In the Archives of Composition : Writing and Rhetoric in High Schools and Normal Schools [1 ed.] 9780822981015, 9780822963776

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In the Archives of  Composition

Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Cultur e David Bartholomae and Jean Ferguson Carr, Editors

In the

Archives of

Composition Writing and Rhetoric in High Schools and Normal Schools Edited by Lori Ostergaard & Henrietta Rix Wood

University of Pittsburgh Press

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Copyright © 2015 University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 isbn 13: 978-0-8229-6377-6 isbn 10: 0-8229-6377-9 Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

We dedicate this book to the many teachers and students of writing and rhetoric who came before us, to the archivists who have preserved the work of these individuals, and to the scholars who spend their days uncovering and honoring that work.

contents Acknowledgments ix Foreword Kelly Ritter xi Introduction: Adding New Stories to the History of Composition and Rhetoric Lori Ostergaard and Henrietta Rix Wood 1 PART I: HIGH SCHOOLS 1. The Rhetorical Praxis of Central High School Students, 1894–1924 Henrietta Rix Wood 27 2. “Raise Your Right Arm / And Pull on Your Tongue!”: Reading Silence(s) at the Albuquerque Indian School Whitney Myers 42 3. Radical, Conservative, Extreme: The Rhetorical Education of the Prince Edward County Free School Association, 1963–1964 Candace Epps-Robertson 61 4. “These Parts of People Escaping on Paper”: Reading Our Educational Past Through the High School Diary of Pat Huyett, 1966–1969 Jane Greer 77 PART II. NORMAL SCHOOLS 5. “Stand ‘Mum’”: Women’s Silence at the Lexington Academy, 1839–1841 Melissa Ianetta 97

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6. “Shall the Courses in Composition and Literature Be Divided? Yes”: Curricular Separation at the Illinois State Normal University, 1892–1916 Lori Ostergaard 115 7. “A Home for Thought Where Learning Rules”: Progressive Era Students and Teacher Identity at a Historic Normal School Beth Ann Rothermel 131 8. “Be Patient, But Don’t Wait!”: The Activist Ethos of Student Journalism at the Colored State Normal School, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, 1892–1937 Elaine Hays 149 PART III. BUILDING SECONDARY-POSTSECONDARY CONNECTIONS

9. Adapting Male Education for a Nation of Females: Sara Lockwood’s 1888 Lessons in English Nancy Myers 167 10. Toward a Genealogy of Composition: Student Discipline and Development at Harvard in the Late Nineteenth Century Edward J. Comstock 185 11. Project English: Cold War Paradigms and the Teaching of Composition Curtis Mason 206 Afterword Jessica Enoch 223 Contributors 229 Index 233

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his book was conceived at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Louisville in 2010 where we met and discovered our mutual interest in archival histories of composition and rhetoric. Five years, myriad emails, and multiple drafts later, we are still friends and pleased to deliver In the Archives of Composition: Writing and Rhetoric in High Schools and Normal Schools. Along the way, we have learned and laughed a lot, and we are indebted to the scholars, colleagues, and editors who contributed to this collection. We would especially like to thank Josh Shanholtzer for his support and guidance throughout the publication process; the Composition, Literacy, and Culture series editors David Bartholomae and Jean Ferguson Carr; and our anonymous reviewers for their astute critiques of this work. We are grateful to Jeff Ludwig for his early assistance with this project and for his encouragement. We appreciate the efforts of our contributors to help us bring their remarkable scholarship to wider audiences, and we are especially thankful to Kelly Ritter and Jessica Enoch, who took time from their busy schedules to frame our work so thoughtfully with a Foreword and an Afterword. Henrietta Wood: First and foremost, I thank Lori for her perseverance on this enterprise. Lori has been a wonderful partner whose knowledge, diligence, humor, and patience have made this book possible. I also thank Amy Mecklenberg

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Faenger for suggesting that we pursue this project. I am most appreciative of the continuing interest and support of my family, Alan Wood, Adrienne Rix Wood, and Tessa Rix Wood. Lori Ostergaard: I would like to thank Henri for her tireless work on this collection, for always having the motivation to push onward, and for the analytical and critical eye that she applied to every corner of this book. I would like to thank Melissa Ianetta for her generous responses to my chapter. And I thank Jim Nugent for his feedback on this work, for his advice on the process, and for listening enthusiastically to endless stories about my adventures in the archives.

foreword Kelly Ritter

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ike many scholar-teachers in composition studies today, I have become  increasingly interested in the histories of institutions and peoples resid ing outside the postsecondary writing classroom—or even the college or university campus in general. As such, I find it extremely fortunate that Lori Ostergaard and Henrietta Rix Wood’s collection, In the Archives of Composition: Writing and Rhetoric in High Schools and Normal Schools, now exists. This book both highlights the stories of composing to which we, as a field, have paid too little attention, and teaches me—and I think many other readers out there—about these sites of literacy education that have been carefully recovered and recognized for further study in our field. In the Archives of Composition reminds us that “writing” does not emerge, fully formed, out of first-year college students (whether at the community college, the four-year comprehensive, or the research university, private or public). Writing happens in secondary schools, and has happened in this location in rich and vital ways for nearly two hundred years. Writing also happened in an era when teachers typically attended special training schools, then called “normal schools,” frequently as groups of young women embarking on a segregated and sometimes difficult and lonely profession. Following the trajectory of recent pedagogical collections that have highlighted the bridge between high school and college, between types of postsecondary education, and between

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developmental phases of writers across various sites of schooling (for example, Kristine Hansen and Christine R. Farris’s The “Taking Care of ” Business, and Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg’s two-volume What Is College-Level Writing?), In the Archives of Composition lays bare the work done for and by young writers before they ever set foot on (or as a substitute for setting foot on) the college campuses that we more typically work at, publicly acknowledge, and write about in our own field scholarship. In order to make these important connections between underrecognized sites of learning and general writing education clear, Ostergaard and Wood have assembled eleven fascinating and archivally rich essays by new and established scholars; these essays examine local practices across more than 130 years of American education, including not only dominant educational paradigms (from allwhite and widely known institutions, such as Harvard) but also marginalized or suppressed ones (at African American and Native American schools, as well as women’s institutions). In these studies, readers are able to bear witness to voices long left unheard in the histories of composition, voices that have informed how we view composition studies as a field and as a series of courses that shape and are shaped by local literacy (and political) practices. Indeed, David Gold’s call to uncover and recover these voices—a call that I myself have taken up previously in my own work—rings again and again throughout the pages of this collection, as a kind of rallying cry for unearthing and putting on scholarly display the writings, teachings, and community actions that have made up the guts of composition outside the more familiar stories that our field has told (and retold), and the pedagogical problems that have been posed as universal (or not), as well as the practices that have worked (or not). Alongside Gold’s name, readers of this collection will also see other venerable field scholars in conversation and frequently at the center of debate—most prominently Sharon Crowley, James A. Berlin, and Robert J. Connors (with a bit of Albert R. Kitzhaber thrown in for good measure). The authors in this collection— following a trend that I see no sign of ending any time soon—call into question these and other voices that have become canonical in our field’s historiographic practices and the methodological assumptions behind those practices. But this book also introduces names that may be less familiar to readers—most prominent among them Christine A. Ogren, whose book about The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good,” is mentioned in several contributions (and is a book, in my view, that everyone in composition studies should read). Other historical figures come forward here that may be known to archival scholars—for

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example, Sara Lockwood and June Rose Colby—but less-known to other readers who either do not themselves interact with a great deal of historical scholarship or—going back to my opening point—read primarily histories of mainstream postsecondary education. As a journal editor, I have come to believe that the value of scholarship is not only to speak to our intellectual interests and illuminate new approaches toward texts, classroom work, or cultural phenomena, but also to simply teach us what we cannot or would not learn if left to our own devices. I will likely never travel to an American Indian school’s archives to examine the ways in which its students were encouraged to be young rhetors. Though I have family in the Kansas City area, I will likely never examine the local histories of Central High School or ask my own questions about the practices of its student writers. And I am someone who, with more effort, could and should make both of those journeys; I’m capable, I’m reasonably curious, and I’m already what I would consider a historian. So I think about readers even more far-flung and/or less inclined than I am. Therein, I think, is the reason that collections such as this one (and collections, in a broader sense—whether through special issues of journals or edited books) are so important. In the Archives of Composition’s many important narratives about writing education meet in one place, wherein the players tell both their own individually important stories and, collectively, another story—that which has been less known, less popular, and less available to rhetoric and composition studies than it should have been all along. My own archival work has allowed me to tell stories of forgotten mid-century women WPAs, fastidious elite college committees and their “scrapbooks,” and patient—but demanding—World War I−era writing tutors sequestered with students who want little to do with the instruction those tutors must provide. Without archival research, none of those voices and their stories—not to mention the countless voices and stories brought forward by other archival scholars who came before and will come after me—would have been heard. But I urge you not to take my word for it; don’t do like so many of us are inclined, and buy this book (or any other book, especially at our annual conference book fairs or while splurging on Amazon one quiet afternoon) but never really read it. Don’t say yes, such work as this book does is important, but right now, I don’t know what use it is to me. Use this book as a text for your histories of composition studies course, or for your graduate teacher-training course, or your English education senior seminar. Study this book—on your own, or alongside your undergraduate or graduate students—as a proud and forceful model for defining

