[wrp]

> ...never once was assigned an actual essay to read.

I recognize this as a huge problem in education and sometimes bore my colleagues with rants about it. In my field of work, we expect grad students to write a thesis/dissertation without ever having studied good examples of such.

I once asked a famous textbook author for examples of well-written dissertations in his field, so I could have students study them as models. After thinking on it, he said he couldn't come up with any, observing that students are generally poor writers. Well, I think we educators have to take some of the blame for that.