The great historian David McCullough (1933-2022) won the Pulitzer prize for biography twice, for his books on Truman and John Adams, but he also wrote best-selling books on the Panama Canal, the Johnstown Flood, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Wright brothers, and others. Here are his comments in a 2002 interview with Bruce Cole on the importance of writing as an act of thinking and learning (Humanities, “The Danger of Historical Amnesia,” July/August 2002, 23:4, my emphasis):
I am adamant on the subject that we must not cut back on funding of the teaching of the arts in the schools: music, painting, theater, dance, all of it. The great thing about the arts is that the only way you learn how to do it is by doing it. If a child learns nothing but that as a guide to life, that’s invaluable. You can’t learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can’t learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can’t learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard. …
We all know the old expression, “I’ll work my thoughts out on paper.” That’s exactly right. There’s something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does. That is why we must have more writing in the schools, more writing in all subjects, not just in English classes. And the teacher who teaches history should be grading the writing, too.
