Writing? I've Never Heard of Her, Does She Go to This School?

After reading the Douglas Hesse blog entry titled, Writing Programs as Squanto, Welcoming the Tall Ships of Teaching Reform, I am left surprised by just how little the academic community cares about writing courses in college. Well the title of the article certainly caught my attention because of the mentioning of Squanto. It turns out this blog post is not a fictional retelling of how Squanto actually defeated the Europeans that came to America and colonized the Europeans as a punishment for trying to sneakily occupy space that is not theirs. The title of the blog post also frightened me a little because normally the mentioning of Indigenous history in American context gets misinterpreted to put it lightly.

Hesse writes, “at several prestigious universities either there is no freshman writing requirement or there is no extensive development program for those assigned to teach in it” and I immediately began to think about an article written by The National Commission on Writing. The article written by the National Commission on Writing is titled, The Neglected “R”, and one of the points in the article was that just because someone is deemed to be an intellectual does not necessarily mean they have the ability to write well. A student may be a computer science prodigy, but that student may not even be able to articulate their brilliant ideas about computer science in the form of thorough writing. Which makes me question the actual quality of education these post-secondary institutions provide because what is the point of molding all of the alleged gifted students if they cannot clearly communicate to their peers and the rest of the world with their writing?

After I kept reading further along in the blog spot, just like I hope you are doing with my blog post instead of falling asleep, I found a reason why colleges have stopped requiring freshman writing courses. Apparently, the colleges with no freshman writing courses are looked at as institutions of higher prestige than the rest. So, I guess for the sake of prestige a college is willing to let their precious biology students show up to their history classes writing papers that my ten-year-old niece could probably compose in her sleep. Ten-year-old children can be great writers I am sure, but I will bet all my money (which is not much) that they probably do not write at the level that a college professor college would expect from a university student.

Now that I am done exploiting my niece’s age for some smiles or maybe even some frowns, let’s discuss the humans who are actually teaching these writing classes. According to Hesse, the academic powers that be seem to believe that anyone can teach writing as long as they have some sort of minimal training from actual teachers of writing or writing center experts. Yes, I get it, everyone nowadays has a Facebook page where people you knew from high school write confidently about subjects such as race relations like they have a Master’s in American Studies. Everyone can write, but that does not mean one can write well or even teach the art of writing. I honestly do not even see the point of having writing courses if institutions are just going to do the bare minimum as far as teaching the subject. It seems like writing is only taught to just check it off on a list and not really have any intention behind it. So many powerful, renowned writers would be surely disappointed to know how writing in schools is being neglected. I bet James Baldwin is turning over in his grave right now and no not because there are grave robbers disturbing him.

I really just do not understand why people think so lowly of the art of writing. Writing is accessible to all who have the dexterity in their hands to perform it, but it does not mean it is not a highly specialized skill or practice. If institutions have strict requirements about who can teach biology, history, music, or psychology then writing should be regarded in the same way. This world was shaped by great writing and well-crafted writing is what keeps society moving forward in every way imaginable, so it is really disheartening to know academics do not take writing as serious as they should. Just imagine a society that without the great contributions to the study of feminism by writers such as bell hooks or Angela Davis. Writing is where a significant amount of our knowledge comes from whether it is in book or digital form. We then use that written knowledge from across all disciplines and genres to help guide us through the world we live in, just like Aladdin showed Jasmine.