Gen. Ed. Ahf To Stay Same For Next Year

The long-awaited announcement of changes in General Education Ahf came yesterday, but it reveals that the widely critized freshman English course will remain essentially the same next year.

Explaining the decision not to radically revise the program, Harold C. Martin, director of Gen. Ed. Ahf, yesterday said that "Despite the intense criticism I believe that we have come reasonable close to achieving the principal objective of the course, namely to get the student to express himself clearly and coherently. Progress in this direction was certainly shown in the students' papers.

"I certainly don't feel that the course was a failure," Martin added.

Desire to go Further

Although he was at a loss to account for the great dislike which many freshmen have for the course, Martin attributed much of it to a desire to do work beyond the scope of the program as defined by a faculty decision. The purpose of the course said Martin, is "to teach a direct simplicity of style in expository writing."

Many students; wanted a chance to do creative writing. "For others our rigor was greater than they were willing to accept," Martin said. "However," he continued, "I think that those who did accept it, whether they have the talent or not, found that it strengthened their style. The ones who most resented it were the ones who most needed it."

Control Emphasis to Stay

The report on changes indicates the "emphasis on rigorous control of language will continue" as will the "study of logical procedure and of the various ways in which language works." However, this latter portion of the course will be "conducted indirectly and spread through all the writing projects of the year." This year the entire first term was devoted to short, 300 word exercises on problems of logical and objective use of language, largely drawn from a logic book.

Not only will this book be discarded next year, but all the materials used will be new. Martin said that he expects that this will probably be the case each year.

Probably the most radical change next year will be in the type of paper assigned. This year there were two types: the one-week 300 word "exercises" of the first term and the two-week 600 word papers of the second term.

Gen. Ed. "Areas" Used

Next year the work will be divided into a number of blocks of assigned materials which will be drawn from the three "areas" of General Education. It will not duplicate work in the elementary courses but will be of the type handled in these courses.

Within each one of these blocks, all of them approximately three weeks long, two types of papers will be assigned. There will be a "full-length exposition," a paper of 600 to 1,500 words which will deal directly with the material in the block. The second type will be short "exercises" and class-time papers which will serve as "preparations for or supplements to the longer papers."

Some of these essays will be "free"--enabling the student to "relate the material under study to his experience." The lack of such papers this year was the source of considerable criticism from the freshmen.

In order to enable the section men to correct the longer papers, sections will be made "somewhat smaller." A larger number of instructors than are now doing so will be teaching or tutoring part time in other courses, principally within the G.E. program.

This year section men have urged their students to discuss with them problems which they have in connection with longer papers in other courses. Next year a room will be staffed at certain hours of the day where students can get help in organization and development of these papers.

Martin said that this year the program was aimed at helping the student to overcome the tendency for "shrillness, and overcharged language" so prevalent among freshmen. He said that to his mind, the prime difficulty which students of this age have is a tendency to "unnecessarily involved and elaborate writing." The aim of the course, he added, was to teach students to "treat difficult problems as lucidly as the problem permits.