What Happened to Writing?

The U. S. Department of Education continues to find that writing skills are lacking in students. This trend is not confined to the United States, but is turning up throughout the industrialized world. Indeed, corporations spend several million dollars annually trying to improve their employees writing skills.

Corporate human resource directors are also finding those skills are not where they need to be. Cover letters are weak, sagging beneath the weight of needless words, grammatical mistakes, and questionable logic. Not being able to fill out a job application properly is the proverbial kiss of death for would-be employees, said one human resource director to the National Commission on Writing.

College admission officers are saying the same thing about application essays. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standards, by the end of high school, 22% of students are below basic standards in writing, 78% are at or above basic standards, 22% are at or above proficient and 1% are advanced writers. The standards encourage first-rate organizational skills, convincing and elaborated responses

to tasks assigned, and use of rich, evocative and compelling language. Those standards set a high bar with only 22% of all high school seniors able to meet it.  

It’s easy to figure out what happened to writing. It simply isn’t taught in most schools. Adults can’t write because they’ve never had to. The only way to learn how to write is by doing it, which includes making errors and then correcting them. Standards need to be raised in schools, which include the art of writing and its inherent disciplines. More papers need to be assigned in schools requiring original ideas rather than teaching students how to take tests.

The importance of verbal and writing skills in this information age cannot be stressed enough. The reward of disciplined writing is the most valuable job attribute of all: a mind equipped to think. Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many.

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