Less Formal English?

Abstract

SPEAKING before National Council of Teachers of English, Dr. Dora V. Smith and Professor Walter Barnes made a plea for less formal English. The first challenge to American youth, said Dr. Smith, that we send him out from our secondary schools capable of reading simple prose which his everyday life presents to him.' Professor Barnes, moreover, recommended a sweet disorder in speech which would admit slang and colloquialisms.2 This was in November, 1936. Several months later, Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, President of University of Chicago, in his address to New York Association of Teachers of English argued that the mastery of tradition is necessary to genuine and intelligent progress. This tradition, he reasoned, is primary in education, and directly dependent on liberal arts-the arts of language and mathematics. Consequently, he concluded that the teaching of English, properly conceived, becomes basic to whole scheme of education, and grammar a basic discipline among arts of language.3 In general, these recommendations-to continue to democratize study of English and exhortation to insure its perpetuation as an integral part of liberal education-are representative of two major views purporting to shape educational system of tomorrow. Neither offers a solution for problem that besets high-school student, and it is debatable which would better serve his needs. That present training in English is already not too satisfactory from point of view of those secondary-school students who enter college seems to be indicated by a recently conducted survey. A total of 357 students of elementary French (100), German (208), Italian (5), and Spanish (44), representing four institutions of higher learning,4 were asked following question: Has your training in English helped you in your foreign language study? Of this number 283 answered in affirmative. Their replies ranged from a predominantly noncommittal yes to such statements as: It has given me a foundation in grammar which I have been able to use in my foreign languages; It has equipped