Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!skyler
From: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Patricia Roberts)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Writing and eng'ing ed
Message-ID: <6289@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 27 Jan 89 22:44:07 GMT
References: <412@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu> <5823@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <416@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu>
Reply-To: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu.UUCP (Patricia Roberts)
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Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
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Often, teachers don't emphasize the need for clear writing skills because
they don't have them.  (The dean of an engineering college in a well-
respected university used to brag that he hadn't learned to write till
he was in grad school, so his students didn't need to learn.)

When they do, they often emphasize the aspects of writing which teach
people: to hate writing; to think that it is something which can be
done by tech writers; to think that it is something different from
thinking; to get obsessed with odd aspects of it.

Those aspects are things like "correct" grammar, spelling, formatting.

I'm ecstatic that people are taking an interest in writing, and that
people in engineering schools are trying to teach it, but I wish they
realized it's more than Sister Mary Discipline taught you in eighth
grade.

-- 
-Trish	 		 		"...cleansed
(919)230-0809			of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static
skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu 	crowding the wires..."             -A. Rich