I can’t dismiss university study as a pathway towards learning or teaching writing and then claim to be qualified based on my years wasted at university.
If my study qualifies me for anything, it’s to be science writer. First I had to learn about science (below), then I learned about writing by working as a science writer. It is these dual facts, that I have become an expert writer and that I am an experienced teacher, that qualifies me to be a writing teacher.
People dismiss science writers. I blame science teachers. Most stupefy students, having no effect except to create lifelong aversion. So when I mention science writing, people recall their tedious and spirit-crushing science classes and assume that science writing must be more of the same. It’s not. The world of real science, in contrast to school-science test trivia, is full of mind-bending concepts, electrifying drama, plus colourful and passionate characters. Nothing else offers this combination. Creativity and imagination are fundamental to science. Science is more difficult than most other forms of writing, yet similar in being basically storytelling. Thus science develops and demonstrates a writer’s skill. Nevertheless, employers (and potential clients) often react with horror at the word science because they associate it with boredom. It’s school they have a problem with, not science.
Later, I learned other kinds of writing by doing them guided by expert feedback, exactly the way I propose to teach you.
Incidentally, regarding science, I had a superior education: not from my three science degrees, although they were excellent as degrees go.
I have a superior science education because I learned it in a superior way.
Before becoming a CSIRO science writer, I was a CSIRO ecologist. During those years, I pestered all of our experts with questions at every opportunity. Then, as a science writer, I spent the next several decades in 1:1 communication with the world’s best experts. First I’d read their stuff, then ask them about it. That’s the ultimate, and I’ve been doing that since 1992.
A second aspect of my education has been fantastic science books that those or other eminent experts wrote for the general public. Some single such books are worth more than entire degrees, and I’ve read them all. Many have inspired me and my writing. I’m sorry to say that my university teachers never did.
I have experienced conventional education and assisted self-education, at times simultaneously. The latter has been almost inexpressibly superior. It’s like returning from another planet; nobody understands how profound my journey has been. What I learned is impossible to get from university. And yet people still talk as if degrees are the whole of education.
At least, some of my other qualifications permit me to teach in certain kinds of school, and that’s worth something. So I learned how to teach by doing it (with feedback). It’s not hard.
If someone can teach, they’re a qualified teacher as far as I’m concerned.
I emphatically reject education as a legitimate university subject (ask me why).
See also Science communication
Articulate Writing 