User:Finnyku/Teaching writing in the United States

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Historical Context

Origins in Harvard (1800's)

The first composition studies department was founded by Harvard in the late 19th century, following the Civil War.

The process that lead to the creation of this department started some time earlier, in 1803, with Harvard's Boylston Professorship. The creation of the professorship was originally funded by Ward Nicholas Boylston in 1772, and the statute was drafted in 1803 by a committee including Eliphalet Pearson, who at the time held Harvard's position of Hancock Professorship of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages. Up until the founding of the Boylston Professorship, English instruction had fallen under the Hancock Professorship. Historian and author, Samuel E. Morison, believes this is because at the time rhetoric and composition was seen as a branch of Homiletics. Pearson's statute defined the duties of the Boylston Professorship as teaching students the "[the theory of writing and speaking well] in its most extended and comprehensive sense."^[1]

In 1869, Charles William Eliot was inaugurated as president of Harvard. During his inaugural speech he addressed what he believed to be a "neglect of the systematic study of the English language," specifically in regards to the American education system. Much of Eliot's work followed the ideas of Edward Tyrrel Channing, the Boylston Professor from 1819-1851, who during his term worked to expand Eliphalet Pearson's original statute by shifting emphasis from convention and grammar to broader concepts of individualism, expression, and self-improvement. ^[2]

Through the 1870's, as enrollment in research universities increased and selection pressure grew, so did public concern about literacy, which universities like Harvard responded to.^[3] Eliot appointed Adams Sherman Hill, a former student of Channing, to the Harvard faculty in 1872 for purposes of improving English instruction at Harvard, soon after which modern composition was added as a subject to the curriculum.^[4] In 1874, Harvard established an entrance exam to test prospective students' written English, of which over half failed. Other institutions implemented their own exams, with similar results, further adding to the growing conversation in academia about the need for a standardized writing curriculum in secondary schools.^[3]

Emergence of Widespread Writing Programs (1900's)

After the establishment of Harvard's composition program, many universities around the US followed suit. The Modern Language Association(MLA) released reports in 1901, 1902, and 1903 compiled from surveys sent to instructors and institutions to document the progress of newly established composition programs. The reports include counts from Edward Everett Hale Jr. (University of Iowa), John Franklin Genung (Amherst College), and Fred Newton Scott (University of Michigan). Through these reports the MLA concluded that while composition gained popularity within the English rhetoric academic community, recognition from other academic fields and professionals remained minimal, and most if not all composition programs were lacking in faculty and resources.^[5]

It remained that early instruction of writing and composition was heavily focused on prescriptive ideas of language.^[6] Emphasis was placed on handwriting, grammar, punctuation and spelling, and papers were more likely to be graded on conformity to these conventions and accuracy of content than on style or creative expression of ideas. This focus on surface conventions can be traced back to the exceptional workload of US instructors during the end of the nineteenth century, who -- since these conventions are easier to assess than quality of ideas -- may have used it as a coping strategy to deal with the volume of themes they were expected to grade weekly.^[7]

Approaches to Teaching Writing

Lucille Schultz has documented a number of methods of teaching writing dating back to the mid-nineteenth century that drew on children's experience and expressive motivation.

Five-Paragraph Essay

The five-paragraph essay is a common strategy for teaching writing in primary and secondary school in the US. It is considered to be a standard format for academic papers to teach students the basics of presenting an argument and providing evidence.^[8]

Writing About Writing

Writing about writing is a more advanced writing strategy that focuses on cultivating creativity and allowing flexibility in students to encourage confidence and garner understanding for writing as a field of its own. The approach was added as a revision to the first-year composition (FYC) curriculum in response to criticisms from scholars such as Charles Bazerman, Debra F. Dew, and Elizabeth Wardle.^[9] In 2010, Wardle and her research partner Doug Downs published the first edition of their textbook Writing About Writing, based on an earlier article of theirs published in 2007.^[10] Both the article and book sought to shift FYC instruction away from having students write primarily about other subjects while implementing writing skills, to instead framing writing itself as the subject.^[9]

References