’m allergic to bees so I always warn my students at the beginning of the semester. A bee flew in through an open window one day. A student exclaimed “Watch out for the Humblebee!” Nineteen years on this planet calling them humblebees instead of bumblebees. Sigh.

    — Grace    Aug 29, 09:05 AM    #

11. MY mother taught high school and accumulated a surprising stack of student howlers. One family favorite was “Poor Mary was an orphan girl. Both her parents died years before she was born.” The worst of it was that when my mother pointed out the problem, the response was “But you don’t understand! She was an orphan- both her parents were dead. It’s like a double first cousin- she got it from both sides.”

    — John    Aug 29, 09:11 AM    #

12. #7: Terrierism is a serious, yet oft unreported, problem. The terrierists who live next door leave little brown bombs everywhere.

    — babylawyer    Aug 29, 09:13 AM    #

13. Grace, “humblebee” goes back to the 15th century, according to MWCD10. It means “bumblebee”; from ME humbylbee, from humbyl- (akin to MD hommel + bee — more at HUM).

    Btw I took the above, with a bit of editing, from the source noted.

    The entry for “humble pie” is even more interesting. . . . I didn’t know that.

    — Dan    Aug 29, 09:14 AM    #

14. From the music world:
    “Beethoven wrote three symphonies, the 3rd, the 5th and the 9th.”

    I was simultaneously tickled and flummoxed by the name “Mental Zone,”
    until I figured out that it was supposed to be “Mendelssohn.”

    — drtmuir    Aug 29, 09:20 AM    #

15. PS Re the Humble-Bee- there’s a nice poem by RW Emerson”
    “Burly, dozing humble-bee
    Where thou art is clime for me.
    Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek;
    I will follow thee alone,
    Thou animated torrid-zone!

    Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
    Let me chase thy waving lines;
    Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
    Singing over shrubs and vines.”

    — drtmuir    Aug 29, 09:28 AM    #

16. In responses to a quiz on Freud, two undergraduates offered comments on, respectively, the edible complex and the insect taboo.

    — Peter    Aug 29, 09:29 AM    #

17. Some of these howlers apparently qualify as eggcorns. Check the Eggcorn Database here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/
    Incidentally, a humblebee is also known in England as a dumbledore.

    — CatherineR    Aug 29, 09:39 AM    #

18. My favorite from my days reading exams for ETS was the student who referred to “God or someone of equal stature.” But only an academic would attempt to rescue a blooper by reference to Leviticus. Some of us obviously have way too much time on our hands.

    — johntee    Aug 29, 09:51 AM    #

19. (Re: #s 15 and 18): Oh, teacher, teacher! I know what humble pie used to be: A pie made from the oedipal organs of a deer or hog!

    — Tracy G.    Aug 29, 10:00 AM    #

20. My all-time favorite was a student who wrote: “Man is the only animal who can peedle on both feet.” Over the years, as I have shared this with my anthropology students, I have noted that my male students find this much less funny than do my female students.

    — Darwin    Aug 29, 10:07 AM    #

21. Oh, Landry (#22). For once, we’re all having a nice time, and you have to go and spoil it.

    — swish    Aug 29, 10:20 AM    #

22. From a book called “Anguished English” comes this blooper:

    “Magellan circumsized the earth in a 100 foot clipper”

    Ouch!

    — Dr. J    Aug 29, 10:42 AM    #

23. And then there was the historian who reported in the Chronicle earlier this summer about his experiences as a reader of AP essays/exams. He found a statement that protesting students at Kent State were shot by the Federal Reserve.

    Many many years ago one of my English TA officemates noticed that a student wrote “writhing” instead of “writing.” We spent the rest of the afternoon inserting “writhing” into textbook titles (“Writhing with a Purpose”) and other phrases like “technical writhing.” My favorite: “writhing across the curriculum.”

    — peg    Aug 29, 10:51 AM    #

24. Of course, the (sad) champion of miselocution is our stumbler-in-chief. For the longest time, I couldn’t believe that some of the goofs captured and (endlessly) rebroadcast were real. Then, about a year ago, I was listening to an NPR broadcast of some speech of his, where he was complaining how Congress was being less then honest <gasp!> in it’s criticism of some Presidential hoo-hah or another. His remark was that Congress was “disassembling.” And as the silence lengthened, apparently ol’ Georgie-boy seemed to realize that something was amiss, because he tried to clarify for the listening/viewing audience that this meant that Congress “wasn’t being entirely truthful,” or some such thing. Well, if Congress was falling apart or tearing something else apart (certainly not an impossibility, though I don’t think that was the case just then), then it might have been disassembling. If they were merely lying (is there actually such a thing in politics anymore?) then they might have been “dissembling.” Sorry, Georgie. Next time please stick to your script, and try not to embarrass the whole nation more than you absolutely must.