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exigence in our field’s scholarship as you consider what your own next article, book, or electronic project will be, as you ask yourself, Where are the conversations that I should be joining, or changing? And when you do one or all these things I suggest, remember some of the especially bright gems that come out of these authors’ patient and extraordinary examinations of local and institutional archives. Think about NCTE’s Project English, and how a deeper knowledge of that initiative helps us to more clearly understand and interpret the attitudes toward writing pedagogy in the 1960s and 1970s. Imagine those nineteenth-century Harvard students writing “back” to their professors (and the Committee of Ten) and voicing their distaste for what was the emergence of current-traditional practices. Put yourself in the position of a nineteenth-century woman attempting to inculcate in her fellow women students a rhetorical agency that would meet and exceed those of her male colleagues. Consider the ways in which the American Indian School students felt upon receiving responses to their student letters from locales as far-flung as Pennsylvania. Go ahead and let yourself get lost, in other words, in other people’s stories of the teaching, learning, and administration of writing that may sound like nothing else you have ever heard. I’ll close here by noting that the function of a foreword, generally speaking, is arguably to introduce, to entice—to serve as a kind of tour guide from one intellectual or methodological place to another, especially when that place is overlooked or rarely visited by anyone outside a particular “circle” of influence or practice. I hope I’ve extended that hand to those of you who ideally don’t “do” history, who don’t know much about less-examined rhetorical and pedagogical practices, who don’t often (or ever) visit this little island called historiography. Ostergaard and Wood, their collection’s authors, and I are glad you decided to stop by. Maybe one day we’ll call you our neighbor.

Works Cited Hansen, Kristine, and Christine R. Farris, eds. College Credit for Writing in High School: The “Taking Care of ” Business. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2010. Print. Ogren, Christine A. The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print. Sullivan, Patrick, and Howard Tinberg, eds. What Is College-Level Writing? Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006. Print.

In the Archives of  Composition

introduction Adding New Stories to the History of Composition and Rhetoric Lori Ostergaard and Henrietta Rix Wood

History is always written from probabilistic, and therefore rhetorical, points of view. All it can do is tell us stories. . . .

— Robert J. Connors, “Dreams and Play:   Historical Method and Methodology”

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 wo decades ago, Robert J. Connors encouraged scholars to enter the ar chives and find the stories of composition and rhetoric waiting to be told.  Connors emphasized the importance of producing many different narratives because “all received wisdom is partial, incomplete. It must be examined again and again, not merely accepted. That, finally, is why there are, and why we need, multiple histories. There can never be any history so magisterial that it precludes the need for other histories” (“Dreams and Play” 34). Since Connors offered this observation, archival scholars have told stories about composition and rhetoric in elite colleges and universities (Adams; Connors 1997; Crowley; Ritter; Varnum). Feminist rhetoricians have charted the persuasive pursuits of women and African Americans (Bordelon; Buchanan; Hollis; Logan; Ritter; Royster). Researchers have investigated what textbooks can teach us about early composition practices (Carr, Carr, and Schultz; Miller; Varnum), compiled local histories of composition and rhetoric (Donahue and Moon; Enoch; Gold), and uncovered early examples of writing program administration (L’Eplattenier and Mastrangelo). This scholarship has productively complicated our understanding of the development of the discipline, registered the participation of diverse women and men, and revealed the need for more work that challenges received wisdom. The contributors to In the Archives of Composition aim to fill a gap in the current

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scholarship by exploring composition and rhetoric in the educational institutions that employed the majority of teachers and trained the majority of students from 1839 to 1969 in the United States. The chapters of this anthology depict the experiences of ordinary writing students in overlooked institutions; magnify the work of important, yet little-known pedagogues; and draw connections between secondary and postsecondary contexts. As Lucille M. Schultz suggests, “composition instruction as we know it had its beginnings” in the public schools, where most Americans studied (6). Schultz admonishes histories of the field that marginalize “school-based writing instruction” (7), suggesting—alongside Kelly Ritter, Jessica Enoch, David Gold, and others—that we begin to investigate “the still-unexplored” archives of composition (8). The eleven chapters in this volume respond to Schultz’s challenge. Ranging from a study of the rhetorical activities of turn-of-the-century high school students to an analysis of a female professor’s progressive instruction at an early-twentieth-century teacher-training institution to an assessment of Project English in the 1960s, the essays in In The Archives of Composition offer new local perspectives on pedagogy and practice. In compiling this collection, we are mindful of David Gold’s suggestion in Rhetoric at the Margins that all history is local (ix) and of Gretchen Flesher Moon’s assertion that local histories “challenge the dominant narrative of composition history, located in primarily elite research institutions, disrupting its apparent simplicity as the myth of origin and proposing alongside it a complicated and discontinuous array of alternative histories” (12). The works in Patricia Donahue and Moon’s Local Histories provide varied historical viewpoints, helping us understand how early writing faculty “at different times, in different places, have developed pedagogies, built curricula and programs, and contributed to the emergence of a discipline” (2–3). We continue this project by exposing new archives of composition and rhetoric, challenging disciplinary beliefs, revising research methods, and questioning assumptions that the field has evolved uniformly. In this way, the authors whose work is included here expand the institutional contexts where we may construct our disciplinary histories and uncover “how much composition in the present time is influenced by the students and teachers, and other stakeholders, of its past” (Ritter 3). Early research in the field produced stories of composition and rhetoric at prestigious private institutions such as Harvard University and Yale University, where prominent male professors tutored upper-class white male students preparing for careers in business, law, medicine, politics, and the ministry. Thus, the teaching and practice of composition and rhetoric at these universities reflected

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the agendas of their instructors and pupils. When the narratives of composition at elite universities are juxtaposed with other stories, however, they reveal how composition and rhetoric was valued and practiced differently within different educational contexts: historically black colleges and universities (Blackmon; Gold), women’s colleges (Gold; Ritter; Mastrangelo), and normal schools (Fitzgerald; Gold; Gray; Lindblom and Dunn; Lindblom, Banks, and Quay; Rothermel 2007; Skinnell). These histories tell the story of institutions that relied on more diverse instructors and catered to a wider range of students than the Ivy League schools. This volume expands the historical narrative by addressing composition and rhetoric in high schools and extends the current scholarship on normal schools. Our dual focus has historical precedent: high schools and normal schools developed in tandem during the nineteenth century, and some urban high schools had their own normal departments. In 1900, for example, 46.3 percent of female high school seniors in St. Louis were enrolled in the normal course of study (Tyack and Hansot 187). High schools and normal schools also shared important similarities. Significantly, historical commentators and contemporary historians refer to both of these educational institutions as “the people’s college,” a phrase that suggests both their egalitarian nature and the diversity of their students (Herbst 5; Ueda 100). Normal schools served students who wanted to enter one of the few professions open to women and African Americans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. High schools prepared students who aspired to higher education as well as those who would enter the workforce or marry after graduation. Although some normal schools and high schools were racially segregated, they convened young people of different genders, classes, ethnicities, and religions who created more heterogeneous student bodies than would be found in four-year colleges and universities. With their diverse enrollments and varied approaches to composition curricula, normal schools and high schools provide a compelling historical contrast to the writing instruction at more elite research universities. A great number of Americans learned to write and argue in high schools and normal schools during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. About 10 percent of United States citizens aged fourteen to seventeen years old were enrolled in secondary schools in 1900; by 1910, it had reached 20 percent; and by 1920, it was about 30 percent. In 1900, 2.3 percent of those aged eighteen to twentyfour attended normal schools, four-year colleges, and universities, increasing to 2.8 percent in 1910 and 4.7 percent in 1920 (Snyder 27, 76). Using available

