[...] the California universities seem to require a course in composition to graduate. So if all these places are requiring these courses, why aren't students learning how to write? Are the courses less demanding? Do the profs not tear the papers apart? Does anyone know?
From my experience as a returning student (I have taken art/English classes at a CA community college years after getting my "real" engineering degree a long time ago in a country far, far away) and seen other students who couldn't string a coherent, properly spelled sentence together, there are three things at play:
1) community colleges have to take anybody who graduates from high school. Not just people who graduate from high school after taking all honor/AP classes. Clearly it is possible to graduate without having mastered the basics (which what you got in honors classes... probably weren't). Also lots of returning students who might have forgotten a lot.
2) lots of foreign students struggling with the language and the conventions of US essay writing. In most community colleges their full tuition keeps the boat afloat, so... (there was an article recently in IIRC the NYT about a cottage industry of faked admission files for Chinese students, which probably doesn't help).
3) And while intro to English composition is indeed required for graduation, it teaches the basics and no, shredding is frowned upon. The buzz word is constructive criticism
. There are remedial classes you have to take before taking English composition (or the ESL equivalent) and up front testing, but while most writing heavy classes (say, history vs. color theory) recommend waiting until you have passed English composition a lot of students ignore the warnings.
