Writing: When the Pressure Is Off

When I was in grad school, I was exposed to a book titled Uptaught by Ken Macrorie. It’s out-of-print now, but it was one of the most influential books I ever read on the subject of how to teach writing. (To see the rest of this post, click “Read More” below.)



This assumes that writing can be taught to begin with, for I firmly believe that the best writing teachers are mentors, nothing more. Every student must find his or her own way. But that is exactly what this book was about.

The book’s thesis was very simple: stop telling kids what to write about. Let students choose their own subject matter within very broad parameters. And go easy on the grading (not that commentary should be avoided altogether). What incentive is there for a kid to do better when he or she is told that intimate thoughts are trash?

Macrorie, a professor at the University of Michigan, obtained the following results after several years of departing from the traditional writing curriculum: as if by magic, students didn’t make nearly as many grammatical mistakes; organization seemed to take care of itself; and the writing was fresh, descriptions were vivid. The students stopped writing dull essays, what Macrorie called “Engfish,” a word that occasionally cropped up in “regular” writing assignments. He found that when students were genuinely interested in a topic, many of the rules took care of themselves. I think this applies to writers of all ages.

The lesson is simple. Real writing doesn’t come from a textbook. It comes from inspiration. Traditional writing courses are similar to teaching kids to never color outside the lines. (The Anti-Coloring Book encourages children to form some of the picture lines themselves.) Such courses produce conformity, not creativity. Rules there must be … but I’m suspicious of most of them.