Why They Can’t Write
For well over 150 years in the US, some group has regularly noted that “kids today can’t write.” Each moment of literacy crisis in the US has been met by some large-scale project to fix it, and each one has left parents, teachers, government officials, and educational reformers wringing their hands, while teachers look around, wondering “why didn’t you just ask us?” If these seasonal crises are to be believed, no one in the US has ever been able to write well.
Of course, that’s not remotely true, and John Warner’s recent book Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (2018) asks us to slow down our periodic ranting to explore what young writers/composers do well, and what gets in the way of their being successful at the various writing tasks we set for them. If you’re interested in thinking about how many of our current practices collude with doom-and-gloom narratives to further prevent young people from writing effectively, then we invite you to join our Spring 2020 Book Group as we read and explore together some of these issues.
Reviewers Write:
Why They Can’t Write dissects the underlying causes of why so much writing instruction fails in the American system and it provides tested, practical solutions for doing better. The book is more than a how-to-teach guide, however. It diagnoses several important structural problems in American education, including standardized testing, the allure of educational fads, the abuses of technology-driven solutions, and cruel working conditions for teachers.
I wanted direction on how to better teach writing, and I got it—sample assignments that I can tweak to fit my classroom and discipline in marvelous ways. But I got so much more. I closed the book feeling energized and motivated to go back to the classroom and make changes. In fact my first reaction, as I finished, was ‘I have to go write about this!’ Which so perfectly encapsulates so much of what John would like to see us do as learners that I couldn’t help but laugh.
Articulates a set of humanist values that could generate rich new classroom practices and, one hopes, encourage teachers, parents, and policymakers to rethink the whole idea of School and why it matters to a society. Warner is pragmatic, not programmatic, and hopeful without being naïve… I hope teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States read his trenchant book. We are the reformers we have been waiting for.
LA Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/students-want-to-write-well-we-dont-let-them/
John Warner’s Website: https://www.johnwarnerwriter.com/why-they-cant-write