----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
In the early 1960s someone published a book with the title, "The Tyranny of Testing." And he was dealing with the practices of the 1950s before testing had become so universal. But Eric's point about the impact _essays_ have on students' lives is especially piercing if one realizes, what very few English teachers realize, that there is no necessary linkage between writing competence and intellectual power! There is abundant evidence for the non-existence of such a link for anyone who wants to search for it -- but it's hard for anyone who herself lives for reading and writing to look at such evidence. The belief that there is a linkage is grounded in the individualist ideology generated by market relations. The elements of this particular illusion go back further, perhaps with the replacement of the roll with the codex, but only in advanced capitalism does it really seize control of human thought. Perhaps Pope's Dunciad (particularly the prefatory matter by Martinus Scriblernus) should be seen as a last-ditch defense of the speech or public rhetoric against its destruction by "literacy."
Carrol
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Just want to second that from my own observations in hi tech: there is no linkage between writing competence and intellectual power.
At the same time being able to speak well or write well is an advantage both in dealing with the status quo and in fomenting change.
Joanna