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The Research Paper’s Entrenchment
in High Schools and Colleges

Ted Morrissey

The following is excerpted from my forthcoming book, tentatively titled Aspects of Expressive Writing: The International Lectures, and specifically from the new commentary I am writing for each of the seven lectures. This excerpt is from Lecture 1, “Locating Our Common Humanity through Expressive Writing,” delivered as the opening keynote at a conference in Hue, Vietnam, in 2018, the Fifth International Conference on Language, Society and Culture in Asian Contexts.

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In my address I make use of James Britton’s categories of writing—transactional, expressive, and poetic—but I amend them by combining the latter two, saying that “I use the phrase ‘expressive writing’ . . . as synonymous with what, in the U.S., we most often term ‘creative writing.’” Moreover, I cite Jeff Park’s observation that “transactional writing is by far the dominant mode in the academy” in the form of analyses and research-based reports, usually called “research papers” or “term papers.” Based on my more than forty years of teaching, it appears universally true that beginning in middle school or junior high school, students are introduced to the idea of writing documented papers, with that documentation aimed at validating a thesis statement. Certainly in American high schools, the focus on research-paper writing is paramount, to the point of obsession (if one can step back and observe the situation with a bit of distance).

High school teachers devote whole courses to “the research paper,” and at every grade level students must go through the process of finding a topic, narrowing it, focusing it, researching it, and then attempting to write a coherent argument using either MLA or APA style. And it isn’t just a phenomenon generated by English departments. Students in other courses—in both the sciences and the humanities—will be required to write a “research paper.” They struggle to write them, then teachers struggle to grade them and to respond to their work in a meaningful way. It is an annual harrowing experience for both student and teacher.

Then in college, students—no matter their major—must take first-year writing courses (what used to be termed, and maybe still is, “freshman composition”) whereby they do it all again. Based on how awful the typical first-year student is at doing a research paper, college instructors typically assume their high schools had really dropped the ball and didn’t teach them the incumbent skills, or they taught them badly. It is worth noting that for much of the twentieth century (perhaps practically all of it), freshmen were required to take two writing courses: one in which they wrote “the research paper,” and another in which they studied literature and learned to write literary analysis. However, by the turn of the twenty-first century, most universities had decided the required literature course was unnecessary and what incoming students needed was a heavier dose of research-paper writing, with perhaps one course devoted to “writing in the humanities” (MLA style required) and another devoted to “writing in the sciences” (APA style required). I used to teach a course where in a single semester students would have to write one MLA-documented paper, and one APA-documented paper, the logic being that the first-year students would be required to write research papers in both their humanities courses and their science courses going forward. For most students, the end result of this two-research-papers course was that they came away with a muddled understanding of documentation style that combined elements of both, willy-nilly, doing neither correctly.

English departments, understandably, predictably, protested; they wanted to keep the required literature study. In retrospect, this development was perhaps the beginning of the end for the humanities in general. In recent years universities have been busily and proficiently dismantling English departments and other departments in the humanities (art, music, etc.). The study of literature (that is, the study of expressive writing), which used to be required of all university students, has now become a niche field, one easily avoided by practically all if they so choose (and the majority do).

I have likely wandered too far afield already, but it’s worth wondering why high schools and colleges became so focused on transactional writing (a.k.a. research-paper writing). I suspect it has to do with the fact that high school used to be considered “higher education” and the few (young men) who attained such a lofty level of erudition had their sights set on one of three professions: medicine, law, or the clergy. All required, it was believed, the ability to think analytically and construct a logically organized argument (whether it was to diagnose and propose treatments for a disease, or to comprehend relevant case law and put forward a legal opinion, or to absorb scripture and interpret the Word of God for the masses). The high school research paper is effective training for the sort of research and writing that doctors, lawyers and ministers are expected to do. By mid-twentieth century, however, practically every citizen was attending and graduating from high school. Yet the old-style curriculum and its expectations remained.

The rationale for teaching “the research paper” in high school evolved into students will have to write research papers in college, no matter their major, which is true—but what’s the rationale for every single major needing to learn “the research paper”? For many students, the main objective of their first-year writing courses is to survive them—and many do not, academically. The percentage varies by university and by year and by other factors, but between about 25% and 35% of freshmen fail out, drop out or stop out of college before their sophomore year; many, in fact, have cleared out by the end of September. When I would adjunct, at both Benedictine University and University of Illinois, Springfield campuses, on the first night of class each August it was challenging to find a decent parking place; in the coming days and weeks it would become progressively easier, and by October 1 primo spots were everywhere. Typically universities admit more incoming students than they have space for, which is why so many students end up in “temporary housing” (storage closets that have been outfitted with bunk beds and child-size desks); by the end of September those temporarily housed students will have been relocated to permanent rooms (or they will be among the quarter to a third who decided college wasn’t for them after all).

Obviously I’m not blaming first-year writing courses as the sole cause of perennial freshman exodi, but in many instances they’re a contributing factor.

In both high-school and college curricula, this single-minded emphasis on transactional writing leaves little (normally no) room for expressive and poetic writing (i.e., creative writing)—styles of writing that copious students enjoy (many, many times I’ve seen reluctant writers, who wouldn’t or couldn’t write a documented paper to save their souls, joyfully puzzle over haiku and proudly share their completed poem with their classmates). So-called non-writers can find pleasure in composing short stories, plays and creative nonfiction (especially memoir). What is more, these expressive forms of writing require similar or the same sets of skills as transactional writing. Obviously all writing requires attention to syntax and diction, but students writing expressively must consider overall structure as well: poems, plays, stories and other narratives must conform to their own kinds of logic, just as documented papers must conform to theirs. Frequently expressive writing requires research. In order for fictional narratives to be plausible, the writer oftentimes must research a place, a historical period or event, a scientific principle or procedure, a well-known person, etc. (Tolstoy became an expert on Napoleonic battles throughout Europe and Russia—as well as Napoleon and his many counterparts—in the process of writing War and Peace).

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Ted Morrissey is the publisher of Twelve Winters Press and its various entities, including Twelve Winters Journal, Twelve Winters Miscellany, and the podcast A Lesson before Writing, which he co-hosts with Brady Harrison and Grant Tracey. His most recent book is Aspiring Child: A Biography of Mary W. Shelley in Sonnets. He is on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok, YouTube, and elsewhere.

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