    — Victor Lieberman    Aug 29, 10:55 AM    #

25. Howlers in the French classroom usually involve less-than-thorough dictionary use and have a certain, dare I say, je ne sais quoi. For example, describing the plot of a popular movie, one student wrote about “le ventilateur fou” (the crazy fan, but ‘fan’ as in the electrical appliance). Another wanted to describe Leonardo daVinci, and spoke of him as having “grande quantité d’ours sous son menton” (a great quantity of BEARS under his chin). I am still trying to figure out how she confused the words in English to get to her weird sentence in French. And inevitably someone will list “volatile” as a personality trait (‘volatile’ in French means someone who takes to the air).

    — RP    Aug 29, 11:01 AM    #

26. oh Peg, “Writhing Across the Curriculum” is going to stay with me for a long, long time.

    :)

    — RP    Aug 29, 11:03 AM    #

27. I once took a class in “creative writhing.” Not as much fun as you might think. Pretty ghastly, actually.

    — Tracy G.    Aug 29, 11:32 AM    #

28. I have a co-worker who thought that the characters in Star Wars had weapons known as “life savers.”

    — JayAre    Aug 29, 11:57 AM    #

29. If you enjoy these, be sure to check out Richard Lederer’s writings, including the book Anguished English.

    — JayAre    Aug 29, 12:00 PM    #

30. We should keep in mind that, although these things are funny, the pleasure we appear to take in the the fact we know things our students don’t is not very attractive nor much to our credit in a number of ways.

    — Dave    Aug 29, 12:37 PM    #

31. One from a former fellow TA for an anthro course: a primate characteristic is the “disposable thumb”

    — al    Aug 29, 12:58 PM    #

32. Along these lines, do check out Kissthisguy.com (http://www.kissthisguy.com), the archive of misunderstood lyrics. The domain name comes from someone who was horrified when his idol, Jimi Hendrix, sang in Purple Haze, “‘scuse me, while I kiss this guy.” Misunderstanding is something we can all relate to, perhaps chuckle from, but refrain from mocking.

    — Brilliant Blonde    Aug 29, 01:25 PM    #

33. #29 RP — The student was typing “beard” into an internet translator. “S” and “D” are next to each other on the keyboard. Her finger slipped.

    — Mary    Aug 29, 02:07 PM    #

34. In a music class, a student plagiarized the phrase “pithy germ cells” referring to Beethoven from an online source. When confronted, he acknowledged that he remembered that I said Beethoven wasn’t very clean.

    — Anon. III    Aug 29, 02:35 PM    #

35. Re: Humblebee/Bumblebee and scapegoat/escape goat
    It warms my heart to see elitists who poke fun at students’ supposed ignorance show their own. I put them in the same category as similar individuals who believe that the “different grammar” often used in the south somehow implies a lower intelligence or a lower class of individual. Again…. they only show their own ignorance.

    — Michael    Aug 29, 03:00 PM    #

36. ——-Years ago, an English teacher friend told me a student of hers in his report on Steinbeck’s, “Of Mice and Men”, all throughout, referred to the two main characters as——Lenny and Squiggy !!

    — Francis Klock    Aug 29, 03:32 PM    #

37. Another one.

    When asked to describe the difference between animal call systems, such as wolves have, and human language, a student responded that humans don’t have two ears and a tail.

    (I originally typed “tale” instead of “tail,” but caught it on the preview. Humans do have tales to tell and tongues to wag).

    — Maria    Aug 29, 03:43 PM    #

38. #1, I always thought that “escape goat” was simply the Spanish pronunciation … and #36, the term for these strange things is “Mondegreens.”

    — DKHO    Aug 29, 03:53 PM    #

39. Re: humblebee/bumblebee and scapegoat/escape goat
    I don’t think that what we have here is a case of student’s supposed ignorance, but (where there aren’t simple typos, etc.) students’ ignorance. In my job I see a lot of that, just as I suppose people who repaint houses see a lot of defects such as worn areas, chipped paint, etc.

    The humblebee/bumblebee case and the scapegoat/escape goat are quite different. Humblebee is the older of the two words and to this day the proper term in British English; but “escape goat” is not the proper term anywhere — not even in the South.

    — Steve    Aug 29, 03:55 PM    #

40. “creative writhing” == faculty meeting?

    — Jean    Aug 29, 05:12 PM    #

41. I had a student mention the Tajma Hall.

    — Margray    Aug 29, 05:34 PM    #

42. My particular favorite would be the student arguing against cruel and unusual forms of capital punishment, public hangings in particular. The girl, bless her heart, unfortunately left out the “L” in “public.”

    — Julio    Aug 29, 05:44 PM    #

43. A couple of things ‘mis-covered’ by my flatmate and in the last week that we’d being saying wrong for years:
    ‘The spall of the back’
    and
    ‘butanical’
    and
    ‘chronological’ instead of ‘chromatic’
    and
    singing ‘Follow the Garbage Pail’ instead of ‘Follow The God That Failed’
    and singin
    ‘Goodbye to the Romans’ instead of
    ‘Goodbye to Romance’

    — Tango Monk    Aug 29, 05:46 PM    #

44. I had a college roommate who sometimes asked me to proofread his papers. Once, when he couldn’t think of the right synonym to use, he asked me if I had a “therosis.”

