The Daily would like to take the opportunity at the beginning of Spring quarter to commend Stanford’s often-maligned first year “Program in Writing and Rhetoric” requirement. PWR 1 provides freshmen with a broad range of edifying courses, teaching them how to think and write critically and how to best utilize the University’s vast research resources. It is an essential part of any Stanford student’s education.

While few would care to admit it, we could all improve our writing. As talented as Stanford students are, PWR offers a way for already-proficient writers to improve, and it assists those needing a leg up. To do this, the program grants students a wide array of courses to choose from — roughly 30 different classes this quarter, for example — in an admirable attempt to ensure that there is something for everyone.

There will always be those who dislike their PWR class, either because of the professor or subject matter. It speaks to the program’s desire to make PWR enjoyable for as many students as possible, however, that one can choose from offerings as eclectic as “Pretty in Pink: The Rhetoric of the ‘80s” and “Writing the Bicycle: Rhetoric and Research on Two Wheels.” There’s even “Machine Dreams: The Rhetoric of Technology/Rhetoric as Technology” for the techies and “Everybody’s Favorite Color?: The Rhetoric of Green,” for the environmentally conscious. Whatever its perceived failings, PWR does not suffer from a lack of diverse, interesting topics.

While instructor quality can vary, as with any class, PWR classes can be remarkably effective at educating students in critical analysis and more sophisticated writing methods. By carefully analyzing others’ writing, students absorb what is and is not effective in their own writing. Additionally, students are required to meet with professors, and they must write and peer-edit multiple drafts of their papers. As a result of this collaboration with teacher and peers, students learn to think and rethink their arguments. The finished product is often much more polished than the typical paper cranked out the night/morning before it is due.

PWR helps compensate for the inability of many other courses to provide these valuable learning experiences. In classes where enhancing writing skills is not the primary goal, students have little time to write multiple drafts, peer-edit or meet with professors to discuss paper ideas. With PWR, students can at least learn the value of doing so, and gain skills that hopefully translate to other classes that are similarly writing-intensive but also faster-paced.

The program is also effective — especially for freshman taking it in their first fall term — at familiarizing students with the myriad research resources that all Stanford students have at their fingertips. Navigating the west stacks at Green can be dizzying, and Socrates, Stanford’s online catalogue, can be confusing to a first-year college student. PWR classes spend several weeks in Green Library acclimating students to these resources through workshops, scavenger hunts and the online “Stanford’s Key to Information Literacy” (SKIL) tutorials. There are those that might scoff at some of the content, but many of the lessons are nonetheless invaluable. Learning to use the Dewey decimal system, to accurately search for journal articles or even to understand the basic layout of the stacks will likely greatly improve students’ ease of research throughout their Stanford careers.

Yes, PWR is a required class, and therefore is almost automatically despised and criticized by many. But the same students who claim the course made them worse writers or didn’t teach them anything likely benefited from the program, knowingly or not.

Stanford recently initiated a study, the “FroshWrite Project,” to evaluate how undergraduate writing develops over time. Freshmen were asked to respond to a prompt before taking PWR, and then to submit their final research-based argument paper at the end of the course. Analyzing this data will provide a quantitative assessment of student writing and the PWR 1 program. From a subjective standpoint, however, we can already tell that PWR seems to work.