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figures, we estimate that one in three college students were enrolled in normal schools in 1900, while 26 percent attended normal schools in 1910 (Ogren 58). Despite the fact that secondary schools trained the majority of students to write, high schools have received scant scholarly attention. Schultz notes that “the history of writing instruction in the schools is an important and undervalued site in the overall history of writing instruction” (4). She contends that secondary schools serve as “the site where what we think of as personal or experience-based writing began; it is a site where the democratization of writing was institutionalized; it is a site where some of our contemporary composition practices were prefigured” (4). Given these possibilities, investigation of composition and rhetoric in high schools is warranted. While the first two sections of this collection address high school and normal school writing instruction respectively, the last three chapters in this volume demonstrate what we may learn by studying educational movements that bridge the gap between secondary and postsecondary settings. As twenty-first-century compositionists consider the high school–college connection, scholars would do well to look to the past for perspective on the present. Recent anthologies amplify the voices of composition students and teachers in secondary schools and colleges, encouraging dialogue and collaboration (Sullivan and Tinberg; Thompson), yet these contemporary conversations seldom historicize issues that have been debated for more than a century. We ask the same questions today that students and educators asked in the late nineteenth century: What is college English? Why are many first-year students underprepared for college-level composition and rhetoric? How can we make instruction relevant to the present and future needs of students? Becoming aware of how high school and normal school educators of the past have responded to these questions may offer insights into how we might answer them today. The essays in this collection span 130 years of United States history, a period of remarkable cultural, social, and political change. When women began to study writing and rhetoric at Lexington Academy in 1839, the subject of Melissa Ianetta’s chapter, the country had a relatively homogeneous population of 22.5 million people and was an internationally isolated agrarian society (Jones et al. 2006, 322). By 1969, the time of Jane Greer’s chapter on a high school girl’s diary, the United States counted 203 million diverse citizens congregated in the urban areas of a globally prominent industrialized nation (US Census). Between 1839 and the 1969, the United States fought the Civil War, abolished slavery, granted African Americans and women the right to vote, embraced capitalism, conducted imperialistic military actions across the world, admitted and excluded millions

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of immigrants, and engaged in two world wars and the Cold War. Women, homosexuals, African Americans, Native Americans, and farm and factory workers campaigned for equal rights and equal opportunities. People who traveled by foot, horse, and wagon in 1839 drove cars, rode in trains, and flew in planes by 1969. The size of families went down and the divorce rate went up. People who communicated by letter in 1839 made long-distance telephone calls in 1969; the periodical press boomed; and radio and television influenced our assumptions and consumption. As this sweeping summary suggests, life changed dramatically — and not always for the better — for people in the United States from 1839 to 1969. To frame the scholarship in In the Archives of Composition, we next briefly review the history of high schools and normal schools in the United States and the trajectory of composition and rhetoric in these institutions. We then provide overviews of the chapters in this collection, and we conclude by offering observations from our contributors about their archival research motivations and strategies.

The Rise of Public Education in the United States High Schools While the first “free” public high schools opened in the Northeast during the 1820s, secondary schools “came into their own” after 1876, according to education historian Lawrence A. Cremin. By the late 1880s, enrollments in public high schools began to exceed those of private secondary schools (Cremin 546). Moreover, as historian Jane H. Hunter suggests, the development of public high schools was spurred by “the same Jacksonian, democratic principles which promoted elementary, common schools” (174). This democratic sentiment is evident in the literature of the time as well: an 1853 editorial for The Teacher and Western Educational Magazine observes that the public schools were “at war with the aristocratic principle. . . . The rich and poor stand upon the same platform, they sit in the same seat” (J. D. L. 161–62). As the century progressed, several historical trends encouraged the expansion of the public high school across the country: the commercial and industrial revolutions, urban growth, and immigration. Historian William J. Reese contends that all of these factors “rendered familiar strategies for personal mobility and family security obsolete. In response, political activists and school reformers redefined the educational experiences of a minority of young men and women” (The Origins of the American High School xiii–xiv). Politicians argued that public

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schools could help solve the social problems of the growing nation, Reese notes, and reformers “hoped to instill the values of ambition, hard work, delayed gratification, and earnestness in youth,” training them “to become sober, law-abiding, and respectable adults” (57). Many of the early proponents of public secondary education favored singlesex schools, and some cities supported separate institutions for girls and boys. By the late nineteenth century, however, sentiment had shifted as educators and taxpayers realized that separate schools were financially untenable. Furthermore, advocates of women’s education supported mixed schools for the greater equal opportunities that they provided girls. In 1900, only twelve cities out of 628 reported that they had single-sex high schools (Tyack and Hansot 114–16). Differences in record-keeping and definitions of high school programs make it difficult to determine the exact number of secondary schools in the United States during the nineteenth century. For example, one researcher estimated that there were 2,000 high schools nationwide in 1880, while another asserted that there were 800 that year if only schools that offered a two- to four-year curriculum were counted (Reese 209). The spread of secondary education also generated disagreement about the kind of instruction that these institutions should offer. Initially, many high schools emphasized academic subjects. In 1900, for example, 56 percent of girls and 47 percent of boys studied Latin in high schools nationwide; 56 percent of girls and 57 percent of boys studied algebra; 43 percent of girls and 41 percent of boys studied literature; and 39 percent of girls and 38 percent of boys studied rhetoric (Tyack and Hansot 137.) Yet historians David Tyack and Elizabeth Hansot note that early in the twentieth century, urban high schools acknowledged that most students were not college bound and also offered business training. Students could supplement their academic coursework with classes in bookkeeping, penmanship, and commercial arithmetic and geography to enhance their preparation for work rather than higher education (212). By 1890, more than a quarter of students enrolled in all public and private secondary schools attended private commercial schools, a statistic that gave added impetus to business instruction in public high schools (212). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, there was a call for vocational training and different programs of study from both parents and Progressive Era reformers who believed that schools should accommodate the abilities, interests, and future prospects of diverse students. These advocates of differentiated education devised intelligence tests and methods for determining vocational aptitude—strategies that often reflected the ethnocentrism of their proponents

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and tended to reproduce the social class of students. In other words, upper-class students were advised to enroll in academic programs and working-class students were steered toward vocational education (Tyack and Hansot 168–69). The consequences for writing instruction have not been fully charted, but it is safe to say that academic programs emphasized literature, literary analysis, and creative writing while business and trade programs focused on teaching students to produce the kinds of texts required in the workplace, such as reports, letters, and statistical summaries. Katherine H. Adams suggests that “by 1910, high schools had begun to respond to the expanse of trade and manufacturing by instituting commercial programs combining instruction in typewriting and stenography with business math and accounting, advertising and salesmanship, and business English” (127). One of the most heated discussions of academic versus vocational training was waged in the African American community. Historian James D. Anderson maintains that African American educators began to criticize the emphasis on industrial education for students of color in the 1870s, arguing that it mainly served white interests to limit the studies and pursuits of African Americans (33). This debate intensified in the early twentieth century when African American educator and activist W. E. B. Du Bois challenged Booker T. Washington, the noted proponent of industrial education for African Americans and founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. Du Bois contended that African Americans should be encouraged to aspire to become professionals while Washington maintained that most young African Americans should concentrate on acquiring practical skills that could lead to profitable work (Washington, Du Bois, et al.). The advent and expansion of public high schools during the nineteenth century influenced composition and rhetoric studies in myriad ways. With the rise of the public high school following the Civil War, many more students were able to pursue secondary education. In turn, teachers of composition and rhetoric revised pedagogies and theories that had been geared to the elite adolescents who attended antebellum academies and seminaries. High school composition teachers worked to provide their students with both vocational and academic preparation, and in doing so these teachers championed a diverse range of curricular and extracurricular approaches to teaching academic analysis, business writing, creative writing, and journalism. High school curricula provided students with mastery over new communication technologies including typewriters, dictation machines, copy presses, mimeographs, telephones, and radio. Our research indicates that high school teachers also encouraged their students to take advantage of the

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new discursive opportunities offered by school publications. In both curricular and extracurricular spaces, high school students gained an advanced rhetorical education designed to prepare them for communication in academic, civic, and workplace settings. While composition pedagogies expanded to meet the changing needs of students during this time, theorists and publishers began in the late nineteenth century to issue composition-rhetoric textbooks that attempted to standardize high school composition instruction. Many of these composition textbooks advanced a conservative, rule-based, and formulaic writing curriculum. Nevertheless, this conservative curriculum may have been balanced by the more progressive and experimental curricular approaches that were regularly promoted by regional English education associations and journals of the time. These journals introduced teachers to the projects method and to cooperative approaches to composition instruction, and they provided a forum for classroom research studies that examined new methods and materials for teaching composition (Ostergaard 132). Moreover, while current-traditional methods shaped much textbook composition curricula during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many high schools also introduced student publications that trained pupils to write for public audiences, as Henrietta demonstrates in her chapter about Central High School. These new discursive venues encouraged students to write about their school communities as well as the world beyond their campuses, propelling the teaching of journalism in high schools and the organization of national student journalism organizations. The evolution of the public high school during the first half of the twentieth century was marked by increasing enrollments and continuing disagreement about curriculum. As already noted, in 1920, about 30 percent of young people attended high school, rising to 70 percent in 1940 and 90 percent in 1970 (Snyder 27). This surge was propelled by the increasing number of secondary schools that offered more students access to advanced education and shifting labor markets that offered fewer jobs for adolescents (Reese 214; Rury 162). Once an educational option available only to elite youth in the nineteenth century, high school became common in the twentieth century. The remarkable expansion of the high school student body caused further consternation about what and how these students should be taught. While critics lamented what they perceived to be falling academic standards, social-efficiency specialists and child-centered reformers criticized schools and parents who insisted that all students should take traditional courses. Among the most adamant proponents of academic education were African American parents in the South, who may have been troubled by

