January 31, 2003

Helping Johnny Learn to Write When He Gets to College

To the Editor:

Why Johnny can't write may have as much to do with our writing assignments as with our students' mastery of writing techniques ("Why Johnny Can't Write, Even Though He Went to Princeton," January 3). We have been seeing for decades that many students who perform well in advanced math and calculus classes have difficulty transferring these mathematics skills to physics, biology, and economics. Many don't seem to know intuitively which mathematics tool is appropriate to