Expository Writing--Freshman Blues

HARVARD ADMINISTRATORS have never quite known what to do with Expository Writing. Since it was instituted some 70 years ago, the program has undergone three or four reforms, in the perennial hope of teaching freshmen how to compose decent English without killing their interest in the process. In 1930, when the program made full use of individual conferences and special tutoring, a university committee found that student composition was at a high point. And when Robert J. Kiely introduced middle-group courses in the late '60s, Expos again received a badly needed shot of adrenalin.

Such gains will probably be lost if the current proposal for reform is approved. On December 19, Gwynne B. Evans and Jean H. Slingerland, director and assistant director of Expository Writing, submitted a proposal to the Faculty Council to exempt over 500 students from the writing requirement, to eliminate the middle-group courses, and to standardize Expos 10 with one text, one exam, and one syllabus for the 1000 who score below 700 on the English Composition Achievement Test. The proposal has not yet been passed, because of considerable controversy between the teaching and the administrative staffs of the program. The issue--to standardize or not to standardize--is crucial. If realized, Slingerland's proposal would not only turn Expos 10 into the insignificant course it already risks being, but would also mark a full scale step towards increased textbook education.

While Slingerland's proposal may not be as bad as its detractors believe, one thing it does reflect is that administrators and not educators control Expository Writing. The proposal's main objective is honorable enough: exempting one third of the freshman class from Expos would make more and smaller sections possible.

But, in light of the proposed standardization of the course content, the suggested cut indicates that the problem is not really being conceived in terms of individuals at all.

The idea of standardizing a writing course is a silly one. In the past, Expos, particularly at the 100 level, has sometimes meant an occasional moment of sanity in the confusion of freshman year. Because many freshmen do not get into freshman seminars and because Harvard's advising system is less than perfect, Expos offers a much needed opportunity for a sort of individual contact that the freshman may not be able to get elsewhere, short of Stillman Services. Many Expos teachers emphasize the advisory aspect of their job. Because writing is a personal business, they felt that Expos offered more of a chance than other courses for students to relate their education to the rest of their lives. It's hard to see how this opportunity would exist, if Expos were reduced to a standardized course in grammar and syntax.

AS FOR THE proposed exemptions from the writing requirement, a high score on the SAT or English College boards by no means insures good writing ability. Good reading is not synonymous with good writing. The elimination of the 100 requirement, except possibly for six or seven courses, will only make freshman seminars and other writing courses more competitive and inaccessible. Since most of the creative writing options open to freshmen are presently listed as Expos courses, their elimination would be a blow to Harvard's already weak performing and creative arts.

Rather than standardize the program at its lowest and least imaginative level, why not diversify the whole requirement at the 100 group level? Individualized courses tailored to particular interests and tastes would be more engaging for students and teachers alike. As there is an imminent shortage of graduate students, and as the best ones sometimes prefer sections of lecture classes to Expos, the staff could be supplemented with local writers and Phoenix and Globe reporters. Such appointments might give a student access to more experienced, seasoned, and unusual perspectives than those of overworked, Ivy-bred, 23- or 24-year-old graduate students.

Expository writing could make a difference to the kind of thinking and expression that will take place through the student's next three years at Harvard and ultimately over the rest of his life. To throw John Stuart Mill at our liberal educators seems ironic, but if the Faculty Council approves Slingerland's proposal without considering its effects, it will illustrate Mill's point that originality is the one thing unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.