Why Writing Counts
Posted on April 29th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 30 Comments »
Since the relevance of the humanities is often discussed on this blog, I was intrigued to read this Times Q-and-A with Delta CEO Richard Anderson. [Emphasis added]
Q. What are you listening for as somebody describes their family, where they’re from, etc.?
A. You’re looking for a really strong set of values. You’re looking for a really good work ethic. Really good communication skills. More and more, the ability to speak well and write is important. You know, writing is not something that is taught as strongly as it should be in the educational curriculum. So you’re looking for communication skills.
Q. And is there any change in the kind of qualities you’re looking for compared with 5, 10 years ago?
A. I think this communication point is getting more and more important. People really have to be able to handle the written and spoken word. And when I say written word, I don’t mean PowerPoints. I don’t think PowerPoints help people think as clearly as they should because you don’t have to put a complete thought in place. You can just put a phrase with a bullet in front of it. And it doesn’t have a subject, a verb and an object, so you aren’t expressing complete thoughts.
Good for Mr. Anderson. I wonder if this is a message that high school and college students are hearing as they make academic choices they hope will prepare them for a future job….
30 Responses
4/29/2009 12:01 pm
Harvard’s writing program has just gone through a transition, of which the latest step was in the Crimson Monday: After search, Expos awaits changes.
4/29/2009 8:39 pm
This is what I find touching or quaint about the Harvard lifers on this site… Richard quotes some corporate executive from Middle America in a big paper to make a general point about writing in this Whole Damn Country, and here’s Harry (don’t mean to pick on you) to pipe up about writing at Harvard!
4/29/2009 11:26 pm
Well, yes, 8:39, but there are subtleties involved with the entries on this blog — which is, via RB and Harvard Rules, and by his own focus on the blog, somewhat directed to local points of view much of the time. Ergo many of the posts are de facto the closest thing there is to a Harvard faculty, administrator, student blog on local issues.
So when one of us self-identifiers posts with high degrees of nuance and allusivity, don’t just jump to the obvious conclusion about self-absorption. There may be a larger, as well as a local, dimension, so dig away. In this case you could start with:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519440
Not that I’m imputing any intentionality to Harry. And in any case the health of Harvard’s writing program is not unrelated to Richard Anderson’s good observations, so what’s wrong with making the connection?
4/30/2009 6:21 am
I apologize to Anonymous — I was in a hurry and I should have said more. Richard is right — my point was that the Crimson reporting suggests that Harvard is in step with the nation in attaching less importance to writing these days. But I’m confused about what is going on here; I was hoping someone could explain. What does it mean to run a national search and then welcome the new leader with “It’s very nice if someone is well-known in New York or California, but what matters in this job is running a great program in Cambridge”?
4/30/2009 7:06 am
Harry, I don’t know how you could read that article as Harard “attaching less importance to writing.” If anything it’s more importance: they’ve hired someone who is fully concentrated on the task of teaching good writing principles to students.
4/30/2009 9:15 am
Well, it’s an odd situation (read the article RT noted too). The new director is known locally and is replacing someone who was known nationally. An academic job is being recast as an administrative job. Perhaps that is all to the good because it shows Harvard is focused on keeping the trains running in the homeland rather than on irrelevancies of national reputation. But then we could say the same thing about any number of other programs, and save ourselves a lot of money in the process, all the while diminishing our academic excellence, which after all is the reason we do national searches and test the records and reputations of the people we hire. I am not saying that is happening here — I just don’t understand it, and am looking for an explanation that fits the facts. I can’t tell whether Harvard is re-conceptualizing writing as something less intellectual and more practical or what — the change in directors cries out for an explanation of the big idea behind it, and none is forthcoming. I thought RB’s original post might provide a clue.
4/30/2009 9:34 am
Harry - big difference between programs and departments. Let departments get the most outstanding scholars and academic minds. Expos is a program not a, or in, a dept. Any place you have preceptors you’re talking quality of instruction — languages, music, writing, maybe math?
4/30/2009 10:06 am
I think having outstanding writers, who are also outstanding teachers, like my old friend Richard Marius, helps attract outstanding teacher-writers to a program, and motivates them to teach and write well. I don’t know the current head, who may well be in that category, but the dichotomy proposed by Anonymous 9:34 is not legitimate in my view.
4/30/2009 10:42 am
How good an administrator was Marius, RT? Since you have to run things, managed people etc. I heard he was a shouter
4/30/2009 12:19 pm
Harry, you must be facetious in asking what the “big idea” is. This is just another example of big administrative changes happening by default. The previous director was fired by the outgoing Dean of the College largely because the expos program was seen as too big, autonomous, and unreformable. There wre promises of doing a national search. But the same people supposed to be running the search were also responsible for implementing Gen Ed, new advising structures, etc. It was inevitable that the interim director, who is committed and doing a very good job, and more interested in working with departments than his predecessors have been, would end up coming out on top. Little effort was put into a serious national search.
4/30/2009 1:19 pm
Expos had major financial issues under the previous director, attributable in part to frivolous spending (catered lunches, river boat cruises, etc.) and to paying Preceptors above and beyond their base salary to do what was, in effect, their job (reading and evaluating more student papers than they thought was warranted).
4/30/2009 1:26 pm
And Marius was, as guy above says, a shouter who had weird hiring practices of his own. The problem, invisible to you RT and HL, is that an Expos director is an unchecked nonfaculty tyrant with 40 people under his or her thumb - no other Harvard teaching unit has this problem. That problem is fixed now.
4/30/2009 2:11 pm
I’m not saying you’re wrong about any of this, but (like anything on the Internet) it would have a hell of a lot more credibility if you’d point us to your evidence, or if you would identify yourself so your lack of agenda could be determined!
4/30/2009 2:25 pm
Ditto from me, on all counts.
4/30/2009 2:30 pm
Job security, Harry, RT. You know this already. Would you be so candid, here and other places, without it?
4/30/2009 2:42 pm
Sure, but that does make the postings unreliable, including the assertion re job security — which may or may not be true.
5/1/2024 9:47 am
PS nil nisi bonum should particularly apply to the anonymous
PPS RM shouted at everyone
5/1/2024 10:02 am
Again, RT : too cute. RM shouting at a tenured professor pal is not the same as shouting at a preceptor on 12 month contract.
5/1/2024 11:51 am
With anticipated June layoffs, self-identification is not the way to go. I can’t believe that faculty are unaware of how nervous Harvard employees are. I guess there will always be a disconnect between those whose jobs are guaranteed for life vs. the rest of us.
5/1/2024 11:59 am
Truer words . . .
5/1/2024 3:57 pm
Look, it’s the first principle of blogging that you can’t believe anything an anonymous source says — unless the source can point you to the evidence, or a signed published article, or something. Sorry your feelings are hurt, but look at it this way: Would you set up a date in the park at night with a completely anonymous person you met on the Internet who said only that he or she was sexy, rich, and handsome/beautiful (choose your favorite adjective)? Same goes for slander.
5/1/2024 5:23 pm
Harry, you were doing well there until your final word: most of this isn’t slander. I wish for once you and RT would acknowledge the great advantage you have - lifetime job security - in being able to say anything you like with name attached. What about workerbee’s note above?
5/1/2024 6:16 pm
Of course we acknowledge that, since inter al., we are both married to non-tenured Harvard employees, both have a record of coming to the support of oppressed employees-at-will, and I have twice in front of several hundred people asked the President and FAS Dean if Harvard might treat its lower-payed employees differently from its tenured professors and high administrators, with regard to freezes.
And some of us are acutely aware of what may be coming in June, and may be coming then in part because many faculty (and students) will not be around.
All of that aside, my point earlier stands:
nil nisi bonum should particularly apply to the anonymous.
5/1/2024 6:23 pm
You also can’t necessarily trust people who sign their names but have no actual knowledge of what has gone on at Expos or, in fact, what qualifications make for a productive director of the program. So while it’s possible that the anonymous commenters don’t know what they’re talking about, it’s equally possible that the named commenters don’t either, or have gotten their information from sources who don’t.
5/1/2024 6:57 pm
You may not be able to trust the judgement of signers, but when the identity is unknown the doubts are just so much more fundamental, since partisans and players may pose as objective holders of knowledge. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but the possibility makes the difference a very real one.
5/1/2024 8:05 pm
Point taken. But signers with no firsthand knowledge of a situation are just that, signers with no firsthand knowledge of a situation. That was my only point.
5/1/2024 8:31 pm
Right, but in this case one was Dean of Harvard College after all, the other a faculty member who knows, as you may, that the views of Expos leadership over the years depend in part on whom you talk, or listen, to. I hope the new Director, on whom I have offered no opinion since I don’t have one, will be an excellent manager and an excellent magnet for talented writer-teachers.
5/1/2024 9:45 pm
Anonymouses (I have no reason to think you aren’t all the same person),
When you told me that you were beautiful and rich, I declined to meet you in the park. But now that you’ve added the new information that YOU’RE TELLING ME THE TRUTH ABOUT THAT, that is supposed to change everything.
5/1/2024 10:29 pm
Harry, for someone who has spent his whole life in the Yard, it might actually be a good idea to try a few steps in the park.
5/1/2024 11:45 pm
What are you talking about? He’s spends most of the summer in Fenway.