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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to automatically defend pointless essays about 'How X influenced 19th century England' or whatever is the current go to topic for teachers, but, and it is not a small but, the whole point of writing pointless essays is to give students an idea on how to write for an audience ( their teacher ).

At the end of the day, unused muscle will atrophy and students may have trouble even producing appropriate prompts for ML generator. I would weep for the future of humanity, but:

1. Coffee did not kick in yet 2. I have upped my nihilism lately

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Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, makes the point that (I'm paraphrasing) students don't learn to write for real world audiences by writing for an audience that's forced to read their crap (teachers).

I may be misremembering what I heard when I watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

As a person, who, on occasion, has to read email from people, who send me things, I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. I do, technically, have to read some of them as it is part of my job description ( not completely unlike the teachers ) and very much a captive audience.

And I get that it is hard and everyone has their own idiosyncrasies and all that jazz, but, and this is probably the only time I will defend corporates, were it not acceptable language enforced by HR, those emails would somehow be even worse than they are now.

So the goal is the same.. give the audience what it wants. What do I get? Well, it varies..

edit: I am really enjoying the link provided, but clearly this guy is talking about a very different level of writer.

The problem with "writing pointless essays" is that students who write pointless essays learn that writing essays is pointless.

Sure there are. It's just kids don't know anything useful though that we actually need them to write essays. That's why we have them write pointless essays instead.

But I have to write essays on how certain systems work, and how certain tasks are achieved in my job in order to document these things. My writing skills definitely play a big part in making a tutorial that is easy for anyone to read and understand.

Until you need to document something important in an email or elsewhere and have no idea how to do it effectively.

Do you think that the only way to learn to document something important is to write boring standardized essays in a school setting?

It's proven to have been the most effective way. I'm happy to learn about other options though since the many of the younger people coming in to the workplace now seem to be half-illiterate.

The issue is the writing paradigm shifts entirely in college. A college English professor would typically fail a standard B-A tier 5 paragraph high school information dump essay. One of the first things I was told in my writing courses in college was to forget that model entirely.

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them."

I am familiar with this quote and I while I do not want to assume, I think it was intended as a rebuttal/counter to old codger how ancients also thought writing would kill memory.

Spoiler alert. It did. Very few people attempt to commit things to memory outside some Guiness record competitions. And just in case I did not hit the point, introduction of Google with world encyclopedia at anyone's hand, further exacerbated that trend.

To sum up, I appreciate the sentiment, but in HN I do hope for, nay, I expect pushback in the form that goes beyond weirdly smug quote.

What I am saying is: argue with me. Don't quote me philosophical bumper stickers.

It seems to me that the average person around me remembers more than the ancients had the ability to even know. To your point of "pointless essays teach children how to write to an audience", there are entire populations of people who, as a matter of survival, learn how to modulate their communication based on the recipient. Those children learn this skill well before they write any essays about "How X influenced 19th century England".

<<It seems to me that the average person around me remembers more than the ancients had the ability to even know.

It is possible. I have no easy way to counter that. I could yell anecdata is not necessarily valid/useful/relevant data, but I know I use it myself to an extent so I will avoid going down that path.

It is true that is likely that I will likely be able to talk to a random person about a variant of pop psychology/crime investigation/science/relationship mechanics shown on recent TV show and I admittedly cannot produce evidence of Plato dealing with the same level of 'not exactly ignorance, but very low level understanding of anything'. I can talk with an average bloke near me about basic genetics, but it in a very limited kind of way.

Is being vaguely aware of a subject memorized knowledge ( 'ahh, yes, quantum mechanics.. that wheelchair guy invented gravity right' kinda way )? Plato was talking about the kind of memory skill that allowed one to recite Homer. And I am not defending oral tradition ( alphabet was a good invention ), but comparing my friend remembering lines to "Shake shake shake" does not seem to be on the same level.

So, to put it in a more direct way:

To what extent does an average person around constitute remembering more when compared to Homer? Or is there is just so much more to know in general that an average person can only deal with very vague generalities.

<< To your point of "pointless essays teach children how to write to an audience", there are entire populations of people who, as a matter of survival, learn how to modulate their communication based on the recipient.

Do they though? Last set of news that made circles across all media was that of professor, who made things too hard. I suppose you argue yes. Not only did they survive; they veritably vanquished their audience into oblivion. But I ask you: was that what I mean when suggesting writing and you generalized to modulating message for your audience? Both answers could be argued to be true, but society as whole suffers more with only one of them.

God I feel old just typing this.

[1]https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4...

ps. The whole post seems a little snarky. Please let me know if that is the case and I will try to adjust language as needed.

edit: clarified main question mid paragraph ( Does >> to what extent)

People used to recite epics and important texts from memory. All of culture and history was stored solely in the minds of the people. Illiterate people and literate people do use their memories differently, as one has to rely much more on their memory.

> 2. I have upped my nihilism lately

We've left future generations with a mountain of garbage to deal with, what's another paper cup thrown onto the pile?

I find that the point of most High School essays is not to practice writing, per se, but to demonstrate that the student has internalized whatever lesson or moral the subject is trying to teach.

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