A Conflict Revisited

The demand that public school students, especially at the high school level, write under time pressure has been the subject of debate for at least the last seventy-five years. As state after state has added a timed writing component to its testing apparatus in recent years, the debate has intensified. Those teachers who are alumni of the National Writing Project (NWP) continue to voice their belief that students internalize the Writing Process, an approach largely free from rigid time constraints. Proponents of featuring timed writing activity, however, continue to support the belief that such instructional demands will assist young people in coping with a variety of challenges in the real, i.e., adult world. The writer of this essay has attempted to present both sides of the argument.