By Natalie Wexler @ The Washington Post
One of my instructional heroes is the late Francis Christiansen, who controversially stated in 1963 that "We do not really teach our captive charges -- we merely expect them to." While I would humbly submit that those words remain just as true today, think this article misses the mark on a number of counts despite including a couple of salient points. Moreover, while the essential problem remains a challenge, the nature of how we go about teaching student writers and how we assess student writing has changed considerably and not necessarily to the advantage of developing its instruction. Most importantly, the whole point of view of the article is flawed, as the adage suggests, "You don't teach writing. You teach student writers."
If I work sequentially through the article here are some reactions.
First, using NAEP as metric for evidence is extremely problematic. As an assessment it is deeply suspect for more reasons than are warranted in this response. Still, when you open with that as grounds, anyone with a deeper knowledge of education should at the least raise an eyebrow.
Second, Common Core's attempts to spread writing across the curriculum is not the first attempt to do such a thing, not by a long shot. Additionally, there is nothing to suggest that it will be any more successful than previous attempts. In fact, there is no evidence yet that this attempt is even being executed. Early evidence suggests that the Common Core unnecessarily, and foolishly in my opinion, reduces the number of writing genres students are likely to be asked to write, which may harm more than help improvement of instruction.
Just because something is mandated has never meant it will work.
What's more, ill-conceived edreform attempts at standardization has increasingly led to more standardized and formulaic writing, which is not generally associated with quality on any level. As has been pointed out, failing to even entertain how high stakes standardized testing has impacted instruction, especially when instructing student writers, is a genuine dereliction.
I would support the claim that many teachers are not trained at teaching writing skill. At least my anecdotal experience would support that contention. I cannot count the number of teachers outside of an English department that have actually said aloud, "I don't teach writing. I am just looking for content." Well, the very suggestion that one department, at least above primary level, would be primarily responsible for teaching student writers seems doomed to failure. That being said, I have met no small number of English teachers that do more expecting than teaching.
Still, having spent the last decade associated with the National Writing Project, I have seen no shortage of teachers eager to learn how to teach student writers better. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of teachers craving this kind of professional development are more likely English Language Arts teachers, rather than those in the wider variety of other content areas. Yet, even I make that claim with a degree of trepidation.
I would also support the implication that all student writers need to begin learning on the sentence level first and foremost. However, to follow that point up with even the slightest suggestion that a five paragraph essay is in any way connected to good writing, either as a model, framework, or product is woefully misguided in my opinion.
In fact, I have routinely challenged students to find a five paragraph essay "in the wild" that is not written by another student. No one has ever found one. Now, there is a scant chance that one exists, but methinks it is rarer than the condor. Strangely, even Wexler's inclusion of Common Core's demand for "extended writing" negates the premise that five paragraph essays have any purchase in the discussion whatsoever.
Again, high stakes standardized testing can be called into question here too. Writing, especially essay-like writing, is almost always used exclusively as a primary assessment of learning on standardized tests. This, of course, trickles down to classroom practice where students continually face writing as a means of assessment only. And others have already stated eloquently ideas about students writing predicated on interest. I would even go one better and submit that most of what student writers are asked to write, in the form of essay assessments of their content learning, asks them to ape a level of authority that they neither have nor are likely to imitate.
Finally, Wexler's proposition "learning to write clearly requires learning to think clearly," reads nicely on the surface, but it too is terribly simplistic. Often writing is the tool of getting to clear thinking, not simply the product of it. As EM Forster beautifully captured, "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" Sadly, there is no standardized test much interested in that kind of writing -- writing as thinking instead of writing from thinking. Plus, all this reading, writing, and thinking business is awfully murky, recursive, reciprocal, and terribly difficult to parse.
Now that I may have written more than Wexler on the topic, that seems a good enough place to stop.