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I despair at the Office for Students’ recommendations that universities punish students for poor writing skills (Universities in England ‘failing to mark down students’ for poor writing skills, 7 October).
It reminds me of the feedback on my first university essay, post-state school, where my tutor criticised the use of the contraction “could’ve” more than the substance of my writing. I learned the lesson, but it could have been presented in a more sympathetic way; my parochial education had simply not taught me the correct way or corrected me. Whether it’s using French as the language of court, Nancy Mitford’s “U” speech, or universities marking down students for not having learned Latin grammar at school, language and vocabulary have long been used by the upper classes to arbitrarily distinguish themselves from the lower, less educated classes.
A policy to penalise students for poor writing skills is only a policy to punish those from the wrong sort of background, and to give unfair advantage to those who have had the benefit of the “right sort” of parents, with the money and time to instil particular writing skills in their children.
Good writing skills are fostered from early childhood and parents and schools need the support to assist children in learning to write from that age. Why is the focus on penalising students for lacking a skill they never had the opportunity to learn, instead of providing them the opportunity to improve?
Students should be judged on the quality of their thought, not the packaging, and I can think of a good reason why that approach might scare the Conservatives and their leader. I note the Office for Students might have found grounds for criticism on either basis in the phrase “get Brexit done”.
Jonathan Hewett
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
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