Response and Summary: I Won't Use Writing as Punishment. I Won't ...

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In the essay, “I won’t use writing as punishment. I won’t…” the author, Roy Peter Clark, attempts to persuade teachers and parents that when writing is used as a method of punishment, the student associates a negative attitude toward all writing endeavors. As he discusses this topic, Clark explores the value and benefits of encouraging children to research and investigate a subject before writing a paper. Clark endeavors to convince teachers and parents that making writing a positive experience for children will instill and nurture a love of writing within them that will last a lifetime. Roy Peter Clark is vice president of Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and publishes a regular column, “Writing Tools,” for PoynterOnLine. An instructor for over 30 years, he has taught at all levels of writing from elementary students to Pulitzer-prize winning authors. Clark is a respected author who has published several books on journalism and writing, and has appeared on the Today and Oprah Winfrey television shows (Clark, 2009, pp. 3-4). It is interesting to observe the author’s note at the beginning of this publication of his essay; Clark informs the reader that this writing was first published twenty years earlier, and how disappointed he was to realize that the article is just as relevant at the present time as it was then. He presents several additional examples of using writing as punishment, and the “grotesque consequences” (Clark, 2009, p. 4) of such measures, including the Harry Potter movie in which Harry is forced to write the sentence “I will not lie” over and over with a magic pen that would leave bloody marks on his hand with each letter that he wrote, scars that would never heal (Clark, 2009, p. 4). The author begins his essay with a story of two fifth grade girls, researching materials in a school library to use to write a term paper. As the principle

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