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white educators’ advocacy of vocational education for African American children (Reese 201–11). Rising resistance to separate and unequal education for African American students and Cold War anxiety about the allegedly inferior educational system of the United States are other milestones of twentieth-century high school history. During the 1930s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began to challenge racial segregation in education through judicial venues (Loupe 21). In 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled that formal segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Southern political leaders vowed to fight the ruling and some communities took drastic action, as Candace Epps-Robertson discusses in her chapter about the closing of public schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia. The Cold War and the launching of the first satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957 created new demands for curricular reform to ensure that the United States remained competitive. One such reform, Project English, which Curtis Mason discusses in his chapter, emphasized the importance of scaffolding reading and writing instruction in the schools. This brief history of the public high school suggests the significant changes in this educational institution from its idealistic inception in the 1820s to its complex conception in the 1960s. Often regarded as a solution to the cultural, economic, and social problems of the United States, high schools were affected by different and sometimes dueling agendas for decades. Parents, educators, and politicians debated curriculum, with some people arguing that students should be prepared for vocations rather than higher education. By the late nineteenth century, demographics propelled the development of testing and tracking students into designated courses of study that tended to serve racial and socioeconomic class ideologies rather than the needs and aspirations of young people and their communities. The remarkable rise of high school enrollment from 1920 to 1970, the campaign to ensure equal education for all students, and Cold War anxiety that led to curricular reform are important historical trends of the twentieth century. All of these trends affected the teaching and practice of composition and rhetoric in public high schools. The surge of students and introduction of differentiated curriculum inspired teachers to revise their messages and their methods, incorporating instruction in new technologies and taking advantage of new forums, such as school-sponsored publications. Despite the move to standardize composition instruction and emphasize style over substance, there is evidence that teachers and students still taught and learned rhetorical strategies. This evidence challenges conventional wisdom that current-traditional

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approaches unequivocally dominated the high school writing classroom in the twentieth century.

Normal Schools A decade after the first high schools opened, the first teacher-training or “normal” schools in the United States were founded in the late 1830s to meet the educational needs of a growing nation. Christine A. Ogren suggests that prior to 1830, teacher education in the United States was primarily an “unintended” outcome of higher education; students educated at colleges and universities might eventually find work as teachers in the schools, but their postsecondary institutions never trained them to teach (16). Ogren quotes one historian who suggested that during this time, teacher training was “incidental, unorganized, and unrecognized by the State and even unnoticed for a time by the academy officials themselves” (16). While teacher-training institutions did not exist in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the nation’s first public schools, called “common schools,” were established during this time in an attempt to unify the country (Herbst 18) by inculcating a shared language, as well as shared faith, values, and “standards of behavior” (19). Normal school historian Jurgen Herbst suggests that early educational reformers feared that in the absence of a common school system, the United States would be unable to achieve “a common country and a united people,” and they placed their hope for the “stability and permanence of the nation” in the creation of a public school system (21). With the establishment of common schools and a nationwide push for compulsory education in the elementary grades came the eventual demand for a workforce of trained, professional teachers. As school reformers began to acknowledge the need for institutions that would be intentionally and explicitly designed to train this professional workforce, new courses of study, separate university departments, and eventually new schools and colleges emerged (Ogren 16). These new schools were modeled on the German teacher seminary and the French école normale (1) or normal school, and their creation and continued funding were eventually supported by the states. The first state normal school in the country opened in 1839 in Lexington, Massachusetts (Ogren 1). The normal school movement spread quickly from there, with thirty-nine additional schools established by 1870 (1), and by the turn of the century, there were more than 100 institutions dedicated to teacher education (Larabee 293). The development of new normal institutions and the increased demand for trained teachers combined to open new educational opportunities for poor and working-class students, women, and racial minorities.

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Students who could not afford to pay tuition were often permitted to attend their state’s normal school for free under the condition that they would teach in that state’s schools for a period of time after graduation. Thus, normal schools came to represent a more diverse cross-section of the U.S. population during this time than the majority of regional and state public colleges. One student at the Illinois State Normal University claimed that her normal university “was a school of the people existing for and representing the masses and not the classes” (Ogren 55). Herbst further suggests that “[t]he students, parents, and legislators saw the normal schools and later the teachers colleges as true community colleges or people’s colleges. These institutions carried the torch of democracy into the hinterland. The normal schools and teachers colleges, far more so than the centrally located state universities, took higher education to where the people lived and worked” (Herbst 6). Normal school administrators also recognized the need to create admission policies that reflected the credentials of their mostly regional applicants. From the 1870s to the early twentieth century, normal schools nationwide did not require prospective students to have high school diplomas until secondary school education was available to most residents of the state (Ogren 77). In 1894, for example, secondary education was sufficiently widespread in Massachusetts for that state to begin requiring high school graduation or the equivalent for admission to its normal schools. The scarcity of public secondary schools in the South, on the other hand, led states such as Kentucky to allow students who had not finished high school to enroll in normal schools until the mid-1900s (77). In addition to welcoming students from different economic and educational backgrounds, many normal schools were established as coeducational institutions. Female students and faculty at the normal schools may have been afforded greater opportunity than their contemporaries at the newly coeducational land grant and elite universities. By the turn of the century, female faculty were in the majority (58 percent) at state normal schools, but represented only a minority (17 percent) of the faculty at state colleges and universities (Ogren 90). Female students were also in the majority at the normal schools where they often took the same classes as men, competed with male classmates for high-ranking positions in debate societies, edited school publications, read graduation addresses, and participated in organized sports (5). The first segregated African American normal schools were established in 1880, but some state normal schools began enrolling African American students as early as the 1870s. Desegregation at a state normal school was first accomplished by Illinois State Normal University President Richard Edwards in 1871. That year, Edwards wrote to his Board of Education to inform them of the applications of

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several African American students to the university. Historian Helen Marshall writes that Edwards was in favor of admitting these students; thus, he sought support from the board (132). The matter was referred to the Committee on Officers and Teachers, which responded that same day, arguing that “in our opinion, neither the Board nor the Faculty of the University has any right to recognize distinctions of race or color in determining who shall or who shall not be admitted to the several departments of the University, the equal rights of all the youth of the state to participate in the benefits of our system of public education, of which the Normal University is a part, being, as we think, fully established and guaranteed by the organic laws of the state” (Proceedings 10; Marshall 132). The report was adopted by the board without further discussion, and while Marshall notes that the board’s decision was “quite in accord with Edwards’ own principles,” she hastens to add that some students protested the admission of African American students and left the Illinois State Normal University as a result (132– 33). Nevertheless, this decision illustrates the spirit of democratic inclusion that permeated the normal school movement of the time. According to Ogren, other normal schools throughout the country began accepting African American students shortly thereafter; although, as Elaine Hays’s chapter illustrates, segregated normal schools were still common during this time, particularly in the South. Kathryn Fitzgerald suggests that the normal school’s inclusive approach represents a significant difference “from the more elite schools where composition has typically been studied” (229), and Ogren argues that the normal schools “hardly differentiated among who could pursue various academic subjects, which helped to establish a foundation for lively intellectual life at these institutions. The faculty and curricular requirements not only suggested that all types of students were capable academically, but also ensured that all students shared an understanding of core subject matter. Normalites thus learned a common academic language, which would allow them to engage together in intellectual exploration” (Ogren 90). While it is difficult to determine the extent to which African American students were integrated into the extracurricular and social life of normal schools, Ogren’s analysis seems to suggest that all students shared an equal academic footing at these institutions, and that academics may have served as a common experience for normal school students despite differences of race, gender, and class among them. Much of the normal schools’ democratic and egalitarian mission changed in the early decades of the twentieth century as some institutions began to offer bachelor’s degrees, to award diplomas rather than certificates, and to “consciously emulate collegiate institutions” (Ogren 90, 202). Ogren observes that while the

