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I actually find that most of my students are what I would consider competent writers for their age, and a significant percentage are quite good. Just about every time I give a writing assignment, I get a few back that pleasantly surprise me with their sophistication. I've been telling friends and family about a short story a student of mine recently wrote because I still can't believe that an eighth grader came up with something so deep.

As a member of that august group of citizens who graduated from high school in the 1960's, I can say that I did not write as well as that. I can't speak for my friends.

But I think that today's high school students write much worse that we did. I often have to edit or rewrite things my younger colleagues write, because they lack clarity, focus, or even standard sentence structure.

Bear in mind that most students who couldn't write like that didn't stay in high school for very long, if at all. High school wasn't for everyone back then. Only the cream of the crop went on to "high" after 8th grade graduation. It was a big deal.

There's a big trunk in Mom's attic that's full of old letters; based on that, high school kids back in the day (turn of the century) did indeed write like that.

My college students, on the other hand, write like third graders; they can't spell, and wouldn't know a subject/verb if it bit them on the. . . .well, I'd best stop now or I'll have a stroke. Sigh.

I didn't make ninth grade until the early '60s, but I doubt that sample was typical in the post-war classroom. I'm pretty sure nobody in my high school used one as a personal pronoun.

I suspect that if there were such splendid writers in the '50s they did the same things most of our splendid student writers do today: they became accountants, or morticians, or cosmetologists.

Mamacita--I've also come across a cache of old letters--this one from the late '20s--and it suggests that students were both better and worse. If those letters are any guide, the writing was more formal but also a bit prolix. Then as now, the grammar was indifferent, and the punctuation impressionistic.

The students who published in the school paper, from which Shatzky draws his examples, were probably the students who wrote best. Those students still exist. (Ask my wife, the high school English teacher, or Miss Eyre, who seems to have some good writers.)

It's also fair to remember, as you do, that many students were simply left out of the equation in the '50s--and that didn't worry people all that much. You could be a pretty lousy writer, mathematician, and who knows what else--and still make a decent living.

Linda--It may be that those splendid writers occupy all walks of life. But I've encountered many bad writers who went through school in the '50s and '60s as well.

Ah, now I see we're on the same page.

People often question me when I talk about teaching for competence or "good enough" writing, though most are not so polite as you.

Maybe other people's students are inspired to write well, but mine aren't. I've never had an English major in any of my classes. I've had one student who "loved to write" who lasted a whole semester. The bulk of my students say they don't like writing, don't think they do it well, and aspire only to write just well enough that people won't laugh at them. I set my class objectives to within the capability of those students.

I believe that (1) I'm paid to teach all students to become competent writers and (2) that nobody gets to be a good or great writer without having been a competent writer first.

My goal is to bring every student to what I call C-level: competent enough to get by in the writing situations they will typically encounter in school and work. If I can get every student up to competence, most of them will become better-than-competent writers with practice, even without any more teaching.

Until students are competent writers they have limited ability to read good writing, let alone desire to read. My students become better readers because training in writing makes explicit the patterns that the poor reader couldn't see because s/he didn't know where to look.

Have just about finished Mr. Bauerlein's book myself. I'm also sceptical about the statistical premise, but concerned by the conclusions. Although, Mr. B seems like he could use a good dose of John Taylor Gatto!

The idea of "good enough" is intriguing, and sounds something like what we had in high school (Class of '69): different "tracks." I suppose these are now gone, in the service of equalitarianism? Do many schools still have enriched programs?

Perhaps an at least partial solution to the problem of providing competence to all and inspiration to some would be more magnet schools for the arts, sciences, etc.? It seemed to me even back when a teenager that a decent competence should have been possible with five or six years of year-round grade school. After that, let parents and kids try out different curricula at different schools.

Or does this just put the problem of "better or worse than" at another remove?