Since Harvard University introduced the daily theme, over twenty years ago, to reform the illiteracy of college men, Freshman composition has been a much battered target for pedagogical sharpshooters outside and inside the profession of teaching. Wendell and Gardiner have been much laughed at for trying to make Macaulays and De Quinceys out of their Freshmen, but their method of teaching composition through much writing and selfcriticism is still fundamental in our method. More recently English teachers have been assailed by the "socializers," whose aim of perfecting the language of daily discourse and of business they have accepted. Are any other changes forthcoming? Replies to a recent questionnaire' on the aims and administration of Freshman English stress certain gradually changing aims and methods. Some of these drifts appear to be in the wrong direction, but our very unsettlement, like the entangling complications of a triangular story, is focusing and intensifying our attention on its more important aspects. We are undoubtedly making progress. It is no recent discovery that college Freshman composition is often largely secondary in kind and quality. College teachers The Alabama Polytechnic Institute sent out a questionnaire on Freshman English during the 1920-21 session. The questionnaire and tabulated replies are at the close of this article. |