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December 7, 2023,
Human beings have been uniquely endowed with complex language abilities, and thus the written word holds a sacrosanct position in our academy. The writing process is the most labor-intensive task that we ask students and teachers to engage in - not only in terms of time, but effort. Writing is difficult to do well, to teach, and to assess. More than any other assignment, writing demands the most energy and creativity from our students. Likewise, teachers must spend enormous amounts of time preparing lessons and then providing meaningful feedback. A mere five minutes per paper per week is eight hours of Saturday work for a teacher. A second draft doubles the load. At many schools, even good teachers rarely bother. The results show, as more and more schools de-emphasize this hard-won skill and as students rely more and more on AI.
Only a quarter of America's 12th-graders, a National Assessment of Educational Progress found, can write tolerable essays. Only about 2% create the kind of stimulating prose that makes reading worthwhile. These trends are, unfortunately, still heading in the wrong direction and it’s a shame. The sheer difficulty proves the importance of writing well, as those who do not engage in the writing process are also stunting academic and moral growth. Flannery O’Connor, maybe the 20th century’s foremost writer of fiction said, “I write to know what I think.” The value and supremacy of writing to crystallize our own rationale thought has been understood since antiquity. Frances Bacon put it this way, “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” In short, better writers are generally better thinkers for having gone through the writing process.
I am thankful that Scottsdale Prep still hold to a standard of writing that produces reflective and insightful young men and women of confidence and accomplishment rather than giving into the temptation to travel the easier road, which harms students. Our tradition and our teachers understand that writing is learned by writing – and making errors – and correcting errors. There is no easy substitute for the hard work involved. Modern author, Octavia Butler, in speaking to this process put it bluntly, “You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing garbage and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.”
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