Rethinking Expos

In a note to incoming first-years, President Neil L. Rudenstine asserted that "nothing is harder than writing."

"Scarcely anything that you can do at college," he continues, "will be more genuinely educational, and more important to you throughout your life, than the capacities that you develop through the conscious attempt to write as well as you can."

I was struck by this letter from the University's president, exhorting us to actively pursue our writing during our undergraduate years. At Harvard, writing was to be more than a mere device of the humanities--it was its own discipline. It would be a skill ingrained in us through the Expository Writing Program, and honed through four years of essay compositions. Yet obtaining adequate writing instruction in the College turned out to be a challenge.

I took Expos my first term here. Electing to take a section on the history of science, the course focused on the exceptionally dry readings--the writing assignments seemed almost secondary. The several individual conferences I had with her over the semester came too late; instead of offering ideas for improvement on the assignment at hand, my instructor offered ideas on writing my next essay. In first-year Expos, writing was to remain a mystical "event," and not a thoughtful process.

Determined to work on the process of writing, I enrolled in an advanced writing course spring semester. Taught by Richard C. Marius, the director of Expos, Expos 52 was a writing course not about science or literature or law, but about writing itself.

The readings included a study of classical rhetoric as well as short non-fiction pieces highlighting specific writing techniques. Every Friday we would participate in a personal tutorial, either with Marius himself or one of his two assistants. We were encouraged to submit excerpts of the same essay in successive weeks to examine each step of the editing and revision process--that way, we could highlight and solve persistent problems.

In retrospect, it's difficult to reconcile these two courses in the same department. If the myths in Rudenstine's letter were dispelled by my fall course, they reached new heights in Marius' class. As I eventually discovered, good, effective instruction can be found in the department. That I had to spend an extra semester and one of my treasured electives to find it, though, is a comment on the structure of Expository Writing at Harvard. There are some serious difficulties not with the quality of specific teachers, but with the philosophy and structure of the program itself.

The first-year program's single greatest flaw relates to its pace. The College assumes we can be made good writers in the space of a single semester of our first year. Within a few weeks, we must complete four essays (two drafts of each) and several smaller assignments. No sooner do we crank out four 10-to-12 pagers than the semester is over; our only certain improvement is our adroitness at fast writing. Instead of mastering the careful craft of revision, we are pushed into a cycle of the bi-weekly expos "all-nighter."

As a half course, Expos is designed to be taken either in the fall or spring of our first year. Evidently, it is assumed those who are assigned to spring writing sections can wait a semester before they begin to write, or to borrow Rudenstine's definition, before they begin to "articulate what [they] think, what [they] observe, what [they] regard as evidence." What of those students who must take writing-intensive concentration tutorials in their first term? Do they get anything out of a spring writing class?

An effective writing program must begin in the first semester to have any direct value on a first-year's coursework. Either the course must be expanded to a full year, or it must assume a radically different one-semester format.

I propose a two-semester structure, of which the second term is required for honors concentrators, and optional for others. The first semester would focus only on the aspects of writing, just like Marius' advanced course. Then, in the second semester, the student could pursue writing within a specific discipline (as in history, literature, or social studies).

All students would possess the tools for effective prose writing after the first semester, while those planning to write theses would pursue additional writing instruction in their own field. Under this system, the second semester writing requirement would become part of the plan of study for honors concentrators. This second writing course would become a logical and effective introduction to the concentration, preparing the student for the sophomore tutorial. While forcing the student to choose a discipline by the beginning of the second term, this additional course would give an early taste of the concentration before the sophomore year; thus, a sophomore could switch concentrations at the beginning of the third term, without falling out of synch with the tutorial. By selecting the discipline-specific writing instructors from the pool of tutors within the concentration, the course would become an integral part of the concentration itself.

Writing instructors could equally profit from such changes. Setting a clear dichotomy between the expository writing instructor and the discipline-specific writing instructor would create separate standards for each. In the first semester, the course could adopt a lecture format combined with weekly personal tutorials. The seminar-style classes in use discourages the instructor from really leading the class; the lecture format would permit him or her to play a greater role.

The beauty of this structure is that it greatly enhances the student's writing experience without increasing the number of instructors. By essentially doubling the class size to a small lecture (approximately 25 to 30 students), instructors would have half as many sections to teach. The gain in time would be devoted toward the personal tutorials--the most important part of the program. By spending more time individually with the students, instructors would be making a greater commitment to their sections.

In a purely writing-oriented class, instructor roles, as well as student expectations, would become much more clearly defined. The objective of improving the student's writing would not be clouded by long reading assignments within a particular discipline. I finished my Expos 12 course feeling I had taken a medicore seminar in the history of science, not an intensive writing course.

Public endorsements of Expos are rare. Long the outlet of first-year disgust, the writing program and its director are now under the general scrutiny of the Harvard community. With my own experience fresh in memory, I would like to redirect some of this criticism. The problem runs deeper than Marius. Harvard's undergraduate administration is itself at fault for failing to effectively incorporate the writing program in the College curriculum. Expository Writing needs a mandate for change to come from the College itself.

An institution which prides itself on setting a world standard for liberal-arts education should be able to teach students to write well. As Rudenstine wrote, "writing and thinking are intricately bound together, and are worth every ounce of effort you can invest in them." It is time for Harvard to discipline its administrative thinking and invest in its writing program.