The Write Stuff
A recent article on The Huffington Post discusses a growing concern in higher education: how should we teach writing? What should our students learn? I think that author and professor Joseph Smigelski makes some excellent points about the teaching of writing in college.
He describes a student who cannot understand how to write an essay outside of the standard five-paragraph formula that we learn in elementary and middle school. He observes that many students seem unable to conceptualize a piece of writing that does not follow this general organization. He is concerned that this is about more than an inability to think outside the proverbial box—it reflects an inability to think. Or as I would put it, think independently or organically.
As a writing advisor at Oxy, I definitely saw this problem many times. It’s actually really hard to break out of that formula once it’s been drilled into our heads since we were single-digit years old—I struggled with it myself and worked with several students who had great ideas but could not take them from the starter structure to a more advanced, college-level structure. I agree with Smigelski that by implying that the beginning of learning the writing process is, in a way, the end, we risk limiting students’ capacity to develop their own unique writing styles that start with organic thought processes. I worked with students who would literally say that they had such-and-such idea for a paper but couldn’t fit it into the traditional structure—totally frustrating! I’m a huge proponent of freewriting, brainstorming, and any other term that basically refers to working out ideas and questions on paper, unfettered from restricting formulas that were never meant to constrain our individual thoughts.
Smigelski’s article made me think of a related issue in higher education today: literature, or the lack thereof. I really, really, really wish that I’d taken more than one literature class in college. And I really, really, really wish that my college had somehow required it. While I appreciate the “box” approach to college requirements (i.e. checking off something in each box/category instead of requiring an identical curriculum for everyone), I feel that it let me get away with an insufficient literary education. I took one English literature class and a few Spanish literature classes (que fueron magníficas) but I regret not taking a class that would have exposed me to some specific genre of classic literature, be it Twain or Tolstoy. I love to read and I firmly believe that no matter what a student’s academic interests may be, everyone’s writing and critical thinking skills can benefit from literary discussion. So I agree with much of what Smigelski said even if my own experience leaves me regretting something he does not include.
Moreover, the main way that my college evaluated writing was with a graded essay at the end of our freshman year after two semesters of writing-based “core classes” on topics from across the academic spectrum. Again, while I appreciate the individual choice that this system permitted, I know that more emphasis could have been put on the actual art of writing. I loved both of my core classes, but I think of them largely in terms of their subject matter rather than as writing courses. A simple test that, honestly, wasn’t that hard to pass cannot shed light on this issue.
While I don’t agree with all of Smigelski’s anecdotes and evidence for his argument, I do agree that universities need to teach writing in a way that values individual thought and reflection over the systematic approach that so many of us learn early in life. It serves a purpose—getting the ball rolling, learning a semblance of structure—but professors need to push it aside in favor of varied writing techniques that allow students to develop their own critical thought and analysis abilities.
PS: I strongly recommend headings as a way of organizing a longer paper without interrupting its flow. Just saying.
How did your college approach the teaching of writing? What would you change?
