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LV's avatar

Black guy here who loved math as a kid. Thank you for making me not regret the fact that I’m no longer young. So glad to have escaped being a pawn in this new woke madness when it would have really hurt me. Woe be unto bright, young Black children today.

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The 21st Century Salonnière's avatar

I’ve been reading these essays and becoming more and more discouraged, if I can just be blunt about it.

About ten years ago I attended a training on how to teach remedial English Comp to college freshmen, and the whole thing entailed telling us not to hold them to any expectations. Supposedly to hold them to “our” expectations was really racist and oppressive to do.

And I thought, no. That’s ridiculous. Look, I’ve never been the schoolmarm with the red pen correcting every typo and comma, because IDGAF about the smallest things (unless I’m dealing with such a great writer that those are the only things left to mention, or if I’m getting paid to edit someone’s book).

But yes, I’m gonna hold these “remedial” English Comp kids to standards, and the standards are gonna be: you decide really carefully what you think, you base it on reading and learning and facts, you think carefully about what you want to say, you plan it out, you organize it in a comprehensible way, you think about your audience (what they know and what they need to hear and how), and you follow a basic pattern of “Telling someone your main point, breaking it down into x supporting paragraphs, and summarizing what you just said.”

You teach them not to try to be fancy, or use big words. You tell them to use everyday, conversational language.

And let me tell you, pretty much everyone can learn to do that. Some kids do amazing, some kids do okay, but almost everyone who wants to learn that skill can learn it. Once you teach someone a basic formula for a college essay, they can build on that. They are much better prepared for every other class they will ever take. Period.

And so I hated and resented that stupid training 10 years ago, and I resented all the earnest well-intentioned people who thought holding kids to writing standards was some sort of racist colonizing enterprise (today it would be called “white” or “white supremacy”— but a decade ago “colonialism” was still the buzzword).

Back then I was just some old-fashioned dumbo who didn’t understand advanced ideas. Today I’d be a white supremacist.

Well-meaning people pass these terrible ideas to each other and to students. You’re basically teaching and expecting certain types of kids to fail, and teaching them that this type of failure is good, instead of teaching them the stuff that would help them get ahead in any job or career.

In my experience, kids don’t come to college as bad writers because they’re stupid, or because their “culture is different”— maybe their culture is different in some cases or in some ways, but that doesn’t make the remedial English Comp kids bad writers. They’re bad writers because no one ever taught them some basic writing skills. They’re supposed to leave your class with basic skills about how to think and how to express those thoughts.

I was really proud every time a kid who thought they couldn’t write turned out to write just fine. I don’t teach writing anymore, but I can only imagine how much worse and more toxic the environment is now, and I’m glad to be gone.

Like I said: discouraged.

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