Slashdot posted yesterday a story about an informal study comparing the writing abilities of bloggers and high school students. Being a member of both groups, I feel particularly qualified to comment on the subject.

First: the means of comparison here was the writing portion of the new SAT, a section which I feel compelled to point out is not weighed particularly heavily (if at all) by a number of colleges compared to the critical reading and math sections of the test. And this perhaps is the most important point to consider. I hardly think that the SAT writing section is capable of telling me whether or not I’m a “good” writer, and I certainly don’t need an 800 to validate my own ability to compose sentences and make points in writing.

The SAT, like all standardized tests, judges the student (or blogger, as the case may be) on his ability to provide to the grader what the grader wants to read. Typically this takes the form of a position on some vague human ideal or absurd philisophical question, which is then supported by equally absurd “concrete examples” either from personal experience, historical examples, or readings, the last two of which typically come from what’s been studied in school that year. The SAT does not care whether you have any actual interest in the topic, or whether you have any fitting “personal examples,” or even whether your paper has any semblance of fact in it. The grader essentially takes each paper through a vague rubric that places emphasis on using concrete evidence to argue abstract ideas, creating an argument designed exclusively to please one’s audience, and preparing a piece of writing to meet these goals in a span 25 minutes.

In short, it’s no wonder that the high scoring essays from students weren’t particularly astounding, or that bloggers didn’t score particularly well. The essay on the SAT is just like any section of any standardized tests: those who perform best on the test are not necessarily those who are most qualified at the subject matter. The College Board chooses as exemplars the essays that most clearly address the points that graders have to check off on their rubrics, and those who fail to meet these points explicitly are left by the wayside.

I enjoy blogging for a simple reason, if nothing else: it gives me the opportunity to write. I can’t blog unless I actually decide that I have something to say–it just won’t happen. I write about things that interest me, and things that I have an opinion on (and yeah that’s a preposition at the end of a sentence, but I don’t care). Without a blog I’d be left with no writing experience other than a few formal papers on the changes in women’s roles in Chinese history or the effect of friction on the speed of a rolling ball, or something similarly useless. One of the most important things I felt I was able to do in my English class last year had to do with voice, and being able to actually write something informal while injecting some personality into it. I’m rather pleased, and this very blog is the one place where I have the most opportunity to practice it and take advantage of it.

Besides, I could sure as hell spend 25 minutes writing something out on my blog when I already know what I want to say, and I don’t have to worry about saying what some robot in Princeton wants to hear.

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