Everybody, inside and outside the academy, seems to acknowledge the fact that college students and graduates cannot write very well.  The problem here is not just that they’ve spent anywhere between $50,000 and $200,000 to learn how to do it, among other things.  The other problem is that almost all of us have to write in our work, and when our writing is bad, we look like idiots.  We have to write emails, we write presentations, we write memos and handouts for meetings, we write résumés, we write cover letters, we write proposals, we write letters to colleagues.  A few spelling or grammatical errors can be forgiven – its for it’s, for example – but the truth is, and I always tell my writing students this: when you make a spelling or grammar mistake that your reader usually doesn’t make, your reader will consider himself more intelligent than you.  This doesn’t help your reputation at work.  And when you make a style or composition mistake – e.g., incomprehensible transitions, an abrupt conclusion, forgetting to state your point as early as possible – your reader just walks away thinking you don’t make sense, or don’t make it very well. So, as a group, students and graduates can’t write, but they need to.  William Major, an English professor, says much of the blame really does fall with English professors.  Because as a group, they idolize the teaching of literary theory and laugh at the teaching of writing.  They make all the graduate students and part-timers do it.

The English professor rarely teaches freshman writing courses because it is beneath her to have to worry over catchy introductions, pithy thesis statements, and thoughtful conclusions. Certainly she cannot be bothered by grammar and form, except briefly and in passing. There is a workman-like quality to the teaching of writing; it is as close to blue-collar as you can get in the liberal arts classroom. In my first tenure-track job at a community college I taught a five and five load, four of which were composition classes (far too many, to be sure). I felt like Lucy in the candy factory. We’re English professors; why work up a sweat?

Richard Weaver, author of Ideas Have Consequences and English professor at the University of Chicago, insisted on teaching freshman writing courses.  Would that all lauded professors would stoop so low.  Maybe America’s college students would appreciate writing if they could tell that their most talented professors did, too.