Today's journal entry should consist of a reflection on what Emig says about "Writing as a Mode of Thinking" in light of what Gallagher has told us (Chapter 1, Chapter 2 about the state of students' writing in today's schools.

First, Gallagher’s doom and gloom scenario should be heavily salted before consumption. Her stats simply aren’t credible when considered in conjunction with reality. I work with students from every socio-economic and achievement level while teaching SAT prep classes. If it were even remotely close to true that “compositions of longer than a paragraph…were infrequent” in high school, half or more of my students would struggle to complete a simple five-paragraph essay. In fact, almost none of my students (fewer than five percent, at a guess) have difficulty producing an essay, including the low income Hispanic and recent Korean immigrants with relatively limited English skills. I’m not sure where her CAHSEE numbers are coming from, but by 2005, over 85% of students passed all sections of the CAHSEE, and statewide in 2007, 91% of graduating seniors passed.

Furthermore, Gallagher’s distaste for the students and teachers who don’t share her values bleeds through too much to enjoy her rhetoric. She admits that her behavior may have been a “bit less than tactful” when she demanded confirmation that her students’ teachers had been so neglectful as to not assign any writing exercises, but in truth, she tells the story because she enjoys relating how she called them on the carpet, given her resentment at what she perceives to be extra work for her. Adam, a student so “lazy” that (according to her) he couldn’t be bothered to use “and” instead of an ampersand is, by virtue of his low moral qualities, not believable. She compares her workload to the student with the “senior stroll” and resents the fact that he does so much less than she does and resolves to even the load.

That said, while I disagreed with her values and her data, her teaching methods seem sound. I certainly don’t disagree that our schools would do well to integrate writing throughout the curriculum, and certainly we can do more to help students be comfortable expressing their thoughts and building arguments in written form.

Janet Emig performed a groundbreaking study on composition and is considered one of the founders of “process” composition. Her essay, “Writing as a Mode of Learning”, raises important issues about the pedagogic, developmental value of writing. My father, brother, and son suffer from dysgraphia, and only my son was able to reach his academic potential (in large part because I knew of the disorder and my brother’s experience with it). While I’m not entirely supportive of the ”process” method of composition, Emig’s arguments for the value of writing as a learning construct can’t be disputed.

If I were designing school curriculum, writing would be entirely separated from English literature/reading, whereas now the two are inseparable. Many students who have no interest in Shakespeare or Huck Finn—or at least, aren’t interested in writing about either—could discover their writing voice by expressing their thoughts on current events, science, history, or other subjects beyond literature.