Les Perelman critiques the College Board’s assertions that its new SAT writing essay and AP Language and Composition essay are responsible for improving writing instruction in America. Perelman contends, “instead of fostering good writing and critical thinking, [these essays] encourage students to embrace habits that produce mechanistic prose lacking any intellectual substance” (128).
To demonstrate his point, Perelman “coached” three students in writing an essentially non-sensical, information-inaccurate essay. The students followed the “rigid structure of the five-paragraph essay, fill up both pages of the test booklet, include lots of detail even if it is made up or inaccurate, use lots of big words, especially substituting ‘plethora of’ and ‘myriad number of’ for ‘many,’ and to insert a famous quotation near the conclusion of the essay even if it is irrelevant to the rest of the essay” (128).
The College Board scored these essays 5/6 with the criteria “effectively develops a point of view on the issue and demonstrates strong critical thinking, generally using appropriate examples, reasons, and other evidence to support its position” (129). College Board asserts that the reader’s scores are validated, which suggests accurate.
Perelman uses these examples of poor writing as illustrations of “information illiteracy” in which writers have so much information to choose from that it becomes “differentiate between truth and falsehood” (1300. He actually clarifies that “information illiteracy” is the negative form of “information literacy” which is imperative in today’s information age. “Information literacy” are “abilities to recognize when information is needed and to locate, evaluate, effectively use, and communicate information in its various formats” (130).
The American Library Association defines an “information literate individual” as someone who can:
• Determine the extent of information needed
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally (130).
Perelman states: “Information literacy is an inherent component of almost all writing and, as such, constitutes part of general literacy” (130).
Perelman claims that “data smog” is when “there is so much information coming at us, from so many directions and so quickly, that it is difficult if not impossible to differentiate good information from incomplete, biased, misleading, or just incorrect information” (131).
Perelman encourages teachers to “teach students to seek, when possible, the original source of a quotation rather than just citing a secondary source quoting the original. . . to evaluate the quality of information, . . . use citations for substance rather than show, for dialogue rather than diatribe” (134).
The pervasiveness of information illiteracy hit me hard last week while I read an advanced business writing group researched article on leadership. While addressing the leadership qualities of BYU-Idaho President Kim B. Clark, one of the students used a 1989 Ezra Taft Benson quotation praising President Clark. The student didn’t even recognize that Benson’s “President Clark” is J. Reuben Clark, a former member of the First President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who died in 1961. The student assumed that the quotation about President J. Reuben Clark, undoubtedly found through a quick electronic search, was about President Kim B. Clark presiding at BYU-Idaho in 2009. The student dumped the quotation in the paper and continued on. The student did not evaluate the information; rather he just unthinkingly incorporated distorted information.
Perelman calls on educators “to design assessments that would reinforce the acquisition of information literacy and real critical thinking, instruments that would reinforce learning goals rather than subvert them and help our students become smarter rather than dumbing them down with word bites” (139).
Perelman, Les. "Information Illiteracy and Mass Market Writing Assessments." College Composition and Communication 60.1 (2008): 128-140.
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