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curricula at these schools became more advanced, diverse, and specialized, other normal schools around the country dropped their academic curricula altogether to focus more squarely on teacher training, industrial arts, and home economics —a move that limited the normalites’ upward mobility and that often “mandated the separation of male and female students” within the curriculum (204). By the 1930s, most normal schools had made the transition to teachers colleges or to regional state colleges and universities. The few remaining normal schools competed for students and tried to preserve their teacher-training missions, which were challenged by newly established schools of education at the more powerful state universities. Lewiston State Normal College in Lewiston, Idaho was the last normal school to transition to a college, changing its name to Lewis-Clark State College in 1971. For more than a century, normal institutions trained the nation’s teachers using a course of study that provided students with a more professional focus on classroom practices and with the academic, liberal arts curriculum that these aspiring pedagogues needed to teach a range of subjects in the public schools. The composition curricula at these schools provides an informative co-narrative to the history of writing instruction at elite universities and a compelling glimpse into the theories and practices that helped to shape a century of high school writing instruction in this country. Indeed, normal school historians such as Kenneth Lindblom and Patricia Dunn, Kathryn Fitzgerald, David Gold, Patrice K. Gray, and Beth Ann Rothermel have discovered archival evidence of innovative pedagogical composition practices at normal schools that are strikingly consistent with current best practices in our field. In the early teachers colleges, Lindblom and Dunn discover faculty “who began with the assumption that pedagogy was a legitimate scholarly practice” (63). They note that in such a context, rather than being marginalized by literary study, composition instruction would have been “celebrated as central to the intellectual mission of the [normal] university” (63). Fitzgerald’s examination of the Midwestern normal schools demonstrates how pedagogical and psychological theories informed the faculty’s approach to composition, rendering textbooks marginal, at best, to the work of the normal school writing classroom (244). Similarly, in a chapter that illustrates how “elitist motivations” negatively impacted the curriculum and values of the Fitchburg Normal School in Massachusetts (Moon 4), Gray still finds some pedagogical common ground between the Northeastern and Midwestern normal schools. She comments that faculty at Fitchburg were also skeptical about the pedagogical value of textbooks and, instead, encouraged their students to learn “by doing” (Gray 172). As they rejected the formulaic approaches to writing instruction endorsed in

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many of the popular textbooks from the time, a number of normal school pedagogues in turn embraced rhetorical instruction in their composition classes. For example, in her earlier work Rothermel argues that between 1839 and 1929 faculty at the Westfield State Normal School in Massachusetts resisted “disciplinary attempts to redefine rhetorical education in mechanistic terms” and instead offered their students “a richer understanding of rhetorical theory and practice than more elite institutions” (154). Likewise, Gold suggests that from 1889 to 1917, the East Texas Normal College provided students with “a rich rhetorical environment in which reading, writing, and speaking were well integrated; [and] participation in public discourse was encouraged” (116–17). Each emerging history of composition in the normal schools complicates what we know of early theories and practices in the field and challenges us to discover more about the early pedagogues who devoted their careers to educating subsequent generations of teachers of writing.

Chapter Overviews This collection is organized by institution type and chronology, beginning with a section on the high schools that preceded and, in many ways, led to the development of normal schools. Next is a section on normal schools, followed by three studies that link secondary and postsecondary composition studies.

Part I: High Schools The four chapters comprising Part I of this collection draw attention to the important and overlooked role of secondary schools in the history of composition. While they have been marginalized in our histories of the field, case studies of high school composition practices, curricula, and extracurricular activities may provide insights into some of the most historically influential sites of writing and rhetorical education in the United States. In the first study in this section, Henrietta documents extracurricular writing at a Midwestern high school for white students. Her chapter challenges assumptions about the wane of rhetorical instruction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Henrietta examines the editorials and essays of students at Central High School in Kansas City as early examples of what Robert J. Connors calls “composition-rhetoric,” rather than current-traditional rhetoric (CompositionRhetoric). She demonstrates that young people were schooled in adaptations of classical rhetoric and used their training to influence their peers on a range of issues through texts that they contributed to school-sponsored periodicals. The next two chapters in Part I investigate how a Native American board-

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ing school and a segregated African American high school prepared their students to become rhetorically and critically engaged with—rather than passive consumers of—dominant, white ideologies and narratives. First, Whitney Myers reconstructs the writing curriculum at the Albuquerque Indian School (AIS), the third-oldest off-reservation boarding school in the United States. Myers observes that “reading, writing, and speaking English well” remained at the center of this school’s curriculum, but English-language instruction was never simply about “assimilation” for teachers or students at the school. Instead, Myers reveals that this boarding school’s curriculum provided students with a “vital second language,” one meant to prepare them to be effective rhetors “in both worlds” (Rosenberg). Then, Candace Epps-Robertson examines the Prince Edward County Free School in Prince Edward County, Virginia, a school created by the African American community in response to the county’s refusal to fund integrated schools in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. The Free School informs our histories of the field by revealing how an institution born of the Civil Rights Movement instructed students in a “literacy for social justice.” Epps-Robertson considers the school’s unique mission, pedagogy, and curriculum in a case study that both complicates our conversations about “activist education” (Kates) and “emancipatory composition” (Stull) and enriches our understanding of the intersections of race and literacy. In the final chapter of this section, Jane Greer analyzes the diary of a Midwestern high school student. Patricia Lee Huyett began her diary in 1966, the year that American and British educators met at Dartmouth College to address the question: “What is English?” Huyett’s journal exposes the curricular and extracurricular writing instruction of one high school student during this time, revealing English instruction that Greer argues was a complicated mix of the “transmission” and “growth” models debated at Dartmouth. Greer suggests that contemporary educators should pay closer attention to the rich diversity of students’ experiences as compositionists attempt to evaluate and reform English curricula. Modeling new methodologies for analyzing historical trends and events, these secondary school chapters privilege the perspectives of students whose voices are seldom heard in our histories of composition-rhetoric. These stories contribute to our understanding of composition instruction by recognizing adolescents as active practitioners of composition-rhetoric and high schools as innovative sites of praxis.

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Part II: Normal Schools Part II of the collection presents four historical case studies that recover the composition practices of normal school faculty and students. In the first chapter of this section, Melissa Ianetta examines the competing scholarly journals of Cyrus Peirce, a rhetoric professor at the first state normal school in the United States, and Mary Swift, Peirce’s student. Ianetta’s research illustrates the complex and conflicting gender expectations as women students were expected to simultaneously embody a “feminine elocutionary style” and engage in more agonistic classroom debates. In her chapter, Lori examines the efforts of an Illinois State Normal University professor to expand her college’s composition curriculum during the early twentieth century and to raise the status of composition on her campus by separating it from literature. This case history of Professor June Rose Colby’s composition program illustrates how a failed national push for disciplinary separation may have succeeded in raising the intellectual status of composition on the local level. In the next chapter, Beth Ann Rothermel analyzes how curricular and extracurricular writing at the Westfield State Normal School helped students “develop and express their understandings of professional identity” in the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, Rothermel examines student work to determine to what extent the writing curriculum aided transformative reflective practices that worked against the conception of educators “as autonomous, isolated and authoritative expert[s],” and promoted definitions of “teacher expertise as a space for learning, social critique, and collaboration.” And in the fourth chapter in this section, Elaine Hays builds on Jacqueline Jones Royster’s work on the literacy practices of nineteenth-century African American women by examining those practices at a twentieth-century normal school. Analyzing the rhetorical instruction and practice offered to students at the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal College, Hays illustrates how the student newspaper helped future teachers employ “rhetoric . . . to develop an ethos that redefined what it means to be a ‘normalite.’” In their newspaper work, these students adapted a pedagogical and practical rhetoric for “sociopolitical intent,” seeking to “change the future of race through education.” These chapters offer new insights on the historical experiences of students, professors, and teachers-in-training in composition-rhetoric programs at normal schools. Registering the activism and resistance of pupils and pedagogues, these studies also interrogate how gender and race inflects the theories and practices of our discipline.

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Part III: Building Secondary-Postsecondary Connections While it is instructive for our field to consider both high school and normal school composition and rhetorical instruction in their respective contexts, Part III presents three chapters demonstrating that we have much to learn from archival histories that blur institutional boundaries. First, in a chapter examining a popular high school textbook written by Sara Lockwood in 1888, Nancy Myers demonstrates how this text may have extended professional possibilities for female students by constructing women as teaching professionals and as writers. In its appropriation and adaptation of a male-dominated college English curriculum from Yale and Harvard, and through Lockwood’s subversion of current-traditional rhetoric, Lessons in English advanced “a nationalistic agenda that support[ed] women’s literacy, their appreciation for American literature, and their work in the home, in the workplace, and in higher education.” Next, Edward J. Comstock’s chapter analyzes the self-reports of 150 Harvard freshmen from the 1890s, who were asked to “[d]escribe the training [they] received, or the experience [they] may have had, in writing English before entering College.” These student accounts were preserved in the 1897 “Report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric.” Comstock’s chapter demonstrates “the classroom experience and the idiosyncrasies of [secondary] writing instruction during this time,” and suggests that shifts in local technologies and practices of subjectification may actually precede the social, ideological, and economic structures that scholars conventionally analyze in historiographical accounts of the field. In the last chapter, Curtis Mason explores the Cold War curricular initiative Project English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in the 1960s. As Mason notes, this national initiative had a “far reaching influence on education in Nebraska” through curricular innovations that developed and promoted methods for high school writing instruction that privileged a rhetorical approach to teaching grammar (rather than mere correction), depended on peer response, and encouraged students to write to audiences beyond the classroom. Led by university researchers, Project English in Nebraska emphasized the role of classroom teachers in shaping a new high school English curriculum. As these chapters suggest, teachers, students, and scholars of composition and rhetoric of the past have confronted some of the same challenges that we face today: how best to empower all students; how to teach students to write effectively while also teaching “to the test”; and how to bridge high school and college composition instruction for the good of all writing students.

