808 St3t Sleeves Teacliing Composition through Cultivation of Ideas CENTRAL CIRCULATION BOOKSTACKS The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was borrowed on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN When renewing by phone, write new due date below previous due date. L162 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/teachingcomposit00stee_0 rEACHING COMPOSITION THROUGH THE CULTIVATION OF IDEAS A Plan which has been followed at Columbia with great success (1289) REPRESENTATIVE ESSAYS IN MODERN THOUGHT A BASIS FOR COMPOSITION Edited by Harrison Ross Steeves, A.M., Instructor in English, Columbia Univer- sity, and Frank Humphrey Ristine, Ph. D., Acting Professor of English Literature, Hamilton College, sometime Instructor in Columbia University. 55° P a g es - Ready in January. AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY New York Cincinnati Chicago Boston Atlanta San Francisco Seattle Reprinted from the Educational Review, New York, June, 1912. Copyright, 1912, by Educational Review Publishing Co. V THE CULTIVATION OF IDEAS IN THE COLLEGE WRITING COURSE It may at first glance seem unnecessary to add one more to the many pedagogical expedients of our academic system, especially when the addition is to a branch of teaching which has in the past borne the burden of much theoretical discus- sion. It is probably not unfair to say, however, that no branch of academic teaching has been so slightly affected by theories or programs — in other words by the forces of swift but possibly uncertain progress — as has collegiate English. This fact may be traced, it seems, to two causes; in the first place, to the traditionary character of rhetoric as an educa- tional discipline; and in the second place, to the fact that rhetoric is regarded as one aspect of the study of the mother tongue, literary study presenting the other aspect, and the resultant fact that considerations of economy in time and effort on the part of teachers trained and expected to deal with both sides of vernacular study have developed a stereotyped an inelastic combination of the two in classroom practise. These two conditions have, then, developed a conservatism toward teaching theory in rhetoric which at least obscures our vision of the truth — that formal rhetoric is a needlessly unedifying subject, and that the assumed relation of com- position to literature, in that both are aspects of writing, is more casual and less intrinsically logical than we might at first analysis be induced to believe. In as far as broad ques- tions in teaching methods in English are nowadays discust, however, they are likely to deal with either of these two im- posing deficiencies of our system; to call up two questions: How can we relieve the study of rhetoric from its depressing formalism? And how can we combine the teaching of com- position and English literature with the least ill effect, since 84 1 546 Educational Review [June 46 considerations of time economy, departmental organization, and general expediency so frequently demand that the two be taught simultaneously? These questions imply the existence of a fixt attitude of mind on both points, an assumption that the teaching of English in required courses presents at the best a dilemma of partially inadequate methods. Our inquiry into the prob- lem, therefore, may very well deal in the first place with the justice of the assumption that our choice of methods and materials is so narrowly limited. Must we regard classroom work in formal rhetoric as a necessity in modern university teaching? And should considerations of expediency affect our administrative policies when observation has convinced many teachers of reasonably extended experience that collateral work in composition and literary study breeds some thoroly baneful results? With reference to the first question it may be said, at least of our Eastern universities, that entrance into the freshman class usually implies adequate foundation work in rhetoric. The fact that this is not unexceptionably true suggests the currently recognized necessity of subdividing the entering classes, whenever it is possible to do so, according to intelli- gence and preparatory fitness. This plan, which should be put into execution at the earliest possible moment, is not merely advisable; it is, under the present conditions of forced preparatory work and with the administrative facilities and large teaching forces of our modern departments, practically mandatory. With this division of the entering class it is of course apparent that some few students must make up in an academic course — whether or not their college gives them academic credit for the work — the deficiencies of their prepa- ration. In this minor instance the problem is possibly the high-school problem of classroom work in rhetoric, and the teacher’s responsibility as to method is that of finding a way to sugar-coat the pill. For the rest of the class one thing is certain: they are to continue writing for another year. What are they to write about ? And how are they to receive the theoretical side of their training? 