The Beginning Course in English

Abstract

HERE was a time when the required course in freshman composition was the stepchild of the English department, the course that no one wanted to teach. It has now become the problem child of the department, the course that no one quite knows how to handle but about which every one is concerned. The cause of this concern is one which might well result in general concern on the part of the teachers in all departments because the freshman English course is the focus for a group of problems connected with the curriculum. These problems attend the transition of the American high school and college from the narrow limits and restricted interests of the past to the larger purposes and expanded content of general education today. Colleges today are larger than they have ever been: some I3 per cent of all American youth of college age were in college just before Pearl Harbor.' The students form a heterogeneous group in the quality of their preparation, in their background, and in their purposes for coming to college. This expansion in numbers and purpose has called for widespread adjustment within the curriculum. An area in which it has not been met by satisfactory adjustment within the curriculum of either high school or college is training in The Training of Secondary School Teachers, Especially with Reference to English, a recently published report by a joint committee of the faculty of Harvard College and the Graduate School of Education, contains a chapter entitled Confusion of Aims in the Teaching of High School English. There is confusion throughout objectives, philosophy, and content of high-school English, so far as the colleges are concerned. Whatever else the high schools are doing effectively, they are not preparing students for college in the area of language training. Students are coming to college poor readers, poor writers, and-a deficiency which is a concomitant of poor reading and poor writing alike-undisciplined thinkers. The result is poor work in all courses in the curriculum in which use of language is required. Berating the high-school English teachers will not improve the ability of these students. It appears to be necessary to start planning the college curriculum with 'Figure given by Neal M. Cross in Social Change, Education, and Reading, Reading in General Education (Washington, D. C.: American Council on Education, 1940, p. 6).