What an excellent question. It’s also one we, as a society, should probably be able to answer. Most of us go through school dreading our writing assignments, only to end up in a job where we realize that writing is actually important, and wish we had learned to write better. Instead, we continue to allow children to go through school groaning and muttering about their upcoming writing assignments, which, to many students, appear entirely pointless. And we’ve never given these students a reason to believe otherwise. The specific topic of the essay may be pointless, but the practice of writing is essential.

So why write? What is the practical purpose of the endless essays and writing assignments we do in grade school?

Communication

During my undergraduate, I worked for the writing center at my college. There was one statement I would make that seemed to be completely mindblowing for a number of the students I tutored. What was that statement? Writing is just communication. Personally, I thought this was quite obvious. Why do we write? We write to communicate thoughts and ideas. But when I think about it, it is actually not that surprising to me that the students I tutored had lost sight of this basic understanding of writing. We spend so much time in school focusing on grammar and style, that we get lost in a forest of commas, clauses, and adjectives and we can no longer see the big picture. The details are just so overwhelming. I am by no means advocating that we stop teaching proper grammar and style in school, but I am trying to make the point that when we focus so exclusively on these details, we cause students to miss the point of learning how to write. The primary reason why we learn to write, and the primary purpose of an essay is to learn how to communicate well. If an academic essay upholds every grammar rule, but doesn’t communicate anything, it is pointless. So, while these rules have a place, they are not actually the most important aspect of writing. Communication and critical thinking are. As human beings, we are created to have ideas. And the skill of writing allows us to articulate those ideas and share them with others. That is the baseline of why we learn to write in school, and what the purpose of the endless essays ultimately is.

Comprehension

Another reason we write is to comprehend. This happens on two levels. Firstly, writing helps us to better understand the mechanics of the English language (or whichever language you are writing in). The second level is in comprehension of a subject. If you can write on it, you’ve proved that you understand it.

From my personal experience, as well as conversations I have had with other people, I have come to believe that an ability to write well translates to a thorough understanding of language. And that shouldn’t surprise us. After all, the more you write, the more you practice utilizing English. Writing in a secondary language helps you to better understand and gain fluency in that language. The same goes for English, or whichever language is your first. The more you write, the more you understand how language functions and the tools that have been created for better communication. Grammar, for instance, serves a very practical purpose. It breaks up words in a way which allows for greater clarity and comprehensibility. If we didn’t have commas, all writing would be one great, long stream of words that the reader would then have to sit down with and make a futile attempt to decipher. So, writing allows for not only a greater ability to use language, but also a greater ability to understand language and communication which comes from others.

Writing also assists in comprehension of subject matter. When we write on a subject, we process it in a different way. Now we not only have to understand the material, we must be able to communicate it. Clear communication requires a thorough understanding of whatever it is you are communicating. When you write about a subject, you think through it more thoroughly, and thus gain a greater comprehension of something you have read, something you have heard, and, sometimes, even something you have thought.

Critical thinking

George Orwell stated that “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” Some of you may be thinking, “Hey! I’ve never been the strongest writer. Are you saying I can’t think well?” I suppose that depends. Having, again, worked as a writing tutor, I have seen many students come in believing they were a terrible writer. A short tutoring session however, quickly showed that they weren’t a bad writer, they just lacked confidence and, in some cases, self-knowledge. An example of this would be the auditory learners who would come in and say they were bad writers. In most cases, these students could read through their essays aloud and pick out all of the errors while they did so. They just lacked the awareness of their own learning style and how it affected their writing process. You may simply be missing a key piece of self-knowledge that would completely change the game for you. The point that Orwell was making is that writing is very closely linked to critical thinking, and so an inability to write, or articulate your thoughts, can signify and inability to critically think.

I am personally of the belief that all people were created with a mind which can think and create. Barring true disability, I believe all people have the capability within themselves to think critically and articulate those thoughts. But our current school system does not teach us to think. In fact, it does, in a lot of ways, teach us not to think. Rather than processing what we learn and asking questions to come to concrete conclusions, we simply learn facts which we are then tested on. This model does not encourage critical thinking, it encourages mindless absorption of someone else’s findings or ideas. Even in the literature classroom, we rarely seek to answer real questions when writing a paper. Instead, we regurgitate a quick summary of the novel, followed by the interpretations we learned in class. When we learn to truly write (i.e.: communicate our own ideas), we learn to critically think.

Creativity

We all have ways in which we love to be creative. You may say, “Oh no. Not me. I’m very black and white. Creativity is not my strong suit.” But allow me to disagree for a moment. Not all of us enjoy pursuing the arts. Not all of us find pleasure in imagining other worlds or seeing rainbows amidst rushing water. But all of us like to create. And thus, all of us like to be creative. Your creation might be something functional, like a new water system, or an excel spreadsheet of all your company’s expenditures. That’s still creativity. And, whether or not it’s our primary career, we all have at least one method of creativity that we love. Feel free to fight me on it – that’s just what I see.

Writing is one way to be creative, and it is one way to encourage creativity. Writing – especially creative writing – forces you to think outside the box. When you think outside the box, you cultivate ideas, and these ideas have the potential to be groundbreaking. When you write creatively, you find ways to articulate your thoughts and ideas in an unconventional manner, meaning that you have to understand this thought or idea even more deeply than you did before. Creativity is an essential aspect of humanity, and learning to write is one way to broaden your creative horizons.

So, you’re saying I should write?

That’s a question you are going to have to answer for yourself, but I would encourage everyone to at least consider it. As I have articulated, there is so much to be gained from writing, and I think for many people a dislike of writing comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of writing. So, after reading this article, perhaps you find yourself reconsidering what it really means to write. If that’s the case, I’d encourage you to try writing down your thoughts, and see where it takes you. You never know what adventure might await.