47 igi2\ Ideas in the college writing course The latter question is solved in most of our universities by the system of individual consultations. In a subject where so much of the result is dependent upon the individual re- sponse, and where individual problems are really very seldom, at this stage of training, collective problems, it seems inevitable that questions of special principles should be taken up with each student separately. This is so generally the custom today that it does not require a special plea. The former question, however: What are they to write about? is em- phatically one which needs a rational answer. In attempting an answer, we return to our first statement of conditions. One group of teachers favors subjects from the common experience of the writer. Another group recognizes the force of the argument of departmental convenience and kills two birds with one stone by basing the course upon literary selections. When subjects are chosen from the common experience of the writer, we have at least one obvious working advantage : the approach to the work is not wholly perfunctory. On the other hand, if the student is not asked to go outside of his own experience, his rhetorical study is only correcting his ineptitude in matters of form and style, and is not producing nor encouraging intellectual expansion. Work conducted on this line is easier both for the teacher and the student, and creates for this reason a state of mutual satisfaction which is frequently taken as evidence of success in the choice of material. But signs of easy receptivity on the part of the student should in most cases lead the teacher to sincere inquiry as to whether he is not offering too many concessions to un- productive preference. In the second place, it is probably true that none of the subjects of this familiar province are more than superficially interesting to the majority of students. Subjects of athletic, social, or even curricular interest, for example, probably do not actually appeal to majorities, as we are usually inclined to assume they do. What may be said for this group of subjects is that they encourage in- dividuality — but an ingrowing individuality, not one that correlates experience with knowledge, or which harmonizes it Educational Review 48 [June with the information and the views that are in the process of forming the cultural background. — — The objections to the project of combining literary study with work in composition are very weighty; both aspects of the work are open to criticism. The objection to the method as one of deliberate choice is that it abuses literature by sub- jecting it to a purpose for which it does not exist, and, pos- sibly, that it upholds an unpractical and discouraging esthetic ideal in composition. The plea which seems to justify, for the moment, this combination is, as I have suggested, that of expediency. Our high-school departments are almost in- variably, and our collegiate departments very frequently, so organized that the teaching of the two subjects in a single course effects a saving in time and effort for both teacher and student. But the only pedagogical assumption that can tolerate this artificial relationship in practise is that education consists in absorbing the greatest amount of concrete informa- tion in the least possible time. From the standpoint of results in composition, then, the course is ineffective, for the simple reason that assigned topics confined to the literary field tax the intelligence and limit the mental freedom of the student. But viewed from the standpoint of effect upon literary appre- ciation, there can scarcely be two opinions. Both students and teachers in large numbers view the results as little short of calamitous. The best illustration of the case can be found in the attitude of entering college students toward the books which have been prescribed for college entrance study — and which have been made continuously the basis of work in composition. These students leave such initially impressive works as Milton’s minor poems and Burke’s Speech on con- dition with a feeling bordering on absolute hatred; and such a condition has forced more than one thoughtful teacher of literature to begin work with entering students by intro- ducing literary antidotes, such as the Ingoldsby legends, and Cellini’s Autobiography, to counteract the effect of this ill- administered dose of “ good literature.” If, then, we continue, as I hope we shall, in the belief that a required course in composition should constitute part of 49 1912] Ideas in the college writing course the freshman’s work, we are confronted with the need of finding, if possible, a subject-matter less ineffective and less inutile than either of the fields so far discust and so generally accepted. We have already referred to the concession to per- sonal interest that has led us to experiment with the subject “ from personal experience.” It is in the direction of this idea that we should seek educational salvation, for it recog- nizes the fact that the first aim of composition should be to produce self-expression. The weakness of all other approaches to the field of material for composition lies in their failure to make writing a matter of intrinsically per- sonal concern; for if the subjects are not within the realm of a student’s vital interest, he must perforce regard writing itself as a purely external thing — an exercise of what is for him pedantic and frequently imitative ingenuity. The subject “ from personal experience ” as we have been in the custom of using it, however, possesses in itself a very radical weak- ness: its title defines it as reminiscential. It is not progres- sive. For everything except the cultivation of formal expres- sion it leaves the student exactly where he was before he began writing. The student sees the instructor descending to his plane of interest and intelligence; and he either — if he is lazy — thanks the instructor for sparing him the effort of thought, or — if he is serious — vaguely criticises this descent as some- thing undignified for the instructor, and not wholly fair to himself. After all, then, when we draw our materials from the domain of private interests, are we in actuality, or only in appearance, encouraging self-expression? We may be wholly wrong in imagining that the college man thinks of