Why learn to write?
Writing as self-discovery
Happy New Year, readers! I hope you’ve been warm and cozy, as I have. I’m rested, and glad to be back.
It’s a long-standing tenet of higher education, at least in the liberal arts tradition that has shaped general education requirements as we know them, that writing is foundational to a college education. Even my dad, who was at the University of Minnesota in what was then called the Institute of Technology studying chemistry, had to take what was then called “freshman English”: a foundational course on the mechanics and practice of writing.
But why? How often do we stop to answer that question for students in clear and direct ways? In a faculty e-mail discussion last fall of how AI is breaking changing everything,1 one of my colleagues (a mathematician) asked:
Reading this thread and attending the [faculty] meeting made me think we have given the students the reasons not to use AI, but what I think is missing (and I’m sure some of you do) is an apology for writing.
Why write? Why is it (paraphrasing Martha Stewart) “A Good Thing”? What is the value in learning to write?
I would love to hear the points you give to students on why writing is important, beautiful, a thing of value.
It’s an important question, and my colleague is right to ask it. Students need to hear the answer clearly, loudly, and continually, or they won’t put in the work needed to develop as the thinkers and communicators we need.
Students want to talk about it, too. In my experience conversing with them, students are aware and cautious about how generative AI use could harm them, and that’s good, but AI has made it so much easier to take shortcuts in a pinch that the temptation is sometimes irresistible. Without clear and frequent reminders of the value of the practices we ask them to engage in, they’re missing the keystone that holds up the educational edifice.
I realize that posting about this on Substack is preaching to the choir, but for reasons that will become clear, I think it’s still worth doing.
The human value of writing
Here’s what I wrote to the faculty discussion list in response to my colleague’s question.
My shortest answer is that writing is thinking, and if thinking is valuable, then so is writing. Let’s assume for the moment that thinking is valuable and that students agree with this. Then the answer to why learn to write can be broken down along the following lines (not necessarily in order of importance).
First, having a record of what you’ve said allows you to review it in a way you can’t in conversation, and this allows better revision as you go and provides a more stable foundation for moving forward.
Second, it’s slower, and therefore potentially more careful, clear, and thorough, than thinking to yourself or even in dialogue with others.
Third, it solidifies what you know, makes connections within the writing and to external ideas, and uncovers gaps in knowledge.
Fourth, well-written communication helps others understand you and thus builds connection with others that can further individual and collective projects.
Fifth, it’s an excellent exercise of our cognitive powers—both logical and creative—and while that’s work, done well it can be very fulfilling work; sometimes it’s just good to exercise our physical or mental power simply for the sake of doing so.
Returning to my basic answer, however, you might be tempted to ask on behalf of our students why we/they should learn to think. Aristotle might answer (in keeping with point 5 above) that the exercise of our rational and creative abilities is a realization of human potential, thereby contributing to the unique kind of flourishing that we’re capable of as humans. Probably this kind of answer won’t resonate with many of our students, though. A more gripping answer might be that life will throw you problem after problem, and you’ll need to be able to think both rationally and creatively in order to solve them. Even if solving them doesn’t itself involve writing, the practice of writing makes you a better thinker, and thus a better problem solver.
As I’ve thought about this since then, I would add three more ideas:
Sixth, writing is connection with other humans, pulling your own thoughts together in a way that enlightens the intended audience. Reading what others have written can often change us, and though we often don’t connect with the author in person, we frequently say we’re moved or inspired by something we’ve read. People get meaning from sharing thoughts with one another, on both ends of the process.
Seventh, writing involves carving out just one subject at a time and making connections among them like beads on a thread, a through line stringing together complete thoughts that touch at facets. The “bird’s-eye” view taken by a writer is both analytic and synthetic, breaking things apart and then recombining them with new understanding.
Eighth, writing can be a way to get through and not avoid difficult things, process emotions, and build resilience. Keeping a journal or composing a memoir is something like the Penseive from Harry Potter: you’re siphoning off a thought to keep elsewhere so that you can look at it again at another time and in another light, or can offer your experience to others (see also point six, connection).
