Kate Simpson is a full-time English professor at the Middletown, Va., campus of Lord Fairfax Community College. She saw my column about Prince George’s County history teacher Doris Burton lamenting the decline of research skills in high school, as changing state and local course requirements and grading difficulties made required long essays a thing of the past.
So Simpson gave her freshman English students a writing assignment.
Simpson noted my complaint that few American high-schoolers, except those in International Baccalaureate programs, were ever asked to do a research project as long as 4,000 words. Was I right or wrong? Did her students feel prepared for college writing? The timing was good because her classes had just finished a three-week research writing project in which they had to cite sources, do outlines, write and revise drafts.
She said she discovered that 40 percent of her 115 students thought that their high schools had not prepared them for college-level writing. Only 23 percent thought they had those writing skills. Other responses were mixed.
Will Fitzhugh has been discussing this issue for decades….
Professor Simpson found that 40 percent of her students thought that their high schools had not prepared them for college-level writing. She still had 60% of her student who did feel equipped. High school English and Social Studies teachers work with students on paragraph structure, citing sources, selecting quality sources, format, logical sequencing, outlining and revision. So many of our students do not value the craft of writing well. So many of our students do not choose to work at their writing when they are with us. What is the purpose of writing a “longer” paper? That is the question we need to be able to answer and express in a way that matters to 17 year olds. What skills and knowledge does the long paper demonstrate?
“What skills and knowledge does the long paper demonstrate?” Is this a serious question?
Maybe students “do not value the craft of writing well” because — given the way they are taught — it is nothing more than a series of seemingly disconnected classroom exercises. “This week we’ll be working on paragraph structure. Next week, citing sources. Later on, selecting quality sources.” And don’t get me started on peer editing.
I dunno, maybe the value of writing at least one long research paper in high school is to have the experience — finally — of putting all of those seemingly separate skills together in an act of sustained analysis and disciplined self-expression. But that’s just a guess.
This seems an appropriate time to give a huge “shout out” to the West High School teachers who work so devotedly to teaching good writing in such writing-intensive classes as Advanced Writing Workshop. At least the ones who guide their students through the process of writing a long research paper.