The "Bullshit" Article

     Apart from reacting to the fairly revolutionary article title: "A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing," I thought Eubanks and Schaeffer made several interesting points regarding the process of writing. Foremost, I found it interesting how much time was spent meditating on the idea of "what bullshit is - or, better yet, a more precise understanding of how what bullshit is varies." I found this to be as satisfying as most students might - it may be refreshing to hear a professional seem to make a condescending realization, even better when in layman's terms. However, the style of text limited the capacity for argument, in my opinion. The need for a degree of possible dishonesty or ill virtue for the promotion of individual education and development, what this article essentially arguing, is somewhat lost in what seems to be an exerted attempt to make this article relevant, by style more than content.
     In spite of my aforementioned critique, I found some of the ideas presented to be refreshing and unique. "Bullshit may be both unavoidable and beneficial." This is perhaps true, especially in terms of learning to write. At least with my personal experience, we are trained to form a strong argument and pull all the evidence we can to support this central idea. When we walk away from the essay, our idea - what we have written - may be unsupportive of our own views regardless of how well the piece was written. This idea surfaced in the article as well. A couple of pages into the article, the authors declare: "If academic writing is bullshit, then bullshit is what we teach." To me, this rings to be needfully true. Before we can teach students (and ourselves) to express what is truly felt by means of writing, we must first teach (and learn) how to express (how to write). Thus, we need practice. We must choose a side and defend it using all possible resources. This will teach us how to argue, how to write, and hopefully, how to think.