Bob Yates wrote:
>I think at lower levels it
>is probably good for students to try to write short stories and letters
>and poems.  I teach at a university.  I don't care whether university
>graduates can write a short story, a poem, a love letter, a letter of
>thank you to a grandparent, or just any kind of expository text.
>
>I think the goal of writing instruction from high school on should be to
>provide the student with an understanding of how to make generalizations
>and support them.  This means an ability to move from the general to the
>specific and back again.

While I certainly agree that college-bound students should be trained in
academic writing, which means being able to manipulate deductive and
inductive reasoning in written form, I think it is dangerous to look at
writing instruction in high school as having one "goal." It seems to me that
the more versatile a student is with language (as a writer and a reader and
a speaker and a listener - oh, yes, and as a thinker) the better off he or
she will be after high school (college bound or not). English is not just
about writing, anyway, and I think that we tend to sometimes forget that
(partly because of that '60s research and its effects on curriculum).

If I must have a single goal, or even a main goal, as a high school English
teacher, it must be to assist my students in gaining control (I like this
word better than 'mastery') over language in all its forms. There is a life
beyond school for all of them, and they need as many skills and as much
versatility as they can muster to make those lives meaningful. Perhaps the
best thing I can do for them is to train them to think more deeply,
critically,  carefully, and creatively. Academic writing is, after all, only
one part of the wide world that our students inhabit.

Sorry if I sound too preachy, but I believe strongly in the wider vision.

Paul E. Doniger
The Gilbert School
"Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her." - G.
B. Shaw