himself first as a paddler of canoes or a dancer of dances. Our first appeal to him should be based upon the interest implied in the fact that he is a college student, one of the republic of thought. He is conscious of this, and his consciousness breeds questions. He is consumed with one problem, if he is serious. He should face that problem if he is not innately serious. What is he with relation to himself, and to society, and to all that has been and is defined in the name of God, and to that, for him, 50 Educational Review [June mystic culture, which he knows he has come to college to partake of, but of the essence of which he knows little, for opportunity has been refused him, and of the meaning of which he comprehends little, for its Godlike remoteness abashes him on the threshold of inquiry? This domain of interest, which recognizes the student’s critical concern with personal and social problems, and which endeavors at least to orient him in the fields of intellectual occupation, which he frequently knows only as names, and sometimes not even as names, has been tested in the required freshman course in English at Columbia in a tentative way for as much as five years, and in a more final method for two years. The main features of the present form of the course are substantially these. In the first term a series of readings are given which do not differ in a very marked way from the type of reading to which the student has been accustomed in his earlier train- ing, but which have casual but important connections with some of the problems suggested. These introductory read- ings — take a life by Plutarch for example, such as the life of Pericles or of Cimon — or a biblical selection such as the Book of Ruth — introduce vital questions of this kind. What is history; is it a record of fact, or is it a retrospective view of life? Does the work, which purports to be historical, concern itself so much with historical facts as it does with a moral point of view? And what, then, is morality; is it a permanent and Heaven-given light, or an expression of social expediency evolved from racial experience? And if morality is “ evolved,” what is evolution, as it touches not only man’s spiritual existence, but his physical existence? And with the problem of evolution come the more general problems of biological science, their relation to traditional religion and to philosophies. No discussion of a single work should, of course, be allowed to run with the diffuseness that is suggested here merely to show the complexity of intel- lectual relationships in a single suggestive piece of writing. Every work utilized should have bearing upon a single more or less specific domain of inquiry, or discussion upon it 5 1 1912] Ideas in the college writing course should at least be restricted to the definition of a simple but broad conception. The aim is, in short, to develop a defini- tional approach to the field of ideas. With this program, in which with remarkable frequency one will find incandescent interest in a single hitherto obscure conception running thru an entire hour, we find gradually developing a consciousness of the efficiency of mental processes, and a polarization of interest in knowledge as it affects life in all its personal and social bearings. It is probably correct to say that the major- ity of students are not aware that they have been acquiring the methods of science, for the disciplinary function of the course is not exhibited to them in this first stage. In fact, the typical remark of the student is one of surprize that so thoroly conscious an intellectual expansion should be secured at the expense of so little formulative effort. But what the student has gained is an effective force whether conscious or unconscious — that is, intellectual curiosity. In the second term, however, the course is made very much more concrete. The readings for this term are in the main monuments of intellectual progress. Here the student is in- troduced specifically to the imposing questions of life in their modern aspects. The field of choice for this purpose is of course almost limitlessly large; and what is to be chosen depends at once upon the mental outlook of the teacher and the mental tendencies of the students as a body. A suggestion or two, however, may indicate some of the possibilities for this part of the course. It has been found useful, to begin with, to prescribe reading in paired viewpoints upon various questions. For instance, the question as to how far and in what way scientific method should affect religious belief is one of the most patent and most important, for the great number, to develop from the introductory work. In concrete presentation this question may be dealt with from the strictly rationalistic standpoint of W. K. Clifford’s essay, The ethics of belief ; and Clifford’s essay may then be compared with William James’s address on The will to believe , which decries the judgment of a pas- sional experience by the methods of logic. A similar con- 52 Educational Review [June trast of the skeptic and poetic attitudes toward the idea of immortality may be found in Tyndall’s Belfast address — so vastly suggestive, too, for the whole field of scientific thought — and Tennyson’s In memoriam or John Fiske’s Life ever- lasting. Huxley offers an extraordinary amount of really fascinating reading on modern scientific methods and con- clusions. Fundamental conceptions of modern political theory may be illustrated by Mill’s On liberty , and Morley’s Com- promise. The special problems of modern politics could be viewed in a writer of the real literary value of W. H. Mallock, and in typical documents of a more radical trend, since it is frequently advisable to meet