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1 February, 2006
WTF? (On the importance of writing skills)

I'd love to say "I hate to say I told you so". But it feels so good. You see, we, the arts students, were right, and they, who cut arts funding, were wrong.

One of two cover stories in Tuesday's {Gateway} (University of Alberta student newspaper) was that a "Writing Task Force" is taking nine months to "determine what changes need to be made, if any, to English and writing instruction" at the U of A.

Why this appropriately abbreviated WTF? Because, as Students' Union Vice-President (Acadamic) says, faculties like Electrical and Computer Engineering "don't think their graduates have been graduating with an appropriate level of communication skills".

Well, do they know the word "understatement"?

In English 101, I sat alongside science students who could not even punctuate a sentence properly, let alone avoid passive voice and dangling modifiers. And they were not happy to be there. As you could guess, they made the course terrible.

Now, 12 years later, I teach science graduates and engineers to write in workshops conducted by a private-sector company. One of the company's biggest clients is the Government of Alberta.

Let's get this straight. Klein's government cut funding to the U of A Faculty of Arts, the only faculty teaching U of A students how to write. Now that same government is paying me to teach U of A graduates how to write. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Don't take it from me. According to the Gateway, "the Faculty of Arts has lost about 90 professors since government funding cuts in the early-to-mid '90s, while in that time there has been an increase of approximately 700 students."

Need more? Walk from 91 Avenue and 116 Street to Saskatchewan Drive and 111 Street. You'll walk from the shiny new Natural Resources Engineering Facility (finished just over a year ago) to the Humanities Centre (largely unrenovated since some time in the 1970s, judging by looks). It is truly astounding to see the gradual decay as you move eastward.

The humanities have always been the flakey sibling of post-graduate education. What do you learn to really do in humanities? It's a waste of money. Nothing gets built, dug, extracted, designed, or done by writing, right?

Well, we've got cars, what do we need legs for? We've got electricity; what do we need fire for? We've got computers; why do we need brains?

Try being an engineer in China. Without knowing the Chinese language. This is what a large portion of what today's engineers are experiencing, right here in Alberta. Trust me, I have frontline experience. A lot of people don't have a clue what a lot of other people are saying. Or writing. I wish I could show you some of the astounding examples I've seen written by the people who are "building this province". I'm embarrassed for Alberta, frankly.

Alberta is straggling behind in the very fundamentals of adult education even as Albertans gleefully spend the money the government sent them, which it took from their paycheques in the first place. Is it coincidence that news stories about "resource rebates" and the Writing Task Force came out in the same week? (Hint: no.) Klein can't afford to teach our university students to write, but he can certainly afford to buy votes!

Language is the foundation of civilization. It shapes the world. It is fire. It is power. From love letters to the letter of the law, fluid command of language can get you what you want. Language is the torch that guides us. Here's a warning: those who can't light the torch are blindly wallowing in the dark.

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