I have a son in high school, and so I am learning a great deal about the different stages of young folks’ development as writers. I also teach first-semester freshmen, which gains me a bit of an idea of what they have just been learning and doing in high school. It seems typical of high-school writing that students are asked to pick a side in a debate or of an issue and fight tooth and nail for that side. This is very likely just what high school teenagers need to learn to do to develop as thinkers and writers. (My son has run into lots of first-rate teachers who clearly know what they are doing. Bravo!) The college level, though, requires something different. The heart of a good paper is still an argument, but here that means an explanation, an analysis that reveals the truth even if that truth is messy. (Nor is an argument, as my colleague in English, Bryan Crockett, once put it, something that ends with you slamming your bedroom door in your mother’s face.) The good writer attempts to prove her point, but the point should not be a partisan oversimplification of a text, idea, institution, whatever; it should consist of a fair-minded reading of the text, idea, etc., based on the application of reason to the evidence. I am afraid, alas, that an argument concerning a complex, untidy reality is not license for messy writing. Quite the contrary. When things are difficult to understand and difficult to communicate, the writer must be doubly clear. I am about to get the final examination papers from my Multicultural Roman Empire students. They’ve done two papers so far, and for most, the second paper was a substantial improvement on the first. This is exciting. I am anticipating even stronger and more compelling performances on no. 3.