The argument that not all children need to learn to write well falls apart under serious scrutiny. Unlike teaching reading, which enjoys the lion’s share of public concern, cf: e.g. the great Phonics Wars, teaching writing has always been a luxury. Why have we not had the great Spelling Wars?
Why Writing Is Helpful For Social Thinking
Insights from philosophers and scientists suggest that writing can mediate thinking itself. By this logic, which may not be entirely sound, children who cannot write clearly cannot think clearly about complex problems. Of course, we know from Scribner and Cole in the 1970s, even earlier from Luria and Vygotsky’s studies in the Russian tundra in the 1920s, that this view of writing as cognitive transformer is an oversimplification, a bias favoring high culture—illiterates do learn to solve problems without writing. Nonetheless, they remain locked out of academic discourse, professional communication, and civic participation.
Writing as Economic Mobility
Having had experience teaching Business Communication (BC) courses during my community-college freeway-flyer days (six years of 3-4 Freshman Composition courses per semester and a smattering of BC at two different campuses), I affirm that Business educators do indeed understand that economic mobility depends on writing competence. It’s in the DNA.
Every career requiring post-secondary education demands sophisticated written communication. Technical fields require grant proposals, research reports, and client documentation. Service industries need internal written communication, clear citational protocols and customer communication. Even skilled trades require descriptive observations, documentation of actions taken, and regulatory compliance.
Democracy Demands Writers
Democratic citizenship requires writing and its substrate, reading. Voters must evaluate policy arguments, reading like writers in critical mode. Citizens must communicate in writing with representatives. Community members must document local issues and propose solutions. Without writing skills, people become passive consumers of others' ideas rather than active participants in democratic life.
Digital environments amplify writing's importance. Social media, email, and online platforms have made writing the dominant mode of human interaction. Children without strong writing skills face social isolation and professional disadvantage in an increasingly text-mediated world.
How Schools Fail by Guessing
Schools cannot predict which children will need advanced writing skills.
The not-everyone-needs-to-write argument often masks class bias. It assumes some children will work with their heads in adulthood while others with their hands, in a weird application of Cartesian dualism. It perpetuates the mythology I grew up with of book learning as addled brain syndrome a la Huckleberry Finn. This is a rabbit hole I’ll spare you.
Writing develops capacities beyond communication—at least it did for me. Learning to read a rough draft means learning tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty and finding a willingness to fill gaps in ideas and to experiment with ways to take action to work through these problems. These skills transfer to problem-solving across domains. Children denied writing instruction lose access to tools for intellectual development.
I’m living proof that schools cannot predict which children will need advanced writing skills. By the algorithms of schooling, I should not occupy the life I’ve lived. I mourn the economic devastation visited on poor rural areas where children are losing funding for public schools as we speak.
It’s Not All About Wasting Human Potential
The argument fails on practical grounds. Many students discover their intellectual potential through writing instruction itself. I think that’s what happened to me in grade school. My eighth grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Ruff, who taught me to write a research paper, ended up being the pseudonym of the middle school I studied for my dissertation. He changed my life.
Creating separate tracks denies opportunity based on premature judgments about ability. Every child deserves the discursive tools writing provides. The alternative creates a permanent intellectual underclass.
To put my money where my mouth is, I offer the following assessment framework for your perusal. Assessment is a vital element in writing instruction. Read it as food for thought, take any or all of it as you like, make it your own, and keep being an inspiration to me by reading and inspiring me to keep writing this sort of stuff for the good of the cause.
Three-Tier Classroom Middle-College Writing Assessment Framework (Underwood, 2025)
Writers develop through three distinct but interconnected contexts. Each context demands different awareness and different skills. Together they create the foundation for authentic voice, flexible stylistic voicing, and strategic collaboration.
Three Contexts:
Peer Context: Working with other human writers
AI Context: Collaborating with artificial intelligence tools
Solo Context: Working independently
Five Dimensions Across All Contexts (Goodwin, 1994):
Instrumental: How tools and processes serve your goals
Epistemic: What you learn about writing as craft
Collaborative: How you coordinate with others
Moral: What builds or weakens trust
Affective: Your emotional engagement and response
Why This Matters
Traditional writing assessment focuses on final products. Multi-metacognition assessment captures the learning process itself. Writers analyze their development across contexts rather than just demonstrating competence within single assignments.
