Grant Piper's May 18 letter, "A little slack for letter-writers," starts off with the inaccurate claim that my May 8 letter ("Use fewer letters when quality lags") specifically cited him by name for poor writing. He then proceeds to make the argument that letters to the editor constitute a genre of writing that is somehow exempt from basic standards of logical argumentation and proof. While I suspect that there may be some who will support this view, as an educator, this is certainly not an idea that I would ever want to convey to my students.
Piper then makes a rather frightening leap in logical acrobatics by suggesting that the demand for the learning and usage of disciplined argumentation (which I would consider to be an essential component in the development of critical thinking) can be linked with the suppression of freedom of expression exercised by illiberal governments.
Of course, the actuality is opposite of this, since it is the learning of clear, critical thinking (and thus writing) that repressive governments most fear. The encouragement of the exercise of clear, critical thought is just about the furthest thing there is from "censoring people's thoughts."
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