    — JayAre    Aug 29, 05:57 PM    #

45. More than half my students on an exam said the Bill of Rights grants Americans the right to “bare arms.”

    — J. R.    Aug 29, 06:46 PM    #

46. My mother had a friend who used to say that expensive items cost “a nominal egg”. She had first (mis)heard the expression after moving to NYC but had not yet adjusted to the local accent.

    — CU Alum    Aug 29, 08:26 PM    #

47. Hail Mary, full of grapes

    — Maria    Aug 29, 09:36 PM    #

48. I’m an accountant / adjunct faculty member and rarely laugh. This is an enjoyable discussion though.

    I agree with the comment that we should not be laughing at the expense of the students. So allow me to mention a couple of my own blunders.

    In writing a response to an exam question regarding a matter right after World War II, I mentioned what actions FDR took at that time. After submitting the exam, I realized that it is pretty common knowledge that FDR had passed away before that time.

    My most embarrasing, though, was in an online chat where I was trying to write the word book and hit a b instead of a k. I’ll omit the rest of the context.

    — KH CPA    Aug 29, 09:41 PM    #

49. Students and faculty are sometimes guilty of foe paws…or, better yet, foe pause….

    — prof    Aug 29, 11:36 PM    #

50. All of these should be taken with a grain assault.

    — McSean    Aug 30, 10:02 AM    #

51. .. well, I received a paper on that controversial (yet delicious!) leader, Marcus Gravy…

    — KC    Aug 30, 10:39 AM    #

52. Then there are the intentional perversion of songs, like:

    While shepherd washed their socks by night, all seated round the tub…

    And

    Gladly the cross-eyed bear

    — Doris    Aug 30, 12:03 PM    #

53. To Brilliant (#36) — I’ve been mishearing sung lyrics all my life! I’ve just learned not to try to repeat them to others until I’ve looked them up on paper. My first experience was in kindergarten when I bravely sang to the class a line in “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” as “watch them catch your underwear!”
    I had a friend who thought a certain hymn went “Andy walked with me, Andy talked with me …”

    — Bill    Aug 30, 02:13 PM    #

54. I had a student write in a rhetorical analysis of an article about date rape: “The author catches the reader’s attention with a graphic sexual assault.” The student who wrote the sentence also got a laugh out of the mistake, when I pointed it out to her. After I moved to another state and was sure that my handouts would never make it back to the student, I used that sentence in a grammar quiz for my freshmen composition students. It was always fun to watch them puzzle over what could possibly be wrong with the sentence. Then one student would get it, explain it to those around him/her, and the giggles would slowly spread across the room.

    When I was a masters student, I overheard one of my professors indignantly telling another a particular sentence I had written on a test the day before, and they both laughed. To this day, I still don’t know what they found so funny about it.

    — SB    Aug 31, 12:44 PM    #

55. From the context of the students sentence that included “escape goat,” it just might be that the student was using a current slang term that refers to certain types of sexual partners, who provide a form of “escape” either from loneliness or from an existing relationship. Check out the “urban dictionary”

    — sue    Aug 31, 04:28 PM    #

56. Of it could simply be that the student plagiarized the paper — the paper mill Directessays.com has at least 7 papers available all of which use “escape goat” instead of scapegoat!

    — sue    Aug 31, 04:46 PM    #

57. When one of my students, many years ago, gave me back Boccaccio’s inspiration Maria d’Aquino as Mario da Queeno, I realized that we had blackboards inthe classroom for a reason and started to make better use of mine for unfamiliar names and terms.

    — Karen    Sep 1, 12:23 PM    #

58. My personal favorite was a student who said that tariffs were an essential technological development in nineteenth century America, and then further argued that one of the most important technological innovations after the US Civil War was Air Conditioning. It allowed for many people to live together in small spaces. Technically correct, I suppose, as air conditioning did indeed come AFTER the Civil War, but wrong in essentials.

    — Julia    Sep 1, 07:23 PM    #

59. What about opening sentences that are grammatically correct but absolutely awful?
    1. “Hitler’s rise to power was very frustrating and hard to deal with. He ambushed the Jews and gave them bad titles.”
    2. “Suicide is a form of death.”
    Now, I am Jewish, so I found sentence one a source of intense merriment- A Tale of Two Jews? The Jew on the Floss?, etc.
    Sentence two lead into a paper which explained to me all the ways a person could ice themselves.

    — Ann Henry    Sep 2, 10:55 AM    #

60. Why stop with the students?

    Here’s a gem from a recent intro psych text book. In reference to fixation in the second psycho sexual stage, the text listed “anal explosive”. Watch out!

    — Bill    Sep 3, 10:32 AM    #

61. Hmm… seems like we have some elitist-elitists. Don’t get so hung up on telling everyone else not to laugh that you forget human beings are funny – be they our students or ourselves. ^_

    — bta (wondering if that sentence was really grammatically correct)    Sep 3, 02:11 PM    #

62. I’m sorry SB, but I need to you spell it out for me. What’s wrong with the sentence: “The author catches the reader’s attention with a graphic sexual assault”?

    — naive    Sep 3, 05:37 PM    #

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