In the teaching of writing, what’s truly amazing is that no one seems to have noticed that the acknowledged Father of the Modern Essay, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, clearly talked about the main principle of NewView, which is this: Everything depends on ‘What’s new to the reader.’

For example, Montaigne made the following general statement about his overall method in how he composes his essays—“I like to turn a thing over in an unintimate new light.” (If “unfamiliar,” here, doesn’t mean new to the reader, what else could it possibly mean?)

And in his 1580 book on essays (Essais), Montaigne actually used the OldView-NewView pattern as his standard for both format and content, as these two distinguishing examples from his Essais show:

The most usual way the OldView of appeasing the indignation of such as we have any way offended, when we see them in self-control of the power of revenge, and find that we perfectly lie at their mercy, is by submission, to move them to commiseration and pity; and yet cue that a NewView will follow bravery, stableness, and resolution, however quite contrary substance NewView Reverse, have sometimes served to produce the same outcome?.

Since we cannot attain unto it he’s talking about the familiar OldView of ‘greatness,’ here, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it; and yet cue that a NewView will follow . . . it does, then, appear to me that we value it at too high a rate the NewView Subtract option: lessening, subtracting importance of the accepted, familiar OldView, and also overvalue the NewView Subtract option, again: lessening, subtracting the overvalued importance the resolution of those whom we have either seen, or heard, have condemned it, or displace themselves of their own accord: its essence is not so seemingly commodious that a man may not, without a miracle, refuse it the NewView Reverse option: slump, oppose, reverse.

It’s beyond me how four hundred years plus of eruditeness missed that constant OldView-NewView pattern in Montaigne’s Essais!

No appreciation the National Commission on Writing declared in 2003 that there’s a crisis in teaching writing in our public school system! (According to national writing scores, only 1 in 5 high school seniors can write well enough for college work.)

The fact that teachers aren’t teaching students how to put newness or NewView in their writing most probably has a lot to do with the consistently low grading writing tests of high school seniors.

Teachers of writing should have been paying closer attention to Montaigne’s book, Essais!

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