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Peer Review, Fall 2003
From the Editor
David Tritelli |
When the study of English literature began to be incorporated
into the undergraduate curriculum, it was almost universally
understood to entail writing instruction. Charged in 1913
by Cambridge University "to promote, so far as may be in his
power, the study in the University of the subject of English
Literature," for example, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch proposed
that "here in Cambridge we practise writing: that
we practise it not only for our own improvement, but to make,
or at least try to make, appropriate, perspicuous, accurate,
persuasive writing a recognisable hall-mark of anything turned
out by our English School." Similarly, Strunk and White’s
1918 classic, Elements of Style, begins by affirming
this relationship between literature and writing: "This book
is intended for use in English courses in which the practice
of composition is combined with the study of literature."
The articles in this issue indicate a significant, ongoing
shift in thinking about the place of writing in the undergraduate
curriculum. The proposition that writing is, as Jonathan Monroe
observes in the lead article, "central to the work of higher
education," not to mention the world of work, is achieving
increasingly broad acceptance. The kinds of innovations described
here comprise much more than a response to the widespread
perception that too many college graduates lack basic composition
skills. As Monroe writes, "rather than a remedial or ancillary
concern, writing is integral to the learning students will
engage and pursue from the first semester of their first year
through their senior years and beyond." Basic composition
skills ought thus to be the foundation, not the outcome, of
college-level writing programs. No longer regarded as a skill
to be acquired in a single course but as a mode of learning,
writing is a key competency to be addressed and practiced
recurrently across the educational experience and at successively
more challenging levels. Accordingly, writing can no longer
be the responsibility of English faculty alone. Responsibility
for writing must be truly pervasive.
AAC&U’s recent report, Greater Expectations:
A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College, hails
the emergence of a "New Academy" based on an engaged and practical
liberal education and fostered by intentional practice at
all institutional levels. As this issue of Peer Review
attests, writing can be an effective fulcrum for many of the
intentional practices that characterize the New Academy: integrating
general education and the major, introducing students to more
interdisciplinary approaches, assessing student learning,
requiring culminating experiences.
Realizing this vision of the New Academy requires more than
alignment within college, however; it also requires alignment
across educational sectors. Seventy-five percent of high school
graduates now go on to postsecondary education. Yet fewer
than 25 percent of twelfth-graders scored at or above the
"proficient" achievement level on the 2002 National
Assessment of Educational Progress Writing Assessment (and
only 36 percent scored at or above "proficient"
on the Reading Assessment). These data strongly suggest that,
in the absence of school-college articulation, even the best
designed curriculum and the most integrated college experience
may still fail to provide students with an education of lasting
value.
The recommendation, made in the Greater Expectations
report, that students have the experience of doing a significant
project in the senior year of high school offers a potential
starting point for constructing purposeful pathways for students
from high school to college and through college to the world
of work. Virtually every student takes a writing-intensive
course of some kind in the first year of college--and these
are generally small classes. So, if campuses would require
a writing-intensive project in the senior year of high school
as a condition of preparation (one chapter or early draft
to be submitted with the application; the final project to
be sent with the final high school transcript on acceptance
to college), then writing instructors could start with that
project as baseline evidence of students’ best work
to-date. This would create a bridge to college; reinforce
the notion of connected and cumulative learning; and be far
better as writing for placement and further intellectual development
than what we do now.
While the curricular architecture is changing, and multiple
pathways are possible within and between educational sectors,
the goals remain the same--namely, to paraphrase Quiller-Couch,
to make the practice of good writing the constant auxiliary
of liberal education and, in turn, to make appropriate, perspicuous,
accurate, persuasive writing a recognizable hallmark of anything
turned out by the New Academy.
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