Drifting Along with the Rambling Tumbleweeds

I don't know how many of you know this, but I have been doing some freelance editing/writing since I graduated. I guess that was kind of my "big dream" from forever ago, and since I didn't get the "professional" experience most places wanted to hire me permanently, I decided to get my own experience. I have mostly done things for people I know. It's been really great! I've done papers, a book, chapters for an anthology, dissertations, theses, and even done some technical writing.

My thesis focused a lot on literacy. It's a HUGE topic, and there really isn't a general consensus on what it means to be literate. You can ask a million questions about it, like literate in what respect? Literate to what end? Literate in what genre? Literate regarding written material? Literate regarding your ability to perform in a technical world (that's for you, Shawna)? Literacy has become a VAST and BROAD topic in America. And it is fairly controversial on all fronts. However, as I have edited student papers and even professional papers that professionals have written and feel are ready for and worthy of publication, I find myself thinking that there is a need to emphasize and focus on academic literacy. Literacy in its most basic sense could be just the ability to read and write. Literacy in an academic sense would be the ability to read and write (i.e. converse and communicate) in an academic setting. In fact, if I were to do my thesis again, I would focus on this. I think that this specification is what was missing from my thesis to connect all the dots and get one committee member in particular off my back! ;0) Still . . .

I am surprised that you can graduate with an M.A. in English without ever having taken a grammar course. In fact, the only grammar course I took was Advanced Grammar in the T.E.S.L. (Teaching English as a Second Language) curriculum. And that class was not a required course for me to take. I don't consider myself the all-knowing on all things grammatical. Just reading this blog entry should more than demonstrate that. However, that's okay in this setting because of my purpose and my audience. I'm not writing for an academic audience. I'm not writing to convey an academic idea. I am not citing sources or trying to prove anything. I am just writing stream-of-consciousness venting ;-D. So I can get away with imperfection here. However, the papers I am editing are written in and published for an academic audience. And the message is often lost in the delivery. In fact, in some instances I wonder if the author even read over the work being produced or simply threw it together and expected to have some sort of license because of his/her title, reputation, etc.

That is what I find so amazing. People are graduating, even writing papers as professors in their fields, without having a knowledge of how to manipulate and work the English language in order to communicate an idea to a specific audience without losing that audience in all of their contextual and grammatical errors (including but not limited to run-on sentences; dangling modifiers; lack of cohesion and, sometimes, coherence; lack of parallelism in lists, etc.). And yet, perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps what is missing is not a knowledge of HOW to do this but an accountability for applying that knowledge. Though I am thankful for the paycheck I get every once in a while to correct these mistakes, I would much rather have my faith restored in the Educational System and its ability to EDUCATE and hold people responsible for applying, not just acquiring, that education.

My sister would be one, as many of the rest of you probably are, to disagree with me. Or at least she would say that she herself cannot do what I say needs done. Why does she feel this way? Not because she isn't very bright and capable but because the system has failed her. It has decided that it isn't necessary to focus on such things, that the general public cannot learn such things, that it is only haughty intellectuals and purists that would ever suggest such a thing is necessary, and that it is just a waste of time, as study after study has "proven," to even try to educate the "general" academic public regarding such things.

Still today, two years after my thesis defense, I hear these arguments and see them as nothing more than society's way of not being accountable for its past actions while simultaneously being unwilling to just accept responsibility for and admit to having made mistakes. In all fairness, I guess that's what an emphasis on Writing Across the Curriculum is trying to accomplish; yet there are still so few who adopt and apply that practice. I don't know; I just don't know. And I don't want to join the ranks of those who point fingers without offering solutions; but acknowledging a problem must always come first. I guess I just come back to monitoring what is taught in my home and to my children in their schools. Sometimes that's really the best you can do anyway.