Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
This article examines a set of 122 sources, from 1913 to the present, which claim that students "can’t write," finding that a significant proportion of these sources offer no evidence to support this claim. But even among those sources that do offer evidence, most of the support offered relies on measures few writing teachers would accept, like anecdotal claims, surface-level correctness, or standardized tests.As a result, this article questions how the claim that students can’t write has been allowed to stand for so long, even in scholarship, and suggests ways for writing teachers to resist its false logic.
Comments
Originally published in Teaching English in the Two-Year College vol. 53, no. 1: https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/tetyc202553132