Ye Olde English… Teaching

I’ve been active on the Internet for several years now and I’ve seen my fair share of teenagers and young ‘uns posting on the Internet. I’ve often read essays written by them, looked at school newspapers, and generally observed what they write. And I’ve come to a disturbing conclusion: a significant portion of teenagers (meaning “high school students”), despite their extensive English education, still can’t write more than a few cohesive sentences.

To me, this is the result of outdated thinking on the teachers’ part.

One only has to look at America’s AP tests (which allow high school students to receive college credit for classes if they pass the AP test) to recognize the problem. There are two AP tests related to English: English Literature and English Language and Composition. The English Literature test clearly has little to do with learning to write (although I believe it may require an essay on the test). English Language and Composition at first glance seems to require one to understand the English language and the basics of composition. But this is not so.

From what I have gathered, the focus of this exam is to learn how to identify various rhetorical techniques and analyze their use; learning correct grammar and writing style is only a secondary purpose, and is often ignored in classes preparing students for the test. Instead, students learn how to identify when a writer uses anaphora and conceits, and how to appropriately structure an essay discussing this.

The trouble is that the vast majority of written communication will not be essays. It will be emails, blog posts, instant messages, and whatever else is invented in the next few dozen years. This perhaps ties back to my earlier post about “mathemagic” — the point being that rather than teaching students how to write an essay analyzing literature, we need to teach them how to write, period.

And I don’t see that being done.