One aspect of education being written off. (Commentary).

LIKE restaurant owners or fashion designers, education reformers succumb to fads--math is the obsession one season, history or spelling the next. But for those selfless souls engaged in the never-ending project of teaching children how to think, behave and be good citizens, one fad is long overdue: an obsession with why U.S. students can't write coherently.

And they can't. Mountains of data collected over the past 20 years tell the story--and tell it, by the way, far more clearly than the average high school student could. Only one out of four high school seniors is rated as "proficient" in writing, according to exams given by the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress. Nearly half were graded as "unsatisfactory."

A study last year by the University of California found that well over 50 percent of incoming freshmen were unable to produce a paper "relatively free" of language errors. The same percentage--no coincidence--have difficulty "synthesizing information and analyzing arguments" in writing.

Really, though, the reason for this disaster is pretty plain. Children aren't learning to write because adults have given up trying to teach them.

Again according to NAEP (the indispensable resource for people who love to complain about U.S. education), fewer than half of high school seniors say they are assigned even to write a three-page paper once a month in--English class! Four in 10 say their English teachers "never" or "hardly ever" give them such writing assignments.

To which a large number of Americans might say: So what?

We are a pragmatic bunch, and an emphasis on writing, which conjures up images of poets and other long-hairs frittering away their time when they might be out making money like decent people should, does seem to cut against the can-do functionalism of American education.

Of course everybody needs to know how to calculate and read, but what good is writing going to do you? The world overflows with starving poets and novelists, and most of them deserve their fate.

Yet writing well can indeed translate into hard cash, say the authors of a splendid new study, "The Neglected 'R': The Need for a Writing Revolution," published by the College Board's National Commission on Writing.

They cite a survey in which nine out of 10 mid-career professionals ranked the "need to write effectively" a skill of "great importance" to their work. The better you write, the better your chances of drawing down the Big Green, say these educators (not in those words, of

The connection between successful commerce and vivid prose may come as a surprise. but it shouldn't. Writing well and thinking clearly--being able to sustain a line of argument or marshal a sequence of facts for more than a moment--are bankable skills. A person who can do one has a better chance of doing the other, and both are necessary for getting ahead in what the report calls "the modern economy"

Admirable as it is, the report overstates the delights awaiting students who strive to write well. "They will find that writing is liberating, satisfying, even joyful," the authors write. "Writing competence builds confidence, which readily turns into creativity and fun."

Now, no concept--not even self-esteem--has been so disastrous to modern education as the notion of "fun," Learning, like writing, can bring pleasure, and there is undeniable satisfaction in having mastered a subject or written well. But neither activity is fun, as, say, bowling is fun. To suggest otherwise only invites frustration.

In fact, most writers who find writing "joyful" and "fun" are not very careful--which means not very good--writers. They're having too dam much fun to worry about the order and soundness of the ideas they're so giddily splashing down on the page.

Still, the commission's heart is undeniably in the right place, and their hopes are high. They propose a five-year, nationwide "Writing Challenge" that would see schools include a writing component in all subjects, not merely English; instruct all teachers, regardless of subject, in the techniques of writing instruction; and install a nationwide system to measure progress year by year.

"What is required," says the report, "is not another educational fad but a fundamental reformulation of what this society means by learning"

Not another fad? OK. Point taken. But for the moment even a fad for good writing would be welcome.

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist with Bloombere News.