Very rough draft of paper #1

After reading the three articles we have been assigned for this class I noticed a common theme among the pieces. The two I felt had the most in common were “A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing” by Eubanks and Schaeffer and “Inventing the University” by David Bartholomae. These two pieces expressed ideas of academic writing. They focused on the ideas of how students often struggle to meet the required jargon of academic writing. Although both pieces do have different views on academic writing their overall theme is similar.

In Eubanks and Schaffer's article, they discuss how academic writing is written by people are the “academics” or professors. They felt that the start of academic writing or “bullshit” comes from professors. They in turn teach our students who then continue on with the use of “bullshit” academic writing. “... one major consequence of studying disciplinary writing has been the abandonment of the abstract ideal once called “good writing”. The current mainstream of composition studies not only takes up academic writing as an object of study, but it also sees writing instruction as at least partly a matter of introducing undergraduates to the established practices of expert academic writers”. (pg. 374). Eubanks and Schaffer explain how teaching writing in school or as a class is part of the problem with academic wrtiting. Since the people who are teaching do not know how to correctly write then how can they teach others the correct way. The creativity is being taken out of writing. It has become an assignment and has to fit into the correct mold of what our university wants.

In Bartholomae article, he describes how students are taught through out their schooling how to “invent” what the school wants. They are required to write to meet the standards of each teacher and professor. They must use the correct jargon or else their paper will be seen as a failure. They has created a class of writers who have lost all creativity. Rather than expressing how they feel about something or actually writing what they think, they often write what they are “suppose” to. Or at least what they think they are suppose to write in order to be accepted by the university.