Why Is Writing Important in Education

Where would we be without the ability to write? -to write letters, that form words, that form sentences? I wouldn’t be able to sit down and respond to this prompt if I was never taught how to write, if a teacher had never encased her hand around mine and guided me as I drug a stubby pencil across paper. Writing is a fundamental component of education as an engine is to a car. We use writing as a method of informal communication, but we also transform the simplicity of writing into elaborate scholarly essays and brilliant novels. Writing bends to the need of its handler and facilitates different purposes every time it’s utilized.

When we teach children to write we are not only enabling them to open a new door of discovery, but also handing them a gilded, universal key that unlocks mysteries behind dozens of doors. Writing is used in math to identify a problem and explain how that problem was solved. Writing is prevalent in science to help students use metacognition and think on how they went from step A to step Z. Writing is used in social studies to present students with what others have written in the past as well as rationalize what their beliefs are and what they envision for the future of our country. If writing didn’t exist, there would be no reading. We would have no book, no child would learn of heroic adventures or dazzling heroes, or touch the edges of glossy pages and eagerly flip them over to uncover what comes next.

Writing is the most basic foundation for learning while simultaneously it is one of the most complex forms of academics. In order to be able to write, you have to use logic and a sense of reasoning, but you also have to be creative and imaginative. You have to concretely, physically write words with a pencil, pen, or even type with a keyboard, but you also have to believe those words mean something. Writing doesn’t just enable us to further our learning in all academic aspects but it allows us to learn about ourselves. When we write, something truly from the heart- an idea, a fragment, it is now documented for the whole world to see. We are sharing a unique collage of our personal perspectives and experiences that otherwise are only available for us to see. Teaching how to write and learning how to write enables us to connect within ourselves and with others. Writing becomes a choice, a choice to share yourself with others in the hopes that they can learn something from you, and you can learn something from them; a carrier for empathy. Isn’t that what we need most in the world? Empathy? The ability to understand that we might not believe the same as someone else but that we still can all express ourselves and utilize writing as an aspect of social progress.