Where I am, driver's education courses are completely voluntary. Drivers get a break on their insurance if they take the courses, but they don't have to. Was the course optional where you were, or was it required? This feels like a bit of a side topic, obviously, but it might be fit back into the writing analogy - some people take lots of courses in writing as a way to, they think, get a jump on the competition just like new drivers can get a break on insurance? But lots of people learn to write, and drive, without taking any courses. And in both cases the skill can be learned at least to the basic levels without actually performing the skill...
Ah, good point, they were only mandatory if you were under 18. Most everyone got a license at 16 though, Driver's Ed was offered as a high school course.
Just chiming in as another person who had no driver's ed. I took the written, got my learner's permit, and the only restriction was that an adult licensed driver had to be in the car with me. My father did, yes, do the up and down the driveway thing, and the parking lot thing, but the government didn't require it and in those stone-age times the school didn't offer driver's ed at all. I think that we would have been perfectly legal if he'd been napping in the back seat. . School driver's ed does seem to be the near universal rule since then--and the change seemed to come pretty rapidly. My guy for some reason didn't learn to drive until well into his twenties, and he hired a professional instructor to give him lessons. The instructor had never before taught a driver that had never been behind the wheel--she truly didn't know how to teach the beginning basics, like how to turn the wheel and when to let it roll back as you complete a turn. Apparently she had focused on things like teaching defensive driving and how to teach people used to an automatic how to drive a shift. So I ended up teaching him how to drive. (Edited to remove a discussion of "these days", because my twenties are 'way back from "these days".)
Well, if someone wants to learn (or improve) to write 'well'. Let's say 'well' means grammatically immaculate, no repetition, perfect clarity, no spelling errors, then I think: writing, changing your writing, writing new, etc. is going to work. But if someone wants to be a selling author and live from it then I think it's most helpful to read. Writing is important too, of course. But I think you need to be in touch with how readers (who do not have any passion or interest in writing) reads. I think it's helpful to strip away all ideas of what good writing is and just read as many books as possible.
I'm only just now having my coffee, so, fair warning in advance. First and foremost, the binary choice of either reading or writing is where you friend's logic is failing in my opinion. We all like a simple binary choice. This or that. Heads or tails. Right or wrong. This camp or that camp. This kind of binary logic permits us the illusion that once we choose, we've made the right choice. I totally agree that reading is important. It opens different avenues of thinking. It shows different ways in which things can be made to work. It presents questions to the writer that s/he would not have known were there for the asking. It presents the possibilities. Again, there is sense in this statement, but it looses its sense when it precludes any other form of learning. Again, the binary choice of either improving syntactic structure or overall storytelling ability is the problem. My thoughts are that both are needed in at least equal measure. As others have noted, just writing - the simple act - will not necessarily improve one's grammar, syntax, style, flow, etc. Just writing - in a vacuum, so to speak - can set down some really bad habits that become hard to break. If you say and write had wrote, had ate, had ran enough times and over long enough a period, it will be hard to convince you that those are wrong because they've been made to sound right in your head. You have to read to know what can be made to happen, but you have to write to learn how to make it happen. I can study the line, form, materials, and techniques used by Chippendale in the creation of his most famous style of furniture. I can know it inside out, as many antique dealers do. In no way, shape, or form, does that mean I can sit down to a pile of mahogany planks and create something even remotely worthy of the name. I would have to start as the boy who cleans up the workshop, because this would teach me to respect the space. Then I would move on to gofer because this would teach me the names of the tools. Then I would move on to caring for those tools in order to learn to respect them and what each of them does. Then I learn the wood, its qualities, what it will do and what it won't. Then I spend six months with the lady who makes the varnish and stain because there's no Home Depot, you have to make it, and what she does is an art unto itself. Etc. etc. etc. Your friend's thought process would have me - the antique dealer who knows the end product very, very, very well - walk into the shop and with no other preparation or formation be allowed to work on an item that has already been commissioned. If that were your shop, and your name going on the piece of furniture, would you allow me to do that?
