I work for the US Government and my section employed a college intern who is a computer science major. The young man had to write an "end of tour" essay and his supervisor brought to me to get my opinion on what the intern had written. After reading the essay, I told the supervisor that the writing level was well below what college junior should be capable of writing; to me, the essay was written more towards middle school to early high school level. I understand that computer science requires quite a bit of mathematics and learning the programming language(s); however, I feel the colleges should continue to stress writing skills should be continued in the technical oriented upper level classes. I have a degree in information technology, in addition to mathematics and computer programming, I had to write essays, answer essay questions, and write papers which were written in accordance with the APA format. I am a computer system security manager with the US Department of Defense and part of my job is writing policy, reviewing incident reports, and developing system security plans. My position requires strong writing skills, but what if that intern finds himself in the same job after he graduates from college? His college did not provide him a diverse curriculum to prepare him for the real world. I am sure he will be an excellent programmer, developer, or software engineer, but what about his writing skills?

My son is a Baltimore City Police Officer; he joined the police department right after high school as a cadet and later he was accepted into the police academy. The police academy not only taught the recruits self defense, using firearms, police procedures, law, and policy, they taught him how to write reports. The academy emphasized writing in addition to the other subjects in their curriculum. I got to read some of his report writing assignments and I saw over time how much his writing improved as he progressed. Now he has his own post which is a very busy one, I cannot think of all the various reports that he has to write based on the different incidents that he handles in his shift. He recently told me the academy's emphasis on good writing and my tough proof reading, writing reports is second nature to him (well it should be) and good writing is essential to helping detectives and prosecutors with their investigations and bringing cases to the courts. A police officer's report is part of the evidence submitted to the courts.

My point, education needs to be a balanced to create a "well rounded" individual and prepare them as much as possible for whatever the vocation a person chooses in life.

Thank you for reading, your opinions, comments, criticisms and input are most welcomed.
Patrick