Bob Costas on Writing
I just got a big shock: turned on the tube, and there’s Bob Costas in a broadcast TV commercial, declaring that “Writing is everybody’s business.” I know who’s behind this spot, and I’m glad to see some familiar names — but I’m not sure what’s going on with the intersection with the College Board (”education, business, and policy-making communities”?), and while one part of me is happy that some of our scholars are reclaiming the national public discourse on writing, another part of me asks: who’s bankrolling you, Bob Costas, and what are they after?
I’m sorry if I’m behind the curve on this: does anybody else have more info? Is this John’s hoped-for re-branding, a turf grab serving conservative (pardon my amazement at a White House press release that first shifts the blame for educational failures onto the “self-doubt” of the “uneducated” and then immediately makes multiple obvious surface-level correctness errors) and commercial standardized-testing interests, both, neither?
April 4th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Nope, got no info, but I share your sense of foreboding. The answer can’t be good.
April 5th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
I wish you’d be more specific on that second paragraph because (1) have you been through the TOC thoroughly? and if so I’ll bet you could be more specific; and because (2) I know it’s not politically correct but I have a lot of problems with how I see the “no child left behind” played out in the school system, the toll it’s taking on teachers, and the displacement of responsibility.
April 6th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
I’m talking about the obtuse absence of punctuation just in paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 (not to mention the entire document’s inability to use an apostrophe properly), I’m talking about the idiotic use of the word “sanction,” I’m talking about the misrepresentations and purposeful vagueness that pervade the entire document coupled to too many sentence fragments, misplaced modifiers, and awkward nominalizations to count. I know you and I have disagreed in the past on the importance of proofreading in a student-produced newspaper, Michelle, with my contention being that students need to learn how to proofread their own work rather than have it done for them, and that the student-produced newspaper being a useful learning tool for that purpose. This document, however, comes from the highest office in the entire nation, and makes a statement attacking what it characterizes as low standards, with a Foreword (allegedly) authored by a President whose public persona glories in anti-intellectualism and wears his own academic underachieving as a badge of pride. I think “No Child Left Behind” is contemptible, both in the flawed thinking and blame-oriented perspective that lie behind it and in the implementation problems that you describe — but when the problems of this so-called initiative are inscribed in a language that enacts the very faults it seeks to attack, I find myself almost unable to believe the stupidity, mendacity, and arrogance of those behind it.
April 6th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
Oh my God, I completely misunderstood the point of your post. Thanks for clarifying. I’m so shocked that I am speechless.
April 6th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
One of the interesting facts of George Bush’s public life is that I have never heard anyone refer to anything he has written personally, not even the kinds of notes his father was famous for writing. A standard bit of presidential lore has been that in an important speech, the president rewrote a few sentences or cut a paragraph or the like. Never has anyone in the White House told that story on George W. Bush. I would guess his dyslexia leads to lots of surface errors in writing, so he just doesn’t do it. He talks to people and they write for him. His speeches are tailored to syntax he can manage. And they are written early so he can practice them. I would imagine rewriting comes not from clarification or amplification, but from what he can manage without serious stumbling.
So it’s not likely the W will be one of the exemplars in the National Commission on Writing’s campaign regarding the “Neglected ‘R’”. The White House is all focused on reading programs. But it’s former Democratic governor Gasper Caperton and former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey who are the titular leaders of the College Board’s effort to raise the profile of writing in American schools.
As part of the CCCC leadership, I met with Caperton, Allan Heaps and a couple other College Board officials during the CCCC meeting in New York two years ago. They were determined to launch their project in late April, even though it was clear on March 18 that we were going to war with Iraq and that media would not be paying attention to some pols trying to whip up interest in writing in schools and colleges. In fact, my frustrations about how both NCTE and CCCC had difficulty in taking a public lead on these issues was an important factor in creating my blog. I naively thought I could use it to get wider public attention about the teaching of writing.
Both NCTE and CCCC are trying to be more pro-active in advocacy for writing. Doug Hesse’s keynote fits that effort in raising the question “who speaks for writing?” What CCCC has traditionally done is address its positions within the profession: we write and talk to each other in our journals and meetings. We have very little experience of addressing the wider public about the nature and importance of writing, and the best ways to develop as a writer in academic, professional and civic contexts.
So one of the questions the National Commission website raises is whether the National Writing Project and NCTE are being coopted by College Board, largely in an effort to minimize criticism of the new writing component on the SAT.
You’ll also notice that the Advisory Committee includes no two-year college faculty, a concern a group of us brought to the attention of Richard Sterling during a meeting in San Francisco during the CCCC convention.
So that’s some of the background on these developments. Your instincts to be a bit suspicious are well placed, Mike.
April 6th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Thanks for all the information, John. This is important stuff, and I share your concern: how do we move this conversation beyond the scope of just a few writing teachers? (I grinned, Michelle, when I saw your observation a while back about falling in with a bunch of rhetoricians.) The Costas spot is one way — but, as you point out in the connection you make to Doug Hesse’s keynote, it’s also a turf grab, performed in part by corporate standardized-evaluation interests, the same interests who stand to benefit considerably from No Child Left Behind. And I was happy to see today that Connecticut is preparing to sue the US over that unfunded mandate: it’s about time.
April 6th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Our blogs preach to the choir, so to speak. We need to be writing/commenting in other places in order to be noticed. John, you may have more of an influence than you realize, but I think that your blog needs to be linked to . . .gee, PTA websites? Parenting blogrings? Let me chew on this for a while.
September 3rd, 2005 at 3:02 pm
I found this site after searching for Bob Costas and writing. I saw the television ad and was curious. I think this page showed up first in Google. I looked at the website the ad promotes and couldn’t really tell what specifically was being done.
As a result of seeing this site I installed WordPress on my site. I had been looking for something like it. For now I’m still experimenting.
In terms of writing, what I was looking for is commentary on why and how writing is important. Sure, I know the cliches associated with the subject; what I’m thinking about is how, in my early forties, I switched gears to become a writer. Previously I worked all over the place and did a lot of writing but now, at least for me, it is different: I have much more respect for it and a higher awareness of its importance. I need to dust off and finish something that I wrote long ago on writing–it is empowering, effective, confidence-building, intimidating, emotion-stimulating, theraputic, and many other personal and collective things. In my opinion people who aren’t good at or are afraid of it are really missing something.
As for this thread, the contributors are an interesting mix of web writers. I’m not qualified to assess the Costas-fronted organization but, with that said, it is nice to see any such organization. I don’t doubt that they have their problems and it is always a good idea to look at backgrounds and motives. Still, who else is doing what? And Mike, I’m disappointed by your vehemence. Rants and raves are a dime a dozen; that is usually not the best way to win friends influence others.
P.S. I like Michelle’s humility and it shows in her website too.