Writing’s role in our lives

In a recent speech, the principal of my kid’s school talked about the importance of writing in the overall education process of a child. It made me think of my own life where I didn’t really begin writing regularly until I was almost 40. It’s important to me know, but really held no significant meaning while I was in school or even college.

My kids don’t show any motivation to write other than what is required for a graded assignment. Maybe it’s because writing for graded assignments doesn’t always let you write from your heart. Assignments are by definition something that someone else chose for you. But I believe,the best writing comes from a desire within and a passion to write to express feelings and emotions. A post I wrote about a Cooperstown baseball trip comes to mind as a writing that flowed from my mind when I was on an emotional high from a life experience.  It was easy writing and captured a moment and a feeling. My kids haven’t made that leap to enjoy writing. I hope someday they will.

It’s also a challenge for students to embrace regular writing today because we live in media consumption oriented society rather than a creation oriented one. The 1% rule of the internet states that “ only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk”. It’s easy to be a content consumer, but not so easy to be a content creator. In this case I’m referring to content creation as the process of writing thoughts as more than posting pictures and status updates.

As I see it, even if we don’t write for audience, we can write for ourselves. We can write to explore and record our thoughts.We can write to think about and form opinions.  It’s a healthy exercise and has many rewards. This was in part, the principal’s thought. Maximize your learning thinking and writing. It’s never too late to get started.