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…
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,…
Teachers should reward brevity, not bullshit. (This is a follow-on to yesterday’s post about teaching writing.) Writing assignments today look like this: Turn in 4- to 6-page paper on themes and symbolism is Raisin in the Sun by Monday morning. Everything is wrong with this. The page length trains students to focus on print rather than online, which…