Take The NYer Poll: Should Creative Writing Be Taught?
June 10, 2009 § 1 Comment
All this fuss about Louis Menand’s New Yorker piece on writing programs has resulted in a poll. Take it now:
Should Creative Writing Be Taught?
Here’s a quote from Menand’s piece:
“Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views of the efforts of other aspiring writers.”
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog 
Where is the teacher in this scenario? Where is the idea that students can learn to be careful and critical readers? Where is the idea that a community of writers can provide the audience that all writers need? Where is the sense that something mysterious happens, a sort of chemical reaction, when a group of aspiring writers come together, a reaction that causes the members of that group to write better and with more energy than they would have in isolation? I believe in the possibilities created when writers come together.