Another humanities colleague wrote this response to the mathematician’s question:
The human world around us is the product of around 2.5 million years of creativity. Every moment we sit down to write is a singular opportunity to think ideas that have not been thought and write words that have not been written. AI combs the internet for what are the most common words already formulated by others on a given topic. A gift of human life is the discovery of our own ideas and words. Our mission is to cultivate the habit of creation, giving form to the previously unimagined, and scripting lives that belong to us.
“A gift of human life is the discovery of our own ideas and words.” Writing offers us the development of the self.
Capital-W writing and small-w writing
In these answers, both my colleague and I are tacitly assuming a certain kind of or purpose for writing, probably because both of us are writers. We’re looking at the act of writing from an internal perspective, treating it as an introspective process that is at least as much for the sake of the writer as it is for the audience. We’re thinking of Writing with a capital W, a practice, a craft, a vocation.
Many pieces of written communication are probably not Writing with a capital W, however, and I suspect we should consider the possibility of a distinction. My colleague suggests that writing offers the development of the self. But it seems to me that much of the day-to-day writing I do is not important in this way: it’s small-w writing. As a department chair I can think of reports I’m asked to provide that I regard as perfunctory hoop jumping and a waste of my time. My life would be better without them. At least some of that is the required form of the reports, not always the substance; if I squint, I think I can see the value in the exercise of reviewing whatever subject matter they require (e.g. what the department has accomplished in a year). But what about memos, meeting agendas, presentations about new policies or initiatives, and so on? It’s hard to see this self-development thesis applying to these utilitarian sorts of communication, though I suppose we can’t rule it out entirely.
The value in these easily-complained-about pieces of small-w writing seems to be less in the self-development of the writer and more in the value it has for the audience. Organization, tone, and wording are all important; this kind of writing can be done better or worse. It requires skill, including the ability to imagine and empathize with the intended audience. It’s thus still very human and much worth learning, to my mind. Employers certainly want people who have this skill. But I’m not sure it fits in the self-development category in quite the same way as many of the answers above assume.
So. My answers mix practical and intrinsic value. I suspect the practical value has more grip on college students, but the point is that we shouldn’t lose sight of the very human intrinsic value of writing as well, which my colleague pointed out with such sparkling clarity. I’ll grudgingly concede that when the product is what matters—getting information from one person to another, e.g. in a memo or report—it’s possible that having an AI produce the artifact loses nothing of value and could be acceptable.2 But very often it’s the process that really matters, and sometimes even the act of writing a report about a project solidifies and modifies the author’s understanding of it. That is why we should learn to write.
See this piece from The Conversation about a middle ground between a writing apocalypse and total AI integration. “In this context, texts that display originality, voice and stylistic intention are likely to become even more meaningful within the media landscape[.] …The work of writers, journalists and intellectuals will not become superfluous simply because much of the web is no longer written by humans.”
All else held equal. Which it isn’t, when you consider the copyright and environmental issues.
Over the course of my teaching career it dawned on me that my students had rarely, if ever, thought about or discussed these aspects/experiences of writing and that, almost universally, the purpose of learning to write was to get good grades on school assignments. Even in writing courses the focus was on doing the writing in the course for some future payoff (what I came to think of as a system of "indefinite future reward").
The thing is that students are eager to have these bigger conversations.
It's very interesting how writing really is almost a kind of super-thinking. Like our thoughts in our heads are often so vague and we can only hold so many ideas at once, but you put them down on paper and they kind of crystallise into something you can return to and see exactly what you were thinking previously to build off of it. It's probably not obvious to non-writers, but I never fully know what I am going to write (and think) about a topic until I've written it.
I think it's especially important not to give away the task of writing to the machines, because those points where we struggle to express ourselves aren't just us trying to find the words for what we want to say, they're us figuring out *what* we want to say. They're crucial decision points, and it's by struggling with them that we get a deeper feel for the problems and a stronger understanding of our own thoughts.
Great post!