Eduwonk Takes it on the Chin : How Should We Write About Education?

From Eduwonk:

The Reviews Are In!
From a blogger’s letter to WaPo’s Jay Mathews:

Between Eduwonk’s smug, intentionally bewildering lexicon and the majority of the education intelligentsia’s God-awful writing skills (for example, anything by Kati Haycock), you are my only hope for thoughtful, well-written ed news.

Blurb-worthy!

Not having the ability to comment on EduWonk’s site doesn’t help combat charges of smugness. We shouldn’t be too hard on Eduwonk, though - there are two ways to approach blogwriting.

I read DailyWritingTips, well, daily. Usually they cover the important-but-mundane elements of writing. It’s full of great reminders and the posts are brief - I recommend it to everyone.

I disagreed with DWT the other day, though. In “Big Words Make You Sound Smart, Don’t They?” DWT suggests the following:

The purpose of writing is to communicate. Communication is the process by which meaning is created and exchanged. If the person who reads your writing doesn’t understand what you are trying to say, no communication occurs when he or she reads your writing.

In order to communicate effectively, you have to use language properly, and you have to use language that people are likely to understand.

Yes and no - it depends on the context. Sometimes the reader’s needs govern communication; sometimes the writer’s offerings govern communication. If you’re writing an instruction manual for assembling an entertainment center, then I’d lean toward simple, accessible language. If not, you might choose to say exactly what you mean to say without being burdened by the consequences of a reader’s ignorance. Sadly, this entire issue reminds me too much of the worthless screeds I had to listen to in college classes. You know, the “English is oppressive! Language is used to keep the [insert any historically-marginalized group] down! Sure, speak your “English” [accompanied by fingerquotes] and be a slave to rich, dead white men!” speeches that college freshmen love to give.

Believe it or not, big/uncommon words aren’t always a sign of insecurity about our intelligence, a desire to oppress, or anything else that can be categorized as weak or sinister. Sometimes a big word says what we need to say when a little, common word doesn’t.

Mark Twain put it more succinctly in his 1895 critique titled “James Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” [Cooper was notoriously imprecise with word choice]. In a list of rules for writers, Twain advised that we:

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

Amen. If he said it, he didn’t bellow it. If he bellowed it, he didn’t say it, whisper it, mutter it or bark it. Twain analyzed a short selection from Cooper’s Deerslayer, a book in a series I love despite its literary flaws, and found that:

Cooper’s word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate words. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called “Deerslayer.” He uses “Verbal” for “oral”; “precision” for “facility”; “phenomena” for “marvels”; “necessary” for “predetermined”; “unsophisticated” for “primitive”; “preparation” for “expectancy”; “rebuked” for “subdued”; “dependent on” for “resulting from”; “fact” for “condition”; “fact” for “conjecture”; “precaution” for “caution”; “explain” for “determine”; “mortified” for “disappointed”; “meretricious” for “factitious”; “materially” for “considerably”; “decreasing” for “deepening”; “increasing” for “disappearing”; “embedded” for “inclosed”; “treacherous” for “hostile”; “stood” for “stooped”; “softened” for “replaced”; “rejoined” for “remarked”; “situation” for “condition”; “different” for “differing”; “insensible” for “unsentient”; “brevity” for “celerity”; “distrusted” for “suspicious”; “mental imbecility” for “imbecility”; “eyes” for “sight”; “counteracting” for “opposing”; “funeral obsequies” for “obsequies.”

An unwavering focus on accessibility is also “singularly dull.” There’s no problem with using a big word as long as there’s a purpose for that word. While DWT and some others might choose to commit always to the blandest simplicity, I’m not interested in reading the literary equivalent of caveman grunts for the sake of others’ accessibility. I want to read good, sharp writing from intelligent, informed sources - which is why I have Eduwonk on my RSS reader. And I’m willing to put up with some smugness here and there if it means I encounter less often the banal.

That Eduwonk bewilders you isn’t entirely their fault, Ginger. Appropriate blog title, btw.

UPDATE at 6/12/07, 5.15pm:

The comment thread on this post is getting interesting. And, it looks like Ginger’s not alone - Alexander Russo just weighed in on the issue:

Eduwonk tries to make light of being called smug (and intentionally bewildering) in a recent letter to the Washington Post (The Reviews Are In!). But the description isn’t that far off. Ever more, Eduwonk’s never wrong, never unsure, never not in the know. All that from a meager year spent turning off the lights at the end of the Clinton administration.

Since Mr. Russo accepts comments, I contributed:

Is there a feud I don’t know about?

A brief glance at the original poster and site that raised the issue should tell you a bit more about the nature of this gripe.

Whereas you might find little value in a never wrong, never unsure, never not in the know website, I like that approach a lot better than usually wrong, mostly milquetoast and often ignorant.

But maybe I’m in the minority.

I wasn’t implying that Russo’s commentary is the latter, just that I don’t prefer that approach. The comment before mine seems to suggest that these swipes aren’t a first. I guess I haven’t paid attention to it in the past.

Eduwonk, my boy, what have you done to deserve this?