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Doing History In her Foreword, Kelly Ritter invites readers who “don’t ‘do’ history, who don’t know much about less-examined rhetorical and pedagogical practices” to join in the intellectual work of the authors in this collection. “Doing history” for the authors whose work is included here means more than simply documenting our disciplinary past. For scholars like Elaine Hays, “doing history” can help us to reflect on the work we do in the present, to “continue to question what [we] believe and value, to question [our] own path[s] to knowledge, and to be in a constant stage of revision.” Edward Comstock seeks “to make the familiar strange” with his historical research, to provide insights into the present day through an understanding of how power was once exercised in the seemingly “‘mundane’ documents” of the past. “Doing history” can lead us to interrogate our most basic assumptions about “whose accounts are authorized, what information matters, who has access, and what silences [still] resonate” in the present day (W. Myers). In short, the contributors to this collection believe that “doing history” can lead our field to more critically examine our present-day best practices, disciplinary values, and unacknowledged assumptions about teachers and students of writing. As a part of their contribution to this collection, we asked our chapter authors to tell us about their experiences “doing history,” and we conclude this introduction with their observations about the importance of researching and writing new archival works to illuminate our field’s early history. Most of our contributors observed that their work seeks both to uncover unexplored sites of writing instruction and to reevaluate the sites where our history has already been written. As Nancy Myers suggests, we may “blame Harvard” for the failings of the past, “but not many of us Rhetoric-Composition folk have really spent that much time in the Harvard archives.” Revisiting established historical narratives can be instructive: Comstock’s own foray into the Harvard archives results in the inclusion of student voices in one of the foundational histories of the field. Our personal knowledge of the Harvard archive may be understandably incomplete, as Myers suggests, but few of us may even know how writing and rhetoric were taught by high school faculty or college professors laboring in our own departments twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago. Local archives may help to fill in some of the gaps in our disciplinary history, but, as Beth Ann Rothermel notes, “digging where [we] stand” and working in the “archives connected to the places [we] inhabit” may also provide us with important insights into our own institutions. When asked to describe the research they do, our contributors suggest this work is inductive or exploratory. Rather than enter the archives to discover

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support for our own suppositions, archival scholars begin with research questions that may need to be reframed, revised, or ignored in light of what we discover or what we fail to discover. Whitney Myers’s chapter in this collection began with only “an interest in rhetoric histories and a large, empty plot of land in Albuquerque that [she] drove by on [her] way to campus every morning.” Her interest in this project was spurred, ironically, by the silences she encountered as she tried to piece together the few historical fragments that remained from the school. When her initial research revealed “nothing but empty spaces, this silence told [her] that a group of people had been marginalized” and their story “needed to be told.” The school and its archive had been destroyed, but Myers was able to piece together a history from interviews and from the private archives of students and teachers. In contrast to Whitney Myers, Curtis Mason relied in part on the expertly preserved archive at NCTE. When Mason shifted his focus, however, to examine how the national movement, Project English, was enacted on the local level, he found that he also needed to supplement his documentary research through an interview with someone who was closely associated with Project English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, with files from the university’s archives, and with articles published in The Nebraska English Counselor during the height of Project English. Personal accounts, journals, interviews, and private collections can help to “humanize history” (Mason), but such materials may also put archival scholars into the dual roles of historical researcher and archivist, responsible for preserving unique oral and documentary artifacts for future generations. As Hays notes, “the nature of archive work begs us to follow unconventional leads,” and for Candace Epps-Robertson, some of those leads were former students of the Prince Edward County Free School whose stories had never before been told beyond the family dinner table. This dual responsibility of historians to analyze history and to preserve its artifacts becomes even more apparent when, as Melissa Ianetta observes in her interview for this collection, working in the archives helps us to imagine the stories that may one day emerge from the archives we compile for our own writing programs. Ianetta echoes the feelings of many of us who like to imagine “the stories that someone someday might tell” using the archives we construct today. Imagining the stories others might one day write of our programs may provide archival scholars with an appreciation for more nuanced, complex readings of history. Lisa Mastrangelo warns against constructing “both heroes and villains out of the relatively ordinary but nevertheless complex players we have found” in the archives (“Lone Wolf ” 248). Like Mastrangelo, David Gold reminds us to

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resist “the temptation to reinscribe easy binaries, taxonomies, and master narratives, even when countering them” (“Remapping” 17). Indeed, this desire to simplify history may affect both new and experienced scholars in the archives, but for many of us, researching the archives becomes a quest for colleagues and collaborators more so than for heroes or villains from the past. Like Jane Greer, many of our contributors find themselves “looking for conversational partners” when they enter the archives. The people who populate our institutional and local histories, like our own present-day departmental colleagues, do not fit neatly under the labels we might wish to assign to them: literary scholar or compositionist, innovator or follower, progressive or conservative, current-traditional or rhetorical. Instead, as Mason notes, the stories that we find and tell “are the result of complex interactions and competitions between stakeholders;” indeed, “the historical puzzle is always more complicated” than we expected (N. Myers). To counteract the inclination to construct histories that simplify the past, researchers like Epps-Robertson assert both the need for constant self-reflexivity and the “importance of historicizing and contextualizing the documents” we work with. This complex historical work requires a kind of interdisciplinary expertise that Nancy Myers suggests may blend “socio-cultural history, institutional history, and literacy history.” What’s more, as Jessica Enoch suggests, an enlarged conception of our work also requires that we cease imagining that archival scholars are “detectives or hunters” (“Changing” 60) because we have a much greater responsibility to the archives and the communities we study than to “just take the materials and run” toward facile interpretations (61). If archival historians are more than just detectives ferreting out clues in the archives, then the institutions we study are also much more than just microcosms of our larger disciplinary history, reflections in miniature of that history as it played out on the local stage. Because local institutions do not merely duplicate national disciplinary movements or trends, because the teachers whose work is preserved in smaller institutional and public archives are not simply local versions of Gertrude Buck, A. S. Hill, or Fred Newton Scott, and because their students are not generic composites of every writing student, local stories can reveal powerful counter-narratives as well as co-narratives that may productively complicate our sense of our own disciplinary past.

Works Cited Adams, Katherine H. A History of Professional Writing Instruction in American Colleges: Years of Acceptance, Growth, and Doubt. Dallas: Southern Methodist UP, 1993. Print.

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Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988. Print. Blackmon, Samantha. Uplifting Education: A History of Writing Instruction at Two Historically Black Colleges and Universities. PhD Diss., Wayne State University. 2001. Print. Bordelon, Suzanne. A Feminist Legacy: The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Gertrude Buck. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2007. Print. Buchanan, Lindal. Regendering Delivery: The Fifth Canon and Antebellum Women Readers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print. Carr, Jean Ferguson, Stephen L. Carr, and Lucille M. Schultz. Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print. Comstock, Edward J. Email interview. 24 July 2012. Connors, Robert J. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997. Print. Connors, Robert J. “Dreams and Play: Historical Method and Methodology.” Methods and Methodology in Composition Research. Ed. Gesa Kirsch and Patricia A. Sullivan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992. 15–36. Print. Cremin, Lawrence A. American Education: The Metropolitan Experience 1876–1980. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Print. Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998. Print. Donahue, Patricia, and Gretchen Flesher Moon, eds. Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2007. Print. Enoch, Jessica. “Changing Research Methods, Changing History: A Reflection on Language, Location, and Archive.” Composition Studies 38.2 (2010): 47–73. Print. Enoch, Jessica. Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865–1911. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Epps-Roberston, Candace. Email interview. 10 Sept. 2012. Fitzgerald, Kathryn. “A Rediscovered Tradition: European Pedagogy and Composition in Nineteenth-Century Midwestern Normal Schools.” College Composition and Communication 53.2 (2001): 224–50. Print. Gold, David. “Remapping Revisionist Historiography.” College Composition and Communication 64.1 (Sept. 2012): 15–34. Print. Gold, David. Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873–1947. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Gray, Patrice K. “Life in the Margins: Student Writing and Curricular Change at Fitchburg Normal, 1895–1910.” Donahue and Moon 159–80. Print.

