Twenty-First-Century Writing/Twentieth Century Teachers?

Authors

Ian Barnard, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2009

Abstract

"My students are writing in their everyday lives—indeed, their everyday lives are written—but we (teachers—writing teachers, in particular--and education administrators, no doubt nudged by politicians and “the public”) have to a large extent failed miserably in embracing and capitalizing on that writing: email, text messaging, instant messaging, blogging, twittering, responding, video gaming, Second Lifeing. Andrea and Karen Lunsford’s recent longitudinal study of Stanford students has shown the lie to the given that students today don’t write as much as they used to (they are writing much more). Are we becoming the stodgy, ungenerous, rigid English teachers that we ourselves were the victims of as children, obsessed with demanding the grammar with which we write and speak?"

Comments

This article was originally published in California English, volume 15, issue 1, in 2009.

Recommended Citation

Barnard, Ian. "Twenty-First-Century Writing/Twentieth Century Teachers?" California English 15.1 (September 2009): 10-11. Print.

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

California Association of Teachers of English