A Chemist's View of Writing, Reading, and Thinking across the Curriculum

Abstract

Teaching students writing, reading, and thinking across the curriculum requires the acceptance of a premise, relatively simple on its face, but imbued with substantial promise for reinventing the formidable tradition of making writing the central cog of the intellectual machinery that facilitates learning. The premise is that all teachers in all disciplines should be actively involved in students' writing, reading, and thinking and should not function as mere judges and graders of purportedly finished writings. I expect to be encouraged by the administration of my college to require more writing, revision, and rewriting in courses that I teach in the future, and to expand the audiences for written work to include the class, the writing laboratory, professors in collaborative teaching arrangements, and others. The college will be participating in one of the national writing programs, and we must also assist our students in completing the writing requirements of the testing program that is mandated for all institutions in the state system of higher education. Recognizing that writing is a process and a mode for also helps students to read with more understanding of the structure of language. Writing and reading are connected, interactive processes requiring students to cooperate in the act of learning. Our students need instruction and practice for reading in their subjects. Reading assignments need to go beyond the text to include materials that offer balance, put the subject into perspective, and place it in the context of real-world points of reference for our students. Discipline-based reading helps students to acquire the learning and expected characteristic of the field. Reading also adds to the value of the writing within the subject or discipline by defining and illuminating basic practices, procedures, and values of the field. Reading and related writing in chemistry and other scientific areas are also forms of social behavior that we must teach if students are to be successful thinkers and scholars in the discipline. That is not revolutionary, it is merely practical. I invite my colleagues in the hard sciences to join the enterprise and re-