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Greer, Jane. Email interview. 3 Aug. 2012. Hays, Elaine. Email interview. 27 Aug. 2012. Herbst, Jurgen. And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989. Print. Hollis, Karyn L. Liberating Voices: Writing at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print. Hunter, Jane. H. How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2002. Print. Ianetta, Melissa Joan. Email interview. 23 Sept. 2012. Jones, Jacqueline A., Peter H. Wood, Thomas Borstelmann, Elaine Tyler May, and Vicki L. Ruiz. Created Equal: A Social and Political History of the United States. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson, 2006. Print. J. D. L. “Public Schools Are Democratic in Their Tendencies.” The Teacher and Western Educational Magazine 1.6 (1853): 161–63. Web. 12 Oct. 2005. Larabee, David F. “An Uneasy Relationship: The History of Teacher Education in the University.” Ed. Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Sharon Feiman-Nemser, D. John McIntyre, and Kelly E. Demers. Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts. New York: Routledge, 2008. 290–306. Print. L’Eplattenier, Barbara, and Lisa Mastrangelo, eds. Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration: Individual, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2004. Print. Lindblom, Kenneth, and Patricia Dunn. “Cooperative Writing ‘Program’ Administration at Illinois State Normal University: The Committee on English of 1904–05 and the Influence of Professor J. Rose Colby.” L’Eplattenier and Mastrangelo 37–70. Print. Lindblom, Kenneth, Will Banks, and Risë Quay. “Mid-Nineteenth-Century Writing Instruction at Illinois State Normal University: Credentials, Correctness and the Rise of a Teaching Class.” Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition. Donahue and Moon 94–114. Print. Logan, Shirley Wilson. Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in NineteenthCentury Black America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Loupe, Diane E. “Storming and Defending the Color Barrier at the University of Missouri School of Journalism: The Lucile Bluford Case.” Journalism History 16.1–2 (1989): 20–31. Print. Marshall, Helen. Grandest of Enterprises: Illinois State Normal University 1857–1957. Chicago: Lakeside, 1956. Print. Mason, Curtis. Email interview. 14 Aug. 2012.

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Mastrangelo, Lisa. “Learning from the Past: Rhetoric, Composition, and Debate at Mount Holyoke College.” Rhetoric Review 18.1 (1999): 46–64. Print. Mastrangelo, Lisa. “Lone Wolf or Leader of the Pack?: Rethinking the Grand Narrative of Fred Newton Scott.” College English 72.3 (Jan. 2010): 248–68. Print. Miller, Susan. “Is There a Text in This Class?” Freshman English News 11 (1982): 22–33. Print. Moon, Gretchen Flesher. “Locating Composition History.” Donahue and Moon 1–13. Print. Myers, Nancy. Email interview. 7 July 2012. Myers, Whitney. Email interview. 31 July 2012. Ogren, Christine A. The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good.” New York: Palgrave, 2005. Print. Ostergaard, Lori. “Local Archives, Local Practices: The Writing Research of Essie Chamberlain, 1920–1925.” Issues in Writing 18.2 (2010): 132-45. Print. Proceedings of the Board of Education of the State of Illinois December 5–6, 1871. Illinois State University. Web. 3 Nov. 2005. Reese, William J. America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind.” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005. Print. Reese, William J. The Origins of the American High School. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1995. Print. Ritter, Kelly. To Know Her Own History: Writing at the Woman’s College, 1943–1963. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2012. Print. Rothermel, Beth Ann. Email interview. 1 Aug. 2012. Rothermel, Beth Ann. “‘Our Life’s Work’: Rhetorical Preparation and Teacher Training at a Massachusetts State Normal School, 1839–1929.” Donahue and Moon 134–58. Print. Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2000. Print. Rury, John L. Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Schooling. 2nd ed. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005. Print. Schultz, Lucille M. The Young Composers: Composition’s Beginnings in Nineteenth-Century Schools. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. Print. Skinnell, Ryan. “Institutionalizing Normal: Rethinking Composition’s Precedence in Normal Schools.” Composition Studies 41.1 (2013): 10–26. Print. Snyder, Thomas D., ed. 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. Washington, DC: US Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement Statistics, 1993. Print.

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Sullivan, Patrick, and Howard Tinberg, eds. What Is “College-Level” Writing? Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006. Print. Thompson, Thomas C., ed. Teaching Writing in High School and College: Conversations and Collaborations. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2002. Print. Tyack, David, and Elizabeth Hansot. Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Schools. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1990. Print. Ueda, Reed. Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print US Census Bureau. www.census.gov. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. Varnum, Robin. “The History of Composition: Reclaiming Our Lost Generations.” Journal of Advanced Composition. 12.1 (1992): 39–55. Print. Washington, Booker T., W. E. B. Du Bois, et al. The Negro Problem. 1903. Ed. W. E. B. Du Bois. New York: Arno, 1969. Print.

PART I High Schools

chapter 1 The Rhetorical Praxis of Central High School Students, 1894–1924 Henrietta Rix Wood

I

n 1906, Edwin W. Patterson praised Central High School as “the people’s college” of Kansas City, Missouri (n. pag.). Commending the city for funding the continuous improvement of Central, he extolls the distinguished faculty, celebrates that school’s observatory and science laboratories as equal to those of universities, and applauds the 3,000 Central graduates who had become the “best citizens” of the city (n. pag.). Although Patterson sounds like a populist politician or a Progressive Period educator delivering a speech, he was neither; he was a Midwestern high school student displaying in a yearbook essay the persuasive skills that he may have acquired through his classroom lessons in rhetoric. Like students throughout the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Patterson and his peers studied rhetoric and were assigned textbooks by some of the most prominent rhetoricians of the era, including G. P. Quackenbos, John Franklin Genung, Fred Newton Scott, and William M. Tanner. At the same time, Central students—and students at other high schools—produced persuasive discourse that they delivered through the new print podiums of their school yearbook, literary magazine, and newspaper. Is it a coincidence that during the same period that Patterson and his peers composed persuasive columns, editorials, and essays, they also may have studied the leading rhetorical theorists of the day? That is the question I asked upon

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finding lists of the textbooks purchased for Central High School students between 1894 and 1924, locating these textbooks that, remarkably, were preserved in university libraries, and then reading the published writing of students in conjunction with these instructional materials. I do not think that the similarities between student texts and instructional texts are accidental, and my methodology is informed by the scholarship of Jacqueline Jones Royster, Lucille M. Schultz, Robin Varnum, and Susan Miller. Practicing what Royster calls historical ethnography, a challenging enterprise given that my historical subjects cannot be interviewed, I follow her formula of “crisscrossing” available data and “merging sight lines” (282). More specifically, I am guided by Schultz, who observes: One way to catch a glimpse of writing instruction in nineteenth-century schools is to read the textbooks. Another is to read the student writing included in textbooks or in prize books or in commencement programs; another is to read the reports written by the committees that evaluated student writing . . . still another way to read nineteenth-century writing instruction is to read these documents in concert: what these “ways in” share is that they address formal, classroom-based writing, and read next to each other, they reveal striking consistencies among what the textbooks were asking for, what students were producing, and what public opinion and the schools were rewarding. (127)

Reading the assigned textbooks of Central students in conjunction with their published writing, I see striking consistencies, as Shultz suggests, and as this chapter will delineate. My study also responds to the work of Robin Varnum and Susan Miller, who advocate annales-style scholarship that encourages composition and rhetoric scholars to consider a variety of sources, such as textbooks and student writing, as we construct historical narratives. Although I have not been able to locate administrative or teacher records that would indicate how these textbooks were used or which sections were emphasized in Central classrooms, their titles are listed in the annual reports of the public schools of Kansas City, Missouri. And while I cannot confirm that every student composition discussed in this chapter was initiated by the student writer rather than by a teacher’s assignment, the fact that most of my examples are editorial columns leads me to believe that students reacted autonomously to specific rhetorical occasions. History is argument and history is conjecture: I contend that there is a connection between the textbooks and the texts of Central students, but I must rely on incomplete evidence. My argument about the intersection of student product and pedagogy is not

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the only one that I make in this chapter. The rhetorical performances of Central students also challenge the assumption that pupils and teachers were more concerned with punctuation than argumentation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Patterson’s essay can be read as epideictic rhetoric, a form of persuasive discourse named by the ancient Greek rhetorician Aristotle that defines and celebrates community. Defining and celebrating the community of Central students, Patterson used the figure of amplification, which is characteristic of epideictic rhetoric. The year that he wrote his essay, Central students may have learned about amplification from their assigned textbook by Quackenbos, who advises that this strategy “consists in enlarging on the ideas expressed under the various heads [main themes], throwing in appropriate additional matter, and forming a complete and consistent whole” (329). Seeking to bolster the reputation of Central High School and the collective pride of its students and faculty, Patterson offers evidence ranging from the caliber of instructors to new plans for expanding the physical facility. Clearly, Patterson and his peers were schooled in more than the mechanical correctness that reportedly became an obsession in the United States during the late nineteenth century. This campaign for privileging proper punctuation and grammar over persuasive principles was engendered by the Harvard Reports of the 1890s, which criticized the poor writing skills of incoming college students. These reports emphasized only one aspect of the composition process, mechanical correctness; they also blamed secondary schools for failing to teach students the rudiments of writing and assigned these schools the responsibility of doing so. Albert R. Kitzhaber observes that this emphasis on superficial correctness “contributed in no small measure to the ideal of superficial correctness that was to dominate composition instruction for many years after” (47). The persuasive discourse of Central High School students, however, suggests that some secondary students learned to argue as well as to spell. In this chapter, I assert that Central students contributed to and benefitted from the development of what Robert J. Connors calls “composition-rhetoric,” which he maintains first appeared in colleges during the nineteenth century. Connors acknowledges that he borrowed the term from the title of Fred Newton Scott and Joseph Villiers Denney’s book, Composition-Rhetoric, Designed for Use in Secondary Schools (1897). In the preface of this textbook, which, significantly, was aimed at high school students and teachers, Scott and Denney argue that “it is desirable that a closer union than has prevailed hitherto be brought about between secondary composition and secondary rhetoric. That rhetoric in the high school

