The Middle 'R'Will Fitzhugh |
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It often seems these days that critical writing is on the decline in American K-12 education and that the middle 'R' is increasingly neglected. With the aid of the Concord Review and the National Writing Board, however, this trend is being reversed and students continue to learn how to write serious history research papers. Since 1987, the The National Writing Board, which offers an independent assessment of academic writing by high school students, has, in the last two years, evaluated papers from students in twenty states and sent reports to deans of admission. College endorsements for the service include Amherst, Claremont-McKenna, Colgate, Connecticut College, Dartmouth, Eckerd, Emory, Georgetown, Hamilton, Harvard, Illinois Wesleyan, Lafayette, Middlebury, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Pitzer, Princeton, Richmond, the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee, Williams, and Yale. As has so often been stated and even occasionally remembered, students rise to the level of expectations set for them and appreciate the chance to improve their expository writing skills regardless of the difficulty. Unless more attention is again focused on the middle 'R', we will continue to burden colleges with students in need of remedial writing instruction before they can write the necessary term papers. We will also continue to deprive high school students of the practice they need to become full from their reading, exact in their thinking, and comfortable with the tools of written expression so essential to academic and professional success. Will Fitzhugh is editor and publisher of The Concord Review. For more information, visit |
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Review has published 517 research papers by high school students of history from 41 states and 33 other countries in a quarterly journal. These papers average 5,000 words, with endnotes and bibliography. The longest paper so far, a 21,000 word paper on the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah, was written by a young woman who is now at Stanford.