Higher Ed Resource of the Week: Why They Can’t Write

This week, Johns Hopkins University Press released Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities by John Warner. Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, writes a column for the Chicago Tribune called the Biblioracle. He is also a contributing blogger for Inside Higher Ed. In this book, he argues that the reason college students can’t write is because we are teaching writing wrong. Students have been conditioned to perform “writing-related simulations,” which make them passive and disengaged. They have learned to follow the rules in order to pass high-stakes assessments, but they have not developed the ability to make choices and think critically. He draws on current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning combined with the enduring philosophies of classical education to provide solutions to the problem. The 288-page book is available for $25.86 on Amazon or $24.57 in Kindle format