I tire as much as the next person of reading essays from snowflakes who think their short lives are profoundly interesting. But for even some top schools in the country, the ability to write coherently is shockingly absent in college first-years. So writing a personal essay is not the kind of self-indulgent fluff assignment that some people claim it is.

In my experience, most of my poor college students think they know how to write a research paper. They go on google and find some quotes and put them in their own words. They’ve flat out told me that this is what they do, and excuse their plagiarism by saying they only neglected to put everything in their own words. So I’m not impressed by the average undergrad’s ability to produce research. I’m a lot more impressed by the ability to evaulate and comment upon sources, to analyze what they read, and to know when they don’t know enough about something. That’s something you usually can’t tell from a research paper on a random subject submitted by a high school senior.

As a writing and humanities teacher myself, I shudder to think of the increased pressure on students to churn out formulaic 5PE’s. It’s based on a predictable assumption on the part of academics that the purpose of college is to create more professors.

The vast majority of the world does not read professor prose, nor want to write it. To pressure k-12 schools, parents, and students to put even more energy into this implies, to the contrary, that that’s what successful writing is. It’s not.

Personal narrative is closer to journalism and popular writing, which the world much prefers to read. Let’s keep encouraging it k-12.

It seems that so many people scream and yell at placing too much importance on test scores. Well by submitting an academic portfolio, that would definitely put the test scores into perspective. I love it!!

I also think academia puts too much pressure on kids to decide early on “what they want to be when they grow up”. I am a second career teacher and am absolutely passionate about my new vocation. But it took me until I was 35 years old to figure out what I wanted to be when I “grew up”.

Great post…

Assignments graded by the teachers…well, I guess we’d learn a lot mmore about the state of teacher standards! With no rubric to norm the assignment (not as if the personal essay has them, either), it would be difficult to compare one assignment with another.

Perhaps the personal essay could answer a philosophical question, moral dilemma, or practical problem — that way there would be some indication of the student’s depth, creativity, and complexity of thought.

Requiring a research paper would be a much better way of judging college readiness but it also would further disadvantage students who don’t get good college-prep instruction. Of course, these kids are in bad shape in any case.