[Englecturers] Fwd: NY Times Article

[englecturers at lists.ucr.edu]

Hello Everyone,

I have a number of responses to this article.  First, I generally agree with what I think is its principal sentiment, that all students should receive rigorous instruction in the types of writing they are likely to use in their professional lives.  That notion seems pretty self-evident.  We need on this and every campus a concerted effort to teach writing.

Second, I have a few doubts about details.  First, I believe the author simplifies writing instructors' doubts about teaching writing.  He claims, "The English teachers, however, have other ideas. The group questioned the validity of the tests and trotted out the condescending notion that requiring poor and minority students to write in standard English is unfair because of their cultural backgrounds and vernacular languages."  I think the National Council of Teachers of English (I hope, anyway; correct me otherwise) would maintain that testing students in business or professional English is unfair if they haven't been taught it, not that students cannot learn vernaculars of English other than their families'.  Furthermore, I think many would say that we should teach the professional vernacular without belittling students' own languages and vernaculars.  

I mean, oofda, in Minnesoeta, we doen't talk like all de odder foeks, but as Sven says, "I might be dumb, but I ain't so stoopid."  Nor are any other students, nor their parents.

The author also mischaracterizes standardized tests and "on demand writing" (in the parlance of our time).  The fabled newly hired "analyst from a top-tier college" won't ever need to write a twenty-minute essay on secrecy with no chance of revision.  While being able to quickly draft a cogent argument is undoubtedly a skill, one I'm current practicing (I hope), few reports need to be so written.

Finally, I suspect that weak writing skills have always plagued a high percentage of the US population, but this weakness hasn't been evident because of anti-egalitarian social structures.  Who cared if slaves, migrant workers, farmers, or factory employees could write? (except for the slaves, migrant workers, farmers, and factory employees).  The business men with poor writing skills could always hire very intelligent women to fix their errors, since the very intelligent women were barred from holding executive posts.

Now, however, decentralized mass communication, still based on the written word, has exposed inherent flaws in our system at the same time that we actually need to educate all of our citizens.  We should respond to the task with a fervor reminiscent of the Scottish Protestant literacy drives in the wake of widely available Bibles.  Writing skills contribute to increased quality of life across the economic and social spectrum.  They are, to continue a religious allusion, our students' economic and cultural salvation.  (They don't hurt students' spiritual quests either, by the way, and I think human spiritual quests are important.)

Finally, let me encourage people to sign their listserv posts.  I'm worried about the irresponsibility of unsigned posting and the underlying fear that causes people to post unsigned opinions.  I propose first we as lecturers in the department vow to hear each others' unpopular opinions, respond politely, and, most important, protect each other from institutional threats.  The Senate Faculty are largely cowed, it seems, especially those without tenure.  We do have a union contract, and more critically, we can have a community that takes care of its members.

Sorry for the length of my post, but evidently I'm able to write again.  It feels good.

--- 
--- Benjamin Harder
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