I’d like to take some time to talk to students about learning how to write. It seems basic, it seems like every school teaches children to write. But the truth is that they don’t. In fact, modern schools fail terribly in teaching writing. And colleges often have to do the work of teaching 1819 20 year old students how to write basic themes and essays. Because in 12 years of schooling, they never learned to do it. A modern schools do not teach writing well, and many homeschool programs commit the same exact mistakes that modern schools do. The number one problem in modern writing instruction, is that the people giving instructions to children about how to write are not professional writers themselves. And so their advice, the activities, the exercises, and so on, are just artificial school activities that don’t translate into real life, writing work that writers do. And so there’s a big disconnect between what schools teach children about writing and what writers actually do. For me, I make a living writing, I’m either writing articles or lessons. And the articles and lessons that I write are the means by which I make my living as a 45 year old Catholic man. The work that I do as a writer, many people don’t even think of me as a writer, because they’re focused on the work that I do in education, or just the topic we’re discussing. And they’re ignoring the fact that the work that I do is primarily full time professional writing. And there’s a lot that goes into that. And I think that the advice that I can offer to students will be very helpful because writing is a professional skill. Even if we think of, of fictional writers or poets that we love, there’s a side of their writing that’s artistic, and free. And, you know, just just beautiful or religious. But there’s another side of their writing that’s practical and professional and responsible. And the writers that you think of, when you name the best and most popular or favorite writers that you’ve read, there are men who understood not just the theory of writing, but who also understood the business, and discipline, and practice of writing in real life circumstances. So I’d like to give you some advice based on my 20 years living as as a writer who makes a living by writing. In the classical liberal arts academy, we have an English Composition course, that’s become one of our most popular courses, it’s really surprised me how interested students are in writing. That course opened up last year, I found a textbook on on composition that I really liked, and wanted to bring into the classical liberal arts academy for students and I started posting lessons and students started working through those lessons. And the next thing I knew, I had students writing the emails and chatting yelling at me to get more of those lessons published and ready because they were really enjoying them and devouring them as fast as I could post them. So I knew that we were on to something. And what I think it is in that book that’s so helpful is that the author who is a professional writer, he writes textbooks remember that he’s a he’s a writer, he knows how to write and that’s why the book is, is useful. But what he does that’s helpful, is he starts by, by having us think about the fact that we all love speaking, I love making videos, it’s much easier to make a video than it is to write an article writing is lonely and boring. And it’s, you know, you, you have to do all this technical work and it just takes a lot of time and you’re editing and rewriting and, and so on. Your hands start to hurt. It’s, as I said, it’s boring and lonely work, whereas making a video is a lot more fun, just like talking is a lot more fun. And so we like to talk and the author in that textbook takes up the question, why is it that we like to talk We don’t like to write. And he goes through all these differences between circumstances in which we speak and circumstances in which we normally write. And he says, We need to fix that. And we need to fix the way we write, think differently about writing. And then writing can become as pleasant as speaking. And that’s true. So the author does that. And that’s very helpful. That gets students started in the English Composition course, with a different attitude about writing much freer, much easier, more relaxed, and so on. And you just focus on the topics, you don’t focus on the actual work of writing, which is good. He also explains why modern schools fail to teach writing well, and he explains that, first of all, they ask students to write on topics that the students are not interested in. And second, they asked students to write for an audience that doesn’t want to read what they write. And so both of those things together just make for a terrible writing experience. And that’s the normal experience of most students in modern schools. So it’s a great textbook, and the English Composition course is going to be a great course, that I’m just going to continue to develop and work to make available to students.
