Academic

The Cure for Bad Writing Skills?

By Calvin Massey

  Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, has written an essay challenging the full-time, tenured professoriate to take on the tough, unrewarding task of teaching basic grammar and composition skills to college freshman.  I have no quarrel with that proposition, but I wonder what all those elementary and secondary school teachers are doing.  Why aren't fourth graders learning the basics of grammar, fifth graders constructing paragraphs with topic sentences, and so on?  Could it be that these teachers are too busy defending their union turf?  Or maybe the teachers can't write either, having themselves been educated by television-addled teachers.  Perhaps a bit more choice in the K-12 education market would improve matters, as another essayist urges here.  Both essays are from the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy and are posted on Minding the Campus.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 12, 2008 (boomark / email).