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Just a quick response to Susan's query/prod.  Media accounts I have seen
of this report on writing at MUN have misquoted the report on virtually
every point, e.g in saying that 80% of MUN students don't know how to
write. . or some such (I may not be quoting quite accurately here myself)
but that was the impression left by the item in Saturday's Globe , for
example. The committee did not report on the quality of writing at MUN
(whatever tht means): didn't test student writing, weren't asked to,
didn't have the expertise or resources, knew they didn't.  Instead they
reported on PERCEPTIONS of writing at MUN.  University officials have not
responded to the misrepresentations in the media since the report has not
yet been "received' by Senate, who commissioned it in the first place.  It
was leaked by students to the student newspaper, and the local and
national media seem not to have bothered checking out that account before
repeating its contents.

Some of you may possibly remember that I asked for advice from all of you
when I was about to speak to that committee a couple of years ago, and
that afterwards I vented my frustrations here about the directions they
were taking.  In the meantime some of the less enlightened members of the
committee dropped by the wayside (not surprising, given the length of
time they took and all the ground they covered) and in the almost-final
version I saw a few weeks ago the report seemed a lot mmore sensible than
I would have expected.

Woops. . gotta go meet students.  No time to proofread this. .but gee
it's probably a whole lot better than you'd expect coming from the Rock.

Phyllis Artiss