young-girl-doing-mathThe Associated Press just released a poll that said 2 in 5 parents think kids need more math in schools to help prepare them for the real world. Half that number thought kids need more English.

As a person who makes a living writing, I realize I’m a little biased. But my first question when I saw this: Are you kidding me, people?

When I need to figure out the interest I’ll pay on a car loan, I can find an online calculator in seconds. My phone has a calculator if I needed to get a quick average of a series of numbers. Everywhere you turn, you can find tools that help you with math.

The internet does not contain tools for helping you write. Sure, you can work with spelling and grammar checkers, but they’re probably 65 percent effective, and they still can’t help you write a good paragraph.

I taught college English for many years. I’d guess at least half of the students I’ve encountered had convinced themselves they were poor writers. Their reticence to write hurt their studies in any class that required writing assignments, which was almost every class, with the exception, perhaps, of math. Even science courses had lab reports to write.

In my classes, my goal was to give the students self confidence about their writing. “When you want to convince your parents that you ought to be allowed to do something,” I’d say. “You organize your thoughts, work out plausible arguments, compose your ideas…. In other words, you write a persuasive essay.”

Ok, so the analogy didn’t hit home with all the students (many had kids of their own, for gosh sakes), but I’d try to find a way to help them understand that they possessed the capability to write well. And then we’d work on giving them an understanding of the guidelines they need once they identify what they want to write. I’d say, “Once you learn all the grammar rules, you’ll have a lot more fun breaking them on purpose.”

I can’t imagine a more critical time for people to know how to write well. With email, we all write regularly. We all read on the internet. Perhaps the worries about the economy prompted parents to rate math over English, or perhaps the parents themselves devalued the study of English because they themselves have not discovered how far the ability to write can take someone.

Whatever the reason for the puzzling responses to that poll, the results make me long to teach English again to give more students the chance to feel good about their ability to read and write.