Education Quote by Tracy Kidder

“People say you can’t teach writing” is a bit of workshop folklore dressed up as wisdom: the romantic idea that talent is mysterious, innate, and therefore exempt from scrutiny. Kidder’s brisk “that’s nonsense” punctures the myth with the confidence of someone who has lived in the trenches of revision. The line isn’t just optimistic; it’s corrective. It drags writing down from the realm of inspiration and puts it back where Kidder’s career suggests it belongs: in craft, habit, and labor.

Kidder’s intent is quietly polemical. He’s arguing against a convenient fatalism that protects both teachers and students. If writing can’t be taught, the instructor is absolved of responsibility and the student is spared the embarrassment of practice. Calling it “nonsense” reframes the relationship: writing is a skill, and skills respond to instruction, models, feedback, and repetition. The subtext is even sharper: people who insist it can’t be taught often mean they don’t know how to teach it, or they’re defending a hierarchy where “real writers” are born, not made.

Context matters. Kidder is known for narrative nonfiction that looks effortless on the page precisely because it’s engineered - structure, voice, reporting, pacing. His statement comes from a tradition that treats writing less like self-expression and more like problem-solving: what to leave out, where to begin, how to make a reader turn the page. It works because it’s plainspoken and mildly combative, a one-sentence manifesto for demystifying art without draining it of ambition.