Quality of educational is proportional to quality of evaluation.
Evaluation of how well someone follows arbitrary language conventions is worse than useless.
I only got to university English 101 outside of some technical writing in the engineering department, but I have to say none of my education in writing was worth anything past elementary school. It is perhaps one of the most difficult things to teach and evaluate, to be fair, but I feel like I am missing a huge chunk of my education and general ability because of it. I can't write or form an argument particularly well, rambling on HN and the like is the closest thing to education I have had.
Prescriptive language rules are not entirely useless. That is the best you can say about them.
Evaluation of how well someone follows arbitrary language conventions is worse than useless.
I only got to university English 101 outside of some technical writing in the engineering department, but I have to say none of my education in writing was worth anything past elementary school. It is perhaps one of the most difficult things to teach and evaluate, to be fair, but I feel like I am missing a huge chunk of my education and general ability because of it. I can't write or form an argument particularly well, rambling on HN and the like is the closest thing to education I have had.
Prescriptive language rules are not entirely useless. That is the best you can say about them.