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Now, what’s important is when when, when parents enroll a student in a writing course, what they what they have in mind, and what is wrong to think is that the students are going to begin writing and submitting writing. And the teachers are going to read their writing, and make corrections to their writing and tell them what to fix and revise their writing. And, and this process of like, you know, reviewing and correcting and editing and improving, that that’s what a writing class entails. And the author, that textbook argues from the very beginning that that is not what a writing course, is about. No one has time to revise and Review and Correct student writing, the student is responsible to write well, and to revise and correct his or her own writing. That’s what a real writer has to do. And so it’s not about submitting essays and having them graded, and then getting feedback and correcting them and resubmit. That’s not the work of a writing class, in English composition, what students do a study the objective principles of composition, and then they put them into practice. When they put them into practice, they’re responsible to police themselves, and follow those principles. Because if they don’t, their writing is just not going to be good. And so it’s very simple. To teach writing, it’s an objective study, there’s a science, principles and elements to learn, that are learned just as principles and elements in any other subject. And then there’s a separate challenge, which is the actual work of writing, which is not done in the English Composition course, but needs to be done in a different context. And that’s what I’d really like to talk about. What I advise students to do is start blogging. Many people think of blogging as sort of journaling, that’s that’s what a lot of people do when they when they talk about blogging, they just they treat their blog as a journal. And they just sort of write a daily post or they post random pictures or say, you know, share random things. But that’s not but that’s not what a blog is. It’s not as valuable as a blog is actually a very important activity in the 21st century for writing. Blogging is how people make a living writing in the 21st century. It’s not just a silly little online journal for someone to write in a blog is how a person begins publishing his or her writing, sharing his or her writing, and learning how to be a professional writer. It’s very important to learn how to blog and to understand the role of a blog on the internet, with relation to search engines and social media and business and so on. It’s very important that students take blogging seriously and, and learn to write well In an online digital format, okay. One thing we’re going to see in the future is that Google is going to control whose writing is read. People are going to go to search engines, and they’re going to enter a search terms, they’re going to enter questions, they’re going to get on their phone, and talk to their assistant on their phone and say, Hey, Google, you know who won the 1980 presidential election, they’re going to ask Google and what Google is going to do is search and pull up articles and present those articles to readers. And that’s how the works of writers are going to be discovered and learned and shared and responded to, and so on. That’s the future of writing. And that’s where the professional work of writing is going, learning how to write in a digital environment. And I really recommend that students start learning how that whole system and business works. It’s very, very important, especially because if you do become a writer, it’s 2021. If you’re 12 years old, or 15 years old, you’re going to be writing in another 1520 years, and all of this digital media and did social media, search engines and so on is just going to be more dominant than, than it is now. And I strongly recommend, if you’re interested in writing, that you get started with blogging. If you want to learn more about that, I’m happy to talk about it. But that’s my recommendation, study English Composition, study the classical liberal arts, learn the Catholic faith, and start blogging. Now, some practical advice about blogging, you can start a blog, which is a website, it’s just a website, you can start a blog for free, you can go to wordpress.com. And you can create a free blog, it’s basically a free website. You can you can give that website a theme, you can pick a subject for your website, you know, something you’re interested in, you could keep it general and just publish. You know, articles that you write or essays that you write are poems, anything that you write, you can post your writings on your blog. And they can they can deal with a number of subjects, you can create categories and categorize the posts that you make. But I recommend that you create a wordpress.com blog, and you start writing and posting and sharing the things that you write. You can start sharing them with me, I would love to see what you write, I’ll read it I’ll I’ll post comments or questions as as a reader. But I’d like to see students learning how to write in a digital environment because that’s where writing is going to take place. As I said, I do this full time professionally, I have to make a living by my writing. And I’d like to help students learn the craft of professional writing by actually doing it together. As you get started with a blog or you know WordPress website, I can begin to interact with you and help you learn how all of this works. No matter what field you intend to go into. You could be interested in medicine. And I’m telling you, blogging will help you in your medical career. You could be interested in law or politics or you can be interested in just getting married and starting a family. But no matter what you do, no matter what industry you work in, what business you do, what craft you take up what your vocation ends up being, learning to write in a digital environment will help you and the best way to learn is to get started. So my advice is that students study the formal art of writing, but that they begin blogging on a on a WordPress website@wordpress.com for free to learn how the digital workplace operates, and then incrementally learning more and more about how it all works and how everything connects out. Social media and search engines and a blog and email and newsletters and all these things work so that you understand how the digital marketplace operates and your writing and your education and Your Catholic faith we can all have a platform that you are skillful in using as you enter into adulthood. So that’s my advice. For students who want to learn to write with a view, to professional writing in the future, start blogging. Once you get started with your blog, I’ll give you some more instructions. And we’ll work step by step through the process, so that you can learn how this digital marketplace works, how the digital writing environment works, and how you can become a real professional writer. No matter what vocation, you end up choosing no matter what career you end up pursuing, what what field you work in, and so on. Anything you do in the future will be helped if you learn how to write in the digital environment. So that’s my advice. If you have any questions or would like help getting started, you know, through my work in writing and publishing, I’ve become a fully capable website developer. I manage the whole classical liberal arts academy website by myself. So I’d be happy to help you with technical questions and issues to help you get started. But the most important thing is step one, get started. I hope that’s helpful. If you take this first step, I’ll help you with the next.
God bless,
Mr. William C. Michael, Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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