“What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: “What if ‘research paper’ is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?"
This quote affects in me in a very personal way--throughout my time as a student, about 4/5 of my life, I have always run into the problem of educators having an unreachable level of expectation for any "papers" to be turned in. What most of those people never really considered is that the students they may have labeled as the "unteachable," or the "failures" were, more often than not, the true geniuses of the classrooms, but they were never given the opportunity, or the right outlet for their specific talents. If the educators had provided more ways than a "term" or "research" paper to share knowledge, these students could more easily reach their truest potential.
Writing "papers" can be a daunting task--and for this reason, I feel that the picture below fits this topic perfectly.
Image copied from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyzq86sCkzOylSAEfqPQSqg7QI0YfOij4ha-nJ_GtuYqshkojmdKjg1iROXz1maKcTMhOGvP2CvFkQBLT5Fr-t7JkfhqSN_6THtGeysHRh44LGwj6ysQB1yT6X_Qe4_dBIafEJNX9ixxA/s320/CSG_Writing-the-Revision-Process-grey-722640.jpg
As you know, I had a much more thought out response to this post earlier. Due to technological complications I wasn't able to post it. I totally agree with you though. Many teachers are stuck in the old habits of "this is how it is." Forcing a student to write a paper on an assigned topic does nothing to grow the student's desire to learn new and interesting subjects. Allowing them to pick their topic and then letting them explain that information in a way that they are comfortable with allows them to develop their own unique skillsets.
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