Writing for the Trash-Can

         Yesterday in Writing Studies class we were asked what was the number one problem for writers in high-school.

        My answer to this question is two fold; the reader-writer relationship and the paper's ultimate destiny--the trash (or some forgotten web folder). This environment does not bode well for birthing papers. Take your audience for example: what is the teacher's goal in reading this paper? To learn new information? Be inspired? Change their thinking or forward an idea? No! They are reading each and every one of your pieces for the soul purpose of hunting for the right answer. Or shall be say "their' right answer. And if it is not found, the paper is an automatic failure, no matter the literary content or small gems of brilliance. Your words are covered in lines of inky blood. 

          Now on to your paper-babies bleak future. This brings me back to AP Language and Composition class last year and researching the issues in public schools. One book I read discussed that cruel way that school children are force to produce--and produce in large amounts--for the trash can. In Ancient Greece, when you wanted to learn something, you would apprentice at the workshop of your desired trade. And, like now, began production, because everyone knows you learn by doing. And yes, your poor, inexperienced efforts would end their lives in the trash, but your good work would be sold. And that was your goal, you worked at making better products, not better trash. 

          Does anyone else see the twisted insanity with today's currant learning system, where parts of children's souls are heartlessly tossed in the trash from the time they were very young?