Competence can be taught, but not greatness.

* Teaching opinion writing still produces competent results.

Some question whether editorial writing can be taught. The simple answer is "yes," "no," and "we are probably asking the wrong question."

Natural gifts - such as red hair or perfect pitch or a sense of humor - cannot be taught. Sometimes we can compensate for or disguise the lack of these, but if we don't have them, we simply do not have them. A red dye job is not the same as having a head of natural red hair.

But for most of us, the tasks of making or doing things require no unusual natural gifts and are something we can learn to do. And whatever can be learned can also be taught.

If I can learn to write an editorial, I can also be taught to write an editorial. My editorial may not win a Pulitzer Prize. Yet it can quite accurately and justly be called what it claims to be: an editorial.

One of the right questions, therefore, is this: Can anyone be taught to write an editorial that we guarantee will win a Pulitzer Prize?

The answer is no.

Competence can be taught, but greatness cannot. If we could learn to make great works of art, then all editorials ought to be masterpieces. But greatness requires special gifts: exceptional originality, initiative, enthusiasm, courage, and character, for starters.

Such gifts cannot be learned or taught. They are simply given to or developed by some of us. Fortunately, competent editorials - those that accomplish all they are supposed to accomplish, though not in any outstanding fashion - can be valuable and useful in themselves.

Another right question was considered in great detail by Joseph Pulitzer nearly a century ago. Initially, both the trustees of Columbia University and Pulitzer's fellow journalists objected to his proposal to endow a college of journalism. Thus he had to face this question: What is the best way to learn, and thus to teach, any of the works of journalism?

Editorial writing can be taught in many ways. Writers can be self-taught, a trial-and-error process that is also hit-or-miss, with no one to explain why some efforts are home runs and others strikeouts.

Or, as editors in Pulitzer's time (and some even today) confidently claimed, "Give me a literate person and in six months I will make him an editorial writer." That, too, is possible, although it consumes more time than most editors can afford to give.

Doctors and lawyers, Pulitzer pointed out, used to acquire their education in "the shop," but those professions soon found better ways of learning their skills. Thus college-level courses in medicine and law and later in journalism - came into being.

Given on the one hand literate people with a little more than average intelligence, energy, and willingness to learn, and on the other hand patient and demanding professors who have themselves learned what editorials are and what is required to write them - then yes, editorial writing can be taught.

If I said otherwise, I would also have to say that many good teachers have wasted many years of their lives struggling to do the impossible. That, I believe, is not true.

NCEW life member Warren Bovee is professor emeritus of journalism at Marquette University in Milwaukee.