If you really wanted to know why I exiled myself from the south, just take a quick look at this.
posted by Jeff 5/01/2003
Writing Beneath the Curriculum
Does anyone think that students' poor writing skills might be a result of the ideological cleansing of thought and language from textbooks? It might be hard to make a direct link, but when discovery and discussion are sacrificed for the sake of feelings then we are perhaps producing minds that won't be able to survive the rigors of the real world, much less produce writing that is clear and concise. "Critical thinking" has been the rally cry of educators for years, but how can a student approach critical thought from subjects that are neutral, that possess no intellectual stimulation? Or could it be that the very words "critical" and "stimulation" have been removed from all textbooks in order not to cause undue excitement amongst the masses?
In the mid-90s I served a two-year tour of duty as a writing consultant (nee tutor) in a university writing center (nee lab). While we catered to all levels of writing, it seemed that we were there to help freshmen prepare for the uber-essay: an essay exam that every student had to take and pass in order to move on to what essentially became English 102. There was no clepping it; it was pass or fail. A student had three hours, the test was administered on a Saturday morning (twice a semester), and one could fail it twice before the dreaded remedial assignment was meted out. Students had no idea what the topic would be, but they were given general guidelines on what to expect. Add to this that the particular university in question had instituted some strict composition policies in which the standard "Intro (thesis)/body/conclusion" essay had been ruled antiquated and replaced by a more organic form of the essay and what resulted was an unmitigated mess. Many of the students failed because they could not adjust to the nonstandard (nonprogrammed) form of writing. An even larger percentage failed because they lacked the ability to simply formulate an essay in the given amount of time. In other words, they couldn't produce the thoughts needed or the language necessary to place them in a college level English class.
Ultimately, the university abandoned the strict essay test in favor of the traditional 101 then 102 method. Some said the university caved to political pressure--the dean or chancellor's cousin by marriage failed--or simply saw the inherent futility in such a test when nearly two-thirds of first-time examinees could not pass it. I believe they kept the essay as a part of the English 101 requirement, but I'm not sure; by then I'd high-tailed it to the world of corporate publishing where we make it our goal to water down good old-fashioned thought with just what we want you to know (and get rich by doing it). Ain’t capitalism grand?
