Last updated on November 26, 2023
Required college composition courses often serve a gatekeeping function, ensuring that only the right sort of students advance towards degrees.
Though anecdotal, every campus course-related hearing I’ve been involved in as an expert on autism and neurodiversity was a writing course. These were not always first-year composition, but they were writing courses and that indicates a problem with the courses — not the students.
The colleges, instructors, students, and families contacting me reflect institutions ranging from a California State University to a couple of premiere research (“R1”) institutions. The proceedings have been investigations and hearings, depending on circumstances; an investigation can lead to a disciplinary hearing. The processes have too often concluded with the student and/or the student’s family threatening lawsuits naming the school and professor. With the threat of legal action, the situations have been resolved quickly — sometimes after many months before the threat of lawsuits.
That the threat of legal action is required for change should trouble educators and disability activists.
I faced such an investigative process at the University of Minnesota. The writing professor is no longer at Minnesota, but she remains a professor elsewhere. Far more should have and could have been done within the Department of Writing Studies. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t already speaking to other departments and programs on a regular basis, and was a consultant through the Autism Society of Minnesota to at least five school districts.
If not for two deans stepping in to put a stop to the mess, I wouldn’t have my doctorate nor would I have gone on to complete my MFA.
Within writing instruction, bullying, including verbal and written abuse, is so pervasive that I anticipate a half-dozen or more emails asking for help each semester. Something is broken within the discipline.
Six-to-eight emails don’t represent a tidal wave of complaints against autistic students, but I am only one person and I am far from the best-known resource for students and families. I’m the last person I would call for help.
Assume only a third of the students contacting me are “really” abused. The rest merely misunderstand situations within their writing courses. That means two or three neurodiverse students contacting me are victims of abuse by writing instructors each semester.
When I was a Coordinator of Professional and Technical Writing, during a faculty meeting on curriculum a colleague said, “We don’t need no autistics here.” I was told by the department chair that this was merely that faculty member’s manner. He teased people. Don’t take it personally. In fact, it is a sign of respect, I was assured. Yet, soon after, my reviews went from outstanding (4.8/5.0) to somewhat negative. I was offered a research grant for a full year if I would remain off campus. I was told people were uncomfortable with my presence.
I don’t blame the universities, overall. People don’t understand autistic traits without training and support. But once there is a problem, listen and learn. Disclosure should prompt a bit of effort to understand a disability.
(Plenty of research supports the avoidance of autistics – see: Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments.)
My wife and I have two foster daughters with special needs. All foster children have special needs. We are now navigating the IEP, 504, and general classroom situation. We know the oldest was teased and insulted — not only by children but also by adults on campus. That experience doesn’t end with age, as I’ve learned over almost 50 years.
Autism, PDD-NOS, PTSD, anxiety, and natural introversion create obstacles within composition pedagogies that are all about sharing, collaborating, and emotional connections. Too many writing instructors want to play therapist and social worker, trying “help” the atypical student. This is the same model that leads to forced public speaking courses, or speaking requirements within writing courses.
Excuse me? Why do we value public speaking for everyone? I know the arguments and consider them all bunk. If someone wants to speak and struggles, that differs from someone who doesn’t want to speak.
My wife, a successful technical communicator, disproves what many composition pedagogies embrace. She’s earned engineering degrees (aero and mech) and is now the lead of technical documentation for a company that designs complex devices. She runs a team of experts. From home. Via e-mail and text message. No public speaking. Rarely leaving the house. Extremely rare voice phone calls. And she has eleven years in her current position.
I’ve worked for the same publisher for ten years and I have never met my editor, the publication team — nobody. I’ve never even spoken to anyone in the main office by phone. I write, I submit, and the rest is out of my hands.
No writing course I have taken reflects our professional realities as writers. It might be that most writers sit around in little circles trying to say nice things followed by aggressively stated “suggestions,” but I’ve never experienced that. My editor isn’t going to tell me why he or she changed things. Nor is my wife going to check in with one of her staff before making a minor change to text.
Professional writing is more like an assembly line with checkpoints than a salon.
We are two successful writers who disliked writing courses and struggled with their design. The pedagogies were more about social skills than writing.
Sadly, I have had two recent examples of students brilliant in the sciences quitting universities because of writing courses. I hope they someday return to complete their degree programs. They could write well, but they failed the pedagogy within the courses. One had published a paper, as an undergraduate. Now what will these young people do? Ideally, industry will judge their skills, not their lack of degrees.
Writing instruction is badly in need of change. All the social justice talk doesn’t align with the realities I see when contacted by atypical but brilliant students from other fields (STEM, always).
These young people simply want to pass a writing requirement without having a mental breakdown. The writing courses destroy hopes and dreams. That’s unacceptable, and I hope not only to me and these students but also to some influential composition and rhetoric scholars.