Gerald Graff

COMPLAINTS THAT American high school and college graduates can’t write have been pervasive for so long that they almost go without saying. Last year, when the Society for Human Resource Management asked managers about the skills of recent college graduates, 49 percent of them rated those graduates deficient in “the knowledge and basic skill of writing in English” (Goodbaum). A few years earlier, in 2006, a survey sponsored by the Conference Board posed the same questions to human resource professionals, and 81 percent of them judged high school graduates deficient in written communications, 47 percent of them said the same of two-year college graduates, and 28 percent of four-year college graduates.

A 2012 survey of employers by the Chronicle of Higher Education concluded, “When it comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are lacking most in written and oral communication skills.” More bad news comes from the standardized test universe—for instance, the SAT exam, which added a writing component in 2006. Since then, the national average has dropped every year except 2008 and 2013, when it was flat. (The 2012 SAT reading result marked the lowest figure since 1972.) In the 2013 administration of the ACT exam, only 64 percent of the 1.8 million test takers achieved a “college-ready” score in English.

On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam in writing (the “Nation’s Report Card”), only 24 percent of twelfth-graders reached “Proficient.” The findings of these surveys and tests are often framed as a national crisis. Bad writing means lower productivity in the workplace, and it also spells deteriorating discourse in the civic sphere. Since the quality of our writing reflects the quality of our thinking, slovenly writing breeds weak citizens—people who are slow to see through propaganda and nonsense, unable to detect contradictions, and poor at grasping the implications of consequential policy choices…

(2015-05-22). The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism
(Kindle Locations 1027-1044). Templeton Press. Kindle Edition.