The writer behind Post-Punk Nerd once described a big problem. His/her writing had become terrible. It was
usually short, no more than a few paragraphs…and add[ed] very little to the public discourse. I have, once, tried to write a piece deeper than the typical blog fare, but in review I find the results to be poor: the language struggles, the sentences enjamb unnaturally and it reads as if I were a mumbling street preacher. What I am trying to say is important, I don’t doubt that, but I lack the skills to say it.
I bookmarked that post and have come back to it time and again. It almost always leaves me feeling a little empty–not because it doesn’t say anything, but because the solution it poses is simultaneously elegant and impossible in my line of work. Post-Punk Blogger has decided that rather than write a whole lot of short blog posts, s/he will now focus on writing longer, deeper, harder-hitting pieces. They will be published less often, but will be of a higher quality than the typical blog writing one often sees around the Internets.
This is a great idea. Twitter and whatnot have their places, I’m sure (though I still can’t figure out why I’d want to limit myself to 140 characters about a sandwich), but my professional concern is with writing. Real writing. The kind of writing that examines and develops and spreads ideas. The kind of writing against which current school practices seem almost diametrically opposed.
Let’s take timed, in-class writing assignments as a particularly easy example. And let’s ask a very simple question: What’s the point? What is the possible educational merit behind having a roomful of students write something until the bell rings, something that will be assessed as evidence of skill at writing, or formulating ideas, or something like that?
I guess you could make the argument that it’s the kind of writing students have to do on standardized tests like CAPT or the SAT. Fine. Respect. But what else is it for? Aside from exams (in college, perhaps, or in civil service or the military), when will students have to do this kind of writing?
I know, I know, the tests exist. But where is the movement to change the tests? Rather than bitch and moan about having to prep the kids for various state exams, college entrance exams, &c., why not push for tools that actually assess skills that students will need when they enter higher education or the workforce?
I don’t know a single instance in my professional life when I’ve achieved more with the very first rough draft version of something I’ve written or created than something I’ve labored over. From budget-nag emails in my first job out of college to software manuals I’ve written to lesson/unit plans to grad school admissions essays to songs, the experience has been the same. Pushing something out for the sake of pushing it out leads to, at best, mediocre work. If we’re about teaching students that it’s better to hand in some kind of crap rather than nothing at all, we deserve what we get.
This week, my colleagues have been into talking about Turnitin.com, a very expensive subscription website that schools use to make sure their students aren’t cheating when they write papers. And fine, whatever, I have no problem with teachers who want to use it. I won’t go near Turnitin, though. The one semester I did have my students was a psychological hellride–rather than spending my time getting to know my students’ writing, I found myself hunting down every single highlighted passage in their work, rubbing my hands together with glee when I discovered an unattributed source.
If writing, especially school writing, is about playing gotcha with students, I need a new job. I don’t have the temperament for that kind of work; if I did, I’d be a detective, which would at least get me out of having to go to faculty meetings. But is it possible that there’s a way to rethink student writing, even at the high-school level, that increases students’ ability to write clearly and stylishly and makes it far less likely that they’ll cheat?
Filed under: Matters Educational, Matters Literary, Matters Political, Matters Technological
