By Roy Peter Clark
Senior Scholar

If your children have ever had a good writing teacher, there’s a chance you owe a debt of gratitude to Donald Murray, perhaps America’s most influential teacher of the Second R. Murray, a man who looked like Santa Claus, died last Christmas time, but those of us who mourned his passing now celebrate his legacy to America.

from the Boston Globe Don Murray as he appeared with his Boston Globe column

Murray left us -– students, teachers, writers all –- a path to follow. He dedicated his life to a simple proposition: that the act of writing was not a magical power possessed by a precious few. Writing was a process, a craft, a set of tools within reach of us all.

Simply put, Don Murray was godfather to a nation of writers. It’s hard enough to imagine a village or colony of writers, but a nation? Why not?

Look around. The National Commission on Writing has described the disastrous consequences of bad writing in America –- for businesses, professions, educators, consumers and citizens. Poorly written reports, memos, announcements and messages cost us all time and money. They are the blood clots in the body politic.

The Commission has called for "a revolution" in the way Americans think about writing. The time is right. Technology stands on our side, easing the burdens of drafting and revision.

 

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Now young writers use cell phones to communicate in the telegraphic and acronymic language of text messages. They have created millions of Web logs and Web sites, becoming their own publishers.

All this is good news for a nation that does not give the "Second R" the same status as arithmetic or reading. Not everyone can read, but we agree that reading is a necessary skill for life in the modern world. Reading makes us better students, better workers, better citizens.

By contrast, we think of writing more as a fine art than a democratic craft. Let me put it starkly: What good is freedom of expression if you lack the means to express yourself?

Fortunately, a generation of teachers, especially in elementary schools, is working hard every day to create a nation of writers. If you visit their classrooms, you can recognize them by their methods:

• They write with and for their students, demonstrating how a writer thinks, works and acts.
• They ask their students to write all the time, not just on special occasions.
• They help students see the world as a storehouse of story ideas.
• They show students how to share their writing, and how to convert sharing into revision.
• They find ways to "publish" the best work of every student, even if it means just displaying it on a bulletin board.
• They encourage young writers and never use writing as a form of punishment.

Poynter Institute photo Jacky Hicks works with Nicholas Saffan at the Poynter Institute's 2007 Writers Camp in June.

That last point is more important than you might think. How many young people learned to associate writing with punishment for bad behavior? What incentive did they have to join a nation of writers?

To build a nation of writers, we need teachers dedicated to the teaching of writing at every level from kindergarten through graduate school. We have a strong foundation to build upon: Many experts think that writing is now taught more effectively in elementary school than at higher levels of education.

And parents can help.

• Let your children see you writing at home.
• Write a letter to your children. Invite them to write back.
• If your child has a teacher who encourages writing, ask that teacher how you can help.
• Work with a parent-teacher group or a business to provide support and materials for writing teachers.

Shirley Brice Heath, a language scholar at Stanford University, argues that there are only three essential acts performed by the most literate people in our society. They read. They write. And they talk about reading and writing in a special way. That’s a model we can follow at home and at school: Encourage our children to read and to write; talk with them about reading and writing.

In the end, there is only one way to create a nation of writers -- and that is to write. Let’s get started.

Roy Peter Clark teaches writing at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla. He is the author of "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer."