English A Chairman Questions Editorial

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The CRIMSON quite properly takes an editorial interest from time to time in English A. I should like to enter a protest against one charge which you bring against English A in your editorial of Monday, February 28, and to raise some questions about which it seems to me you might well do some thinking.

The charge I resent is contained by implication in your phrase, "the 'What I Did This Summer' themes of English A." The implication amounts to saying that English A invites trivial papers on trivial subjects. This, of course, is directly contrary to the policy which I have done my utmost to urge both upon the instructing staff and, whenever I have had an opportunity, on students in the course. I am responsible for the slogan, "The unforgivable theme is the theme without a subject." It is perfectly true that we usually begin the year with one or more assignments asking the student to write about his personal experience. This is one source of content for any writer, and in my judgment, a course in English composition is not doing its job if it does not lay on the student the duty of some self-scrutiny. If the student meets this opportunity by writing inconsequential papers typified by your imaginary subject, "What I Did This Summer," I think the student must be held largely responsible for this particular failure in education.

The questions I should like to ask are these. Is it the opinion of the CRIMSON editors that undergraduates would like or would profit by a non-credit course or half course? Is this a favorable educational situation for teaching or learning the difficult business of educated writing, especially when it is fair to presume that those required to take a non-credit course would be the least competent students? Again, in what ways do the editors of the CRIMSON suppose that "a greatly expanded English C" would differ from the general aims and methods of English A?

My own belief in the principle of General Education is evidenced, I think, by the fact that during the last four or five years I have, with the collaboration of my staff, moved English A itself steadily in the direction of General Education. Particularly in the second half year, after trying in the first half year to lay down some fundamentals of composition, we have tried to teach writing in relation to the study of texts which we thought worth close discussion in the classroom. Theodore Morrison,   Director of English A

The CRIMSON feels that a corrective non-credit half-course, as suggested by the new General Education plan, will be far more effective than the present catch-all English A, especially when accompanied with the proposed increased stress on writing in basic GE courses. The enlarged English C will give students a greater opportunity for creative writing, if they want this instruction in addition to the writing for specific purposes which the GE program will emphasize.