radicalism on its own ground. The humanitarian side of sociological and economic questions may be found in essays such as Tolstoy’s A first step and Ruskin’s lecture on Work. The field extends itself obviously into the work of Arnold, Plato, Morris, Spencer, Paulsen, and even moderns of the stimulative value of Professor Robinson, Professor Santayana, Mr. Balfour, or Mr. Frederic Harrison. Choice should be limited only by the necessity of adhering to writings which possess an essential irritancy. The question of a method of handling this material of composition is again one to be resolved by the teacher. The practise that has developed in our experiment with the course requires an impromptu theme, upon a prescribed topic, to be written during one of the three weekly meetings. The other two meetings are given over to discussion in which consideration of the broader bearings of the subject is en- couraged, not represt. In short, classroom treatment of the material — in classes confined to about twenty members each — attempts to adjust the Socratic method to the peda- gogical formulas of the modern university. I have in this scheme defined what I believe to be an im- posing modern academic responsibility. In an age of such striking expansion and diversity in the field of knowledge, it seems incumbent on the university to present to the student, in his earliest years as a student, and with careful avoidance of categorical formalism, a survey of his field. This survey is sometimes given in required or elective courses in philoso' 53 i9 12 ] Ideas in the college writing course phy; but these are generally reached too late to be of the service that they might be in the first year of study; and in addition, their method of dealing with this material is in general, I think, more formal and less elastic. It is, of course, not inevitably the province of an English department to serve this purpose; but there is no very clear reason why it should not do so in a composition course. A departmental objection to the plan might be that in adopting this method the de- partment abandons in its required course the esthetic study of literature. In answer to this objection, however, we have the judgment of many teachers that this point of approach to literary study has been sorely over-used in the teaching of immature students. Furthermore, the minority to which this approach appeals can be satisfied thruout their entire college residence in elective courses in literature. On the other hand, as between the broader utility and cultural value of a course of this scope, and the restricted aim of one in literary appreciation, the commendable modern tendency to correlate the work of the various academic departments un- questionably favors the former. A second objection may be offered that no matter how attractive or how generally advisable a course of this purpose may be, the English department leaves its peculiar province if it deals broadly with what most students of letters would be inclined to call non-literary material. But if we look back into the history of the academic study of English we discover a time when the command of the mother tongue was not a separate subject of study, but an aspect of general culture; and it was supposed to be derived from the agents and the agencies of culture — the teachers and the curriculum. It was not only supposed to be thus derived, but it was in very fact so derived, for the teachers in all branches of study made it their concern that it should be. When English became separated as a subject for special study, however, it lost its relationship to the general domain of ideas and affairs, and concerned itself with itself — as, indeed, sister-subjects were doing in a day of intensive specialization. The result is that in the main we have narrowed our conception of vernacular 54 Educational Review study to the esthetic aspects of both literature and composition. We no longer speak of literature in the catholic sense o f Bacon, but we confine it in the trammels of De Quincey’ . specious distinction. Our preoccupation with the “ literature of power ” has encouraged an indifference to the “ literatur * of knowledge ” — that is, strictly as literature. As a result our test of spirituality in literature is almost wholly that esthetic quality, and we are today rather curiously deaf o the appeal of substance. The suggested extension of c-r course in writing to a broader literary realm is not, th one of radical change, but rather a return to the educatio \ view which accepted language as the key of thought, not the exercise of formal or imitative artistry. Our plan may seem to sound of academic pretentiousne , it may seem at first glance to be a hard test of the studei ; acquisitive capacity and interest; and it may be conceived even taxing the cultural equipment of many instructors English. Whether the plan is really over-pretentious or depends, I believe, on the outlook of the instructor and mentality and maturity of the students. In the Colun department the experiment has apparently not overshot purposes of a writing course or the capacities of aver , freshmen. On the second point, we have been led to bel: from observation, and from the frank judgments of stude both serious and frivolous, brilliant and dull, that this mate is fresh, illuminating, interesting, and emphatically benefi to a greater majority of students than any of our course ^ i composition of either of the regular types have ever bel appealed to. As to the last point of objection which been suggested, if the college instructor finds the mate i beyond his depth, is not this in itself a convincing perse argument in favor of the “ course in ideas ”? Harrison Ross Steeves Columbia University