Ideas

My Students Write Their Papers Backwards

My job is to help them move beyond their assumptions, in literature and everything else.

First published in The Atlantic on January 17, 2026.

by Julia Fisher, The Atlantic

January 22, 2026 | reading time: 4 Min.

In my high-school English classes, I often tell my students that they write their papers backwards: They devise a thesis and then look for evidence to support it. They’ll find what they want to see, I tell them, but they won’t be surprised. They might say that Ishmael, the narrator in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, is appalled by Captain Ahab, but they won’t notice that the two characters also sound a lot alike.