Summary of Inventing the University

This is a summary of Bartholoamae’s ” Inventing the University”.

The main point of Inventing the University is that students should use proper and correct language when writing a paper or speaking to their college professor. Throughout the years colleges have been the ones to blame for the incorrect writing habits and speech habits being formed by their students. The central idea is that all students must learn to be “one” with their audience. This can be achieved by having students learn to be aware of whom they are conversing with and in due time be able to use the correct dialect when speaking to different social groups whether it be their professors, friends, families, etc. A key idea is that Dr. David Bartholomae went through and analyzed several articles written by former college students who may have went on to be future educators and passed down these bad habits in writing and speech. As Bartholomae went through and analyzed each article he pointed out and explained how wrong each and every one was with very specific detail. Some of the main things Bartholomae was able to access from the articles was the incorrect formatting, improper grammar, run on sentences and etc.

 Many of those wrong doings done by the students were seen as acceptable to the universities due to the fact that teachers before them have all learned and formed the same bad habits. In conclusion we must reinvent the universities and teach them new studies to learn to speak and appeal to all audiences.