Each context teaches different lessons. Peer collaboration reveals how human feedback differs from algorithmic suggestion. AI interaction shows the boundaries between human creativity and machine assistance. Solo work develops independent judgment and authentic voice.
The five dimensions scaffold intentional agency and comprehensive reflection. Instrumental awareness prevents writers from using tools mindlessly. Epistemic reflection builds transferable craft knowledge. Collaborative analysis develops partnership skills. Moral consideration maintains ethical standards. Affective attention sustains motivation and engagement.
Assessment Structure
Writers maintain ongoing logs documenting writing project experiences across all three contexts. At regular intervals, they complete structured reflections analyzing their development in each dimension.
Sample Prompts:
Peer Context - Collaborative Dimension: Narrate recent experiences you’ve had getting and giving feedback to peers and reflect on these experiences. Talk about experiences when AI feedback has been useful and explain how it came about. What experiences with peers doing text talk with you have been eye opening lately? What does each partnership require from you as a writer?
AI Context - Moral Dimension: Describe a moment when you had to decide whether AI assistance was appropriate. What factors influenced your choice? How do you decide whether to use AI or not at the beginning of a writing project? How do you handle it when you think a peer might be becoming dependent on AI?
Solo Context - Epistemic Dimension: What do you most enjoy about solo writing? Talk about experiences you’ve had getting and giving feedback on solo pieces? What happened when you decided to write that sonnet? What aspects of writing can you only learn when working completely independently? Why do these require solitude? What coaxes you out of the solo situation to use AI? To seek feedback from peers?
Implementation
Begin each major writing project with epistemic exercises. Writers need to know the situation in which they are going to be writing, what their options are, how they might find a way in; asking them to talk with one another about aspects of the upcoming project and to memorialize their insights in writing serves assessment purposes as well as consolidation. This sort of work is far more energizing and clarifying than writing an outline. Writers can take the time to anticipate how peer, AI, and solo work will contribute to their success.
During the project, they log significant moments in each context, and they confer with their mentor, the teacher. Teachers have a standing expectation that every writing project will involve students writing in each context, though no one needs perhaps to use AI unless they see a reason. Nonetheless, reasons for nor using AI should be documented and the subject of reflection.
Project completion includes comparative self-analysis. Writers explore artifacts from their work and examine how different contexts supported different aspects of their development. They identify which combinations serve different writing purposes. They undertake these reflective engagements in their writing community with their teacher serving as community mentor.
Semester portfolios include cross-project reflection showing growth across contexts over time. Writers demonstrate increasing sophistication in reading collaborative situations and choosing appropriate tools.
Learning Outcomes
Dispositions
Writers develop stamina and persistence while they undertake complex and demanding writing tasks for real purposes within their writing community.
Writers develop their understanding of the ethical imperative to document the source of novel and original ideas that are not their own, particularly but not limited to academic and media sources with identifiable sources of retrieval.
Situational Awareness
Writers develop strategic awareness of when each writing context serves their goals. They recognize the unique contributions of human collaboration, AI assistance, and independent work. They build frameworks for navigating technological tools while maintaining authentic voice. They understand and are skilled in developing flexible voices to suit audience and occasion. They have experiences across the spectrum of writing genres, including poetic expressive as well as communicative texts.
Most importantly, they learn to articulate, monitor, and adjust their writing processes, vigorously seeking appropriate external resources. This metacognitive capacity transfers across genres, audiences, and technological environments. They become writers who can adapt to new contexts while preserving their human agency and dignity.
Transformation
The framework offers to transform writing development from rule-following to strategic thinking. Writers learn not just how to write but how to learn to write better and for a wider scope of occasions and audiences through conscious engagement with the full range of available collaborative and technological resources.
In this manner, they learn to participate in social discourse.
For democracy.
In pursuit of happiness.
Your turn.
How have writing skills—or the lack of them—shaped your journey? What role should writing play in our schools today? Share your thoughts.