There is nothing fishy about college

Professor Stanley Fish, who is a retiree of the University of Illinois in Chicago, writes a blog for the New York Times. On September 7th, 2009 he wrote a blog titled “What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3.” In this work he states that the most important thing to know for college level writing is sentence structure. I somewhat agree with him and what it is that believes. However I believe that you cannot write a successful paper without collaboration. If you do not know how to teach collaboration you can read an article written by Robert J. Garmston.

The reason why I believe that is that I watched eight videos of tutoring sessions at The Ohio State University at Newark campus. There were also videos from Columbus State Community College.  While I watched these video’s at the Writer’s Studio, the tutor who was working with me is Brewster. The majority of these videos mentioned something about another point of view, or reading out loud, or even having a friend read your writing to get feedback. But the most common thing they were doing was brainstorming. Now when you brainstorm you are thinking about something from the past that you have already learned. So you are using another source. You don’t just magically come up with ideas without having something else start the process.

In Fish’s article he sates “By all the evidence, high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all.” I truly agree with him here. When I look back I don’t remember having to write papers or anything like that really. It was mainly grammar and punctuation. In college those things are important but there not that important when you first start. I believe that the most important thing in college level writing is not doing solo work.

Large group of tutees studying with a tutor. 

One of the sessions I watched was of the tutor Brittany and the tutee Shawn.  Brittany said “no one writes in a vacuum, it is important to share your writing ideas with others.” This is completely correct. By collaborating with a classmate it can help you get ideas. And those ideas can help build your confidence and with that you might build a friendship. With the friendship you might have a better chance in getting a higher grade. It can also help you have someone to go over the assignments and review each other’s work. The benefits can be great.

Schools need to have higher standards

Fishes statement “By all the evidence, high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all.” This is true with what he believes and what I believe. In high school and middle school they focus too much on your grammar and not enough on teaching you how to be a successful writer. They do not prepare you enough for undergraduate school. I think the reason why they do that is because they have too strict of standards that that have to teach, that are not that oriented towards college. If the standards were better oriented towards college the students would be better more prepared for college.

How I feel right now!

My personal experience I went to Norwayne Local schools and I also attended Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (also known as E.C.O.T.) In both cases the standards were not towards college at all. They were just trying to teach the basics and that’s all. I believe that I personally would have been better suited for college if they cared more. So based on my experience middle schools and high schools need to step up their standards. So I agree but disagree with Stanley Fish’s view.