academic writing and literacy

Eubanks and Schaeffer’s article “A Kind of Word for Bullshit: the Problem of Academic Writing” and Gere’s article “Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms: The Extracurriculum of Composition” both discuss the problems with academic writing. In “Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms,” Gere discusses the fact that many people are turned off of writing because of the way it was taught to them in school. Having a creative outlet such as a community writing workshop was much more beneficial and helpful to people interested in writing than the academic writing of compositions in school. Gere argues that academic writing does not allow room for people to reflect their individuality in their writing. Gere states, “in concentrating upon establishing our position within the academy, we have neglected to recount the history of composition in other contexts; we have neglected composition’s extracurriculum.” Eubanks and Schaeffer appear to agree with Gere about this problems of academic writing. They discuss student’s use of “bullshit” in their academic writing as a way to sound more academic and professional. This leads to the combination of “disregard for the truth with the inevitable classroom pretense that the writer truly cares about his or her academic development, and an insidious variety of bullshit is fashioned.”

In her article, Gere offers ideas for educators to incorporate the extracurriculum of writing into their classrooms for a more writing workshop-type atmosphere. Eubanks and Schaeffer’s article, on the other hand, pretty much concludes that, yes, jargon is used in academic writing and people just have to deal with it. I did not find that their article offered any solutions or ideas for academic writing to be less bullshit and more non-academic friendly. I think it’s interesting that the two articles had such opposite approaches to dealing with academic writing. While Gere’s article is helpful for future educators who want to address the problems of academic writing, Eubanks and Schaeffer’s article is rather unhelpful. They even state in their conclusion: “At this point, convention would have us offer possible solutions to the problem of academic bullshit. But…we will demur.” Their logic is that bullshit is all around us and that none of us can put an end to it.

The Eubanks and Schaeffer article has to do with literacy because of its discussion of the use of jargon in academic writing. For non-academics, the overload of jargon commonly used in academic writing can be intimidating and make the piece confusing or difficult to understand for the common reader. By including jargon in their writing, academics are showing that their writing is exclusive and that not everyone will comprehend what they are trying to say, and they’re okay with that. Academic writing makes literacy seem more exclusive than it really is, and that is wrong. Just because a non-academic reader may not understand all of the jargon used in a piece of academic writing does not mean that they are illiterate.