In most conversations about the United States and globalization, competition, and the future, people tend to focus on math, science, and technology (eg. here). Judging by some recent reports on business and higher education, though, we may pose similar doubts about productivity in areas of writing. A study by the College Board entitled “Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . Or a Ticket Out?” found that more than 40 percent of corporations surveyed offer or require training for employees with writing deficiencies, and the Board estimates national costs run to $3.1 billion annually. (See, also, the College Board study, “The Neglected ‘R: The Need for a Writing Revolution.”) And in the periodic Skills Gap reports by the National Association of Manufacuturers, writing deficiencies in the workplace always come up near the top when employers talk about workplace problems.
Bad writing by employees means reduced efficiency, and businesses see costs rising steadily. (See the New York Times story here.)
It would seem, then that the fields of writing and rhetoric would have a golden opportunity to enhance their standing. “We can fix this,” people at CCCC, chairs of writing programs, and others leaders might proclaim. “We can make students better business communicators, more efficient readers and writers, more productive workers.” A little speech by comp folks at a state college about workplace readiness to big employers of graduates in the state might find a responsive (and generous) audience. A chat with state legislators about sending better communicators into government and business might help with budget negotiations.
But look at the announcements and programmatic statements surrounding this week’s CCCC meeting and you see nothing of the sort. (Go here and click on “Convention Preview.”) Instead, you get statements like this in the “Call to Convention” by Charles Bazerman and Suzie Null: “As writers we are joyous in our making meanings: as teachers we are joyous in the meanings our students make. In this making, we document and transform the world.” The nature of that world transformation is indicated by the highlighted topics: “We have many panels discussing how writing and writing education addresses social inequality, racism, poverty, environmental crisis.” And one keynote speaker will be “noted <>i>New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the stories on My Lai, Abu Ghraib, and many other shameful realities our government has wanted to keep hidden.” Another speaker, Cheryl Glenn, will deliver the Chair’s Address, entitled “Representing Ourselves,” particularly “the ways identity and rhetoric might best be fused for representing our profession.”
Indentity, social change, inequality . . . As I stated in my earlier post on the identity fixations of the 2006 meeting, this is not a workable strategy for building respect for composition across the campus, nor is it a winning tactic for securing off-campus support. A little less talk about racism, sexuality, and injustice, and a little more about productivity and workplaces, would serve the field well. If leaders in the discipline worked with a few capitalists and politicians, positioning writing programs in a crucial position in the productive economy, writing programs might receive more of the resources they in fact deserve. If they stick to a discourse of crisis, shame, adversarial values, racism, sexism, etc., they cancel their reach. Perhaps, though, the moral flush that comes with such “transform the world” pronouncements is worth all the lost influence and funding that might come with what appears to many a cooptation by and capitulation to the darker sides of U.S. society.
