A recent Maroon article detailed a change on campus that cuts me to the core: the writing program is being sunset. Or at least, the writing program as it has existed for the last 40 years is. That itself is not a problem; change is inevitable. However, the replacement class all undergrads will soon be required to take appears to be a retreat into the very kind of abstract, decontextualized version of writing instruction the University once prided itself on avoiding.
To make my biases clear straightaway, I am an alum of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities, where I took the flagship course Academic and Professional Writing, nicknamed the “Little Red Schoolhouse” (LRS). I later worked as a writing intern, trained by the writing program and embedded in the Humanities Core teaching writing seminars. Then I trained other writing interns. Finally, I worked as a lector, TA–ing a section of LRS. (I have not worked for the writing program since 2020.) But my bias runs even deeper—my stepfather Larry McEnerney ran the program for 30 years. I was raised on the functional power of “however” and knew from a young age the value of a problem.
So what’s my problem now? The one place on campus that I saw resisting the siren song of “theory” is now giving in and embracing the abstract.
Taking the place of LRS’s presence in the Humanities Core is a new class, “Inquiry, Conversation, Argument” (ICA), which seems to me to fly in the face of 40 years of writing training at UChicago. At the risk of being reductive, instead of teaching that writing is an embedded facet of academic work, it’s a writing 101 class that removes writing from academic work and instead teaches it as an abstract skill.
What do I mean when I say writing is being made abstract? In a classic writing 101 class, students are all engaging with the same question, presumably chosen to facilitate the teaching of writing. In doing so, the class removes students from the realities of writing. In the real world, academic and professional writers do not get to choose their topics. The topics are determined by the demands of the job or are part of a “conversation” between interlocutors in a field. I challenge you to find me an article in an academic journal that doesn’t engage with, respond to, refute, or challenge other articles.
When students write on a generic topic that exists to facilitate the teaching of writing, they are abstracted from actual readers. Imagine playing chess, but you’re never allowed to see or think about what your opponent’s moves are. Imagine teaching students to play chess but telling them they don’t need an opponent to play!
Teaching writing as if there are abstract and universal rules or qualities that make it “good” is a devastating mistake. Are Trump’s tweets “good writing”? If you think you can answer that without first asking who the audience is and what the function of the writing is, you may have taken a writing 101 class.
I’m making these claims based on a review of the syllabus, which we all know might not accurately represent the class. But based on what I’m seeing, I think concern is warranted regarding the aspects of argument that are stressed. Arguments will be “logical” and “grounded in analysis of evidence.” Obviously, I have no problem with logic or the analysis of evidence, both of which are essential in academic writing. But crucially, students must learn that logic is not abstract; it does not operate outside of communities and disciplines. I can hear my undergraduate logic professor shrieking as I write this, but the logic of arguments in history is different from the logic of biology, which is different from the logic of law, which is different from the logic of anthropology, and so on.
Anyone paying attention to the world in the last decade should know that logic is usually not what convinces people to accept an argument. More precisely, different communities rely on different logics to create truth. Those who fail to see how logic functions within community are those who wonder why their article is not getting published in the journals they want to be in, “even though their logic is perfect.”
As for analyzing evidence, students at UChicago don’t need to be told how to analyze things; they’ve been doing that since fifth grade. What they need is to learn how to argue. And academic and professional writers cannot be successful arguers if their logic and analysis are made abstract from their readers.
UChicago has long avoided a “writing 101”–style requirement, and for good reason: those classes treat writing as an abstract skill that can be removed from the field in which one is writing. The qualities of good writing are the same whether you are writing an email to your mother or writing an article for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, a writing 101 syllabus would say. But it’s obviously the case that different fields have different expectations for writing, and even within fields, writing can function differently for different audiences and goals. However, we are ideologically inclined not to like that, because it’s hard and complex. Truth should be ! and should Not Contradict Itself! So we create writing 101 classes.
The philosophy of ICA and the new writing program seems to be that the skills students learn in generic topics—writer-centered topics—will transfer to specialized, reader-centered writing. But will they? Does the five-paragraph essay? Starting with a “hook”? The “funnel method” of introductions? These are the things that the LRS has spent 40 years drilling out of undergraduates who were only ever trained to make writing instructors and standardized test–graders happy.
The LRS always delivered an inconsistent product because it embraced this complexity, but that was a feature, not a bug. By hiring Ph.D. students (people who were engaged in academic work, as opposed to people engaged in writing instruction), the writing seminars were inherently chaotic. But consistency came from the fact that the teachers were actually writing in their field. The coherence didn’t come from teaching writing as an abstract skill to be applied in a field. The teachers were working on an article for Critical Inquiry. They were publishing in Philological Quarterly. They were actively engaged with their interlocutors, and they needed to think about their readers in order to be successful.
Now undergraduates at UChicago are losing the concrete connection to the people here who are doing the work of actual academic writing. Instead of publishing in the Chicago Journal of Sociology, they are teaching writing.
Apologies to those in this boat, but according to the new director of the writing program, the new instructional professors teaching this course “represent the best qualified and most effective writing instructors in the country.” Respectfully (because Lord knows I don’t have any of these skills), wouldn’t it be better to choose effective writers? I have found that it’s rarely the case that effective academic writers teach writing. Effective academic writers are doing research and getting published in academic journals in their field.
If I had to guess, from now on, undergrads here will get a more standardized experience. They will get clear rules about what makes “good writing.” And, because of it, they will be much worse at writing. Because writing isn’t standardized. A good argument is not good because it’s logical, or because the evidence has been analyzed. It’s not good because it follows rules. A good argument convinces the readers the author wants to convince.
The debates about what the new writing program should be like ended at some point a year ago. I’m not sure what writing this accomplishes beyond simple venting, and I hope I’m overreacting. It certainly may be the case that there is already a plan in place to avoid these pitfalls. But we are at UChicago, and it’s usually a safe bet that UChicago will move towards the abstract. It often serves us well… but not when it comes to writing instruction.
