Let’s Return to Teaching Students How to Argue
We hear all the time that America is hopelessly polarized, that the electronic landscape allows us to stay in our own hermetically-sealed communities, and that no one can speak with…
Posts tagged with
“writing”
Are English Departments Really Dying?
In an earlier millennium, yours truly undertook graduate studies in history and persisted a couple of years before getting cold feet. Some new PhDs could not find academic positions; some…
A Popular Fiction Genre is Unreadable Garbage. Blame Colleges.
Over the last several years, a burgeoning new genre has put the book-watching world on notice. “New Adult,” a coinage first used by St. Martin’s Press in 2009, refers to…
A Book Full of Advice for High School and College Grads
America’s education establishment beams out a message to young people like a pulsar: Go to college! A high percentage of them do. Once the students are enrolled, however, the schools…
College Writing Courses Are in Trouble, But This Isn’t the Solution
Freshman composition occupies a unique position in a college curriculum. It is the only class required of about 90 percent of enrollees whose diverse aptitudes and prior writing experience present…
The Forgotten Man We Need Now for College Writing Reform
Academia has a long history of ignoring original minds who push their fields forward. There was the monk Gregor Mendel, who experimented with cross-breeding peas in his monastery garden. His…
How Much of an Effect Do University Writing Programs Have?
The list of top-rated college writing programs is dominated by private institutions. But North Carolina State University is one of only a few public universities to break through. It is…