The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, western Massachusetts, has mounted a comprehensive exhibit of the nudes of impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It’s impossible to see these paintings and sculptures in a public setting without some complicated feelings. I’ve never visited an impressionist art exhibit with a content warning before. I visited The Clark this weekend. (If…
Today’s question is from an academic who’s being forced to use a colleague’s terrible materials in his course. I’ve got six ideas on how to fix the handiwork of Professor Writewrong. Can you do better? Here’s the note I got: Dear Dr. Wobs I’m a college professor and I like to think a decent writer….
Isi, my teenager, is a college student taking calculus. The teacher is assigning homework from Knewton, an online learning system. I’ve been helping with the homework. Now I can see why computers can’t teach college courses — and why tools like Knewton are not just destructive, they’re evil. The old way of teaching calculus worked…
Today’s question comes from a university student who thinks the professor is putting him in a box with instructions on how to write a paper. But how big is that box, really? Dear Dr. Wobs, Re: Avoiding the structure of academic writing I’m taking a political science writing class at Ohio State, and we have a…
The New York Times published a piece about helicopter parents making obvious and easily detectable edits to college essays. Once you recognize that your job as an editor is to improve writers, not just writing, you won’t do stuff like that. The writer of the Times piece, titled “How I Know You Wrote Your Kid’s College…
Is it wrong to write a paper for a student? This seems like a black-and-white ethical issue, but having now seen some comments from people with a very different cultural perspective, I’m trying to think about it more carefully. This occurred to me when I saw that the Pakistani tech journalist and entrepreneur Hira Saeed,…
The chief law enforcement officer at Syracuse University sent an email to everyone to tell them not to be afraid. This obscured the real purpose of the email, which was to cover his ass while not saying anything at all. Here’s the email that my friend got. I’ll highlight the weasel words and passive voice…
In my last post, I described what to do with document reviewers who say too little. But what about those who say too much? Here’s a comment from last week’s post: Josh, what is your advice for responding to the person who is asked to “review for accuracy only” and sends back an article completely…
David Labaree published a devastating takedown of the five-paragraph essay, that pernicious container that’s corrupting the teaching of writing everywhere. He’s made me wonder about my own rules and advice for writers. In my mind, writing and thinking are two sides of the same process. Separate the two, and thinking ceases to be important, which…