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should be regarded as a thing apart from composition, that it should be regarded simply as a ‘course,’ to be pursued and passed and put out of remembrance as quickly as possible, is not good either for rhetoric or for composition. In this book, as the name signifies, no such apartness has been recognized.” (iii) Connors notes that like Scott and Denney, he uses composition-rhetoric to denote the “form of rhetorical theory and practice devoted to written discourse” (6). Observing that writing was always part of the older rhetorical tradition and that other strands of rhetoric evolved in the nineteenth century, Connors avows that composition-rhetoric waxed while oral rhetoric waned after 1860 in the United States. He writes that “composition-rhetoric is a modern rhetoric, quickly changing and adapting, driven by potent social and pedagogical needs, and running on the rails of an ever cheaper, ever quicker, and ever more competitive printing technology” (7). Those “social and pedagogical needs,” according to Connors, ranged from the influx of students to postbellum public universities to the emergence of graduate student writing teachers who struggled to deal with too many students. He also holds that a variety of composition-rhetoric forms emerged in different educational settings. To date, however, scant attention has been paid to the evolution of composition-rhetoric in the public high school setting, even though many more young people attended high school than college in the United States during the early twentieth century. In 1900, about 10 percent of persons aged fourteen to seventeen years old were enrolled in secondary schools; by 1910, that percentage was 20; and by 1920, it was about 30 percent. College enrollments during this same period were significantly lower: in 1900, only 2.3 percent of those aged eighteen to twenty-four years old were enrolled in college, rising to 2.8 percent in 1910 and 4.7 percent in 1920 (Snyder 27, 76). Rhetoric was a popular course in coeducational public high schools. In 1900, 39.2 percent of girls and 37.5 percent of boys at public high schools nationwide took rhetoric courses (Latimer 149). Furthermore, by the early 1900s, many secondary schools had taken advantage of print technology innovations that made student publications possible. Central High School introduced a student literary magazine in 1885, a yearbook in 1899, and a weekly newspaper in 1921. This chapter fills a gap in the scholarship on composition-rhetoric by analyzing the persuasive discourse of Central High School students from 1894 to 1924. Comparing the advice of their assigned rhetorical textbooks to the texts that they created, I argue that these young people attempted to meet the “potent social needs” of Central students by critiquing school policy, promoting school spirit, countering factionalism, and fostering unity. In so doing, they defy assumptions

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that students of this era were at the mercy of autocratic, error-obsessed instructors who assigned formulaic “themes” on topics far removed from the experiences and opinions of the young people required to produce them. Indeed, as the ensuing discussion will show, Central students took advantage of new discursive forums to exercise significant rhetorical agency.

Central High School at the Turn of the Twentieth Century To put the texts of Central students into cultural and historical context, I next provide background on the school and its students. Central High School opened in 1869 to educate white students in Kansas City, Missouri, which had a racially segregated public school system (Worley). By 1900, Central reportedly was the largest coeducational high school in the United States (Twenty-Ninth Annual Report 81). Its enrollment ranged from 1,800 pupils in 1895 to 2,376 in 1925 (TwentyFifth Annual Report 51; Fifty-Fourth Annual Report 69). As the first public high school in Kansas City, Missouri, Central convened boys and girls of different classes, ethnicities, and religions. Reflecting national trends, girls outnumbered boys at Central from 1895 to 1925. In 1895, there were 1,087 girls and 650 boys enrolled (Twenty-Fourth Annual Report 55). By 1925, the school district had stopped publishing the numbers of girl versus boy students, but there were 334 girls and 261 boys in the senior class (Fifty-Fourth Annual Report 69). The 1907 volume of the Central yearbook listed the names and addresses of seniors, who included the children of a draftsman, a huckster, several salesmen, a junk dealer, a bank clerk, the controller of a local distillery, the treasurer of a preserving company, and two physicians, one of whom was a woman (The Centralian 1907, 9–13). The senior class of 1907 included the granddaughter of German immigrants; the son of Russian Jewish immigrants; the daughter of an English mother and a Hungarian father; the granddaughter of Irish immigrants; and the son of an Austrian father and a German mother. These demographic details indicate the complexity of social needs that Central student writers attempted to address through their composition-rhetoric. Despite the cultural diversity of Central students, they were bound by their commitment to a rigorous course of study. By the late nineteenth century, the high school offered six academic programs: the Classical Course prepared students for college; the Scientific Course offered training for students who planned to pursue higher education in science; the English Course trained future teachers; the Latin-English Course was designed for students who wanted a liberal education and/or who planned to apply to law or medical schools; the Modern Language Course provided instruction in German and French; and the Business

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Course prepared students for future careers. All students took classes in English, elocution, rhetoric, English literature, civics, language, mathematics, and science (Seventeenth Annual Report 104–6). Judging by the persuasive discourse of Central students, the English faculty tutored them in the new composition-rhetoric theories, which reflected industrialization, increasing enrollments, and the fact that many students went to work rather than college upon graduation, according to Schultz (30). Several of the textbooks assigned to Central students from 1894 to 1925 were widely used in both secondary schools and institutions of higher learning throughout the United States, and thus provide insight on rhetorical training nationwide. Among these insights is that students continued to study rhetoric even though classical conceptions were adapted and traditional terms were not always used. Quackenbos discusses amplification more thoroughly than Aristotle; Genung offers advice on deliberative, forensic, and epideictic rhetoric; Scott and Denney coach students in the production of compelling arguments; and Tanner urges young people to capitalize on the persuasive potential of editorials.1 As was the practice of other high schools, Central adopted college-level rhetoric textbooks to ensure that students were properly prepared for the rigors of advanced academic writing. Yet secondary schools also were the first educational institutions to challenge the new obsession with grammar. In 1892, the Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies recommended that “grammar analysis (as an instrument of interpretation and of criticism) may properly accompany reading and the study of composition, it should not be regarded as a separate subject in the curriculum” (88). Two of the rhetoricians whose textbooks guided the studies of Central students supported this approach. In 1895, Genung valorized high school composition students as fledgling authors—rather than disparaging them as grammatical illiterates—and cautioned instructors to avoid thinking of “the teaching of English as synonymous with wielding a blue pencil” in an article, “The Teacher’s Outfit in Rhetoric,” that was published in The School Review (405, 422). Scott took a functional view of mechanical correctness; proper diction and spelling were the tools for effective communication—the means to an end rather than the end itself (Kitzhaber 71). Central students were aware of the correctness campaign, as indicated by a statement that appeared in some issues of the school literary magazine: “Grammar and composition appear without Faculty correction.” Reassuring readers that these publications were neither censored nor supervised by adults, this statement also proved that Central students had mastered the rules of grammar and style that were considered so crucial in this period.

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Genung: Transforming Classical Rhetorical Concepts Turning now to the composition-rhetoric of Central students, I begin in the mid-1890s, when school records indicate that they used one of John Franklin Genung’s texts. The annual school report does not list the title, but most likely it was The Practical Elements of Rhetoric, with Illustrative Examples, first published in 1885. At least eighteen Eastern colleges used this text between 1890 and 1900, more than any other competing manual (Brereton 327). While Albert R. Kitzhaber observes that “the period 1850–1900 can hardly be called a particularly distinguished time in the history of rhetoric,” he identifies Genung and Fred Newton Scott, as well as Adams Sherman Hill and Barrett Wendell, as the “Big Four” formulators of rhetorical theory during this time (59). From Genung’s textbook, Central students may have learned that “rhetoric is the art of adapting discourse, in harmony with its subject and occasion, to the requirements of a reader or hearer” (Practical Elements 1). The objectives of discourse are to convey information through “didactic prose”—biography, criticism, essays, fiction, history, and treatises; to appeal to the reader’s sensibilities, “to make him feel the thought as well as think it” through poetry; and to influence the reader’s “will” through oratory (1, 3). Demonstrating the tendency of late-nineteenthcentury rhetoricians to transform classical concepts, Genung merges epideictic, deliberative, and forensic rhetoric into two categories. He calls epideictic rhetoric “demonstrative,” and writes that “this name may be given to that class of orations wherein no defined end is directly proposed, but wherein none the less [sic] the demands of persuasion are present, in a general impulsion towards noble, patriotic, and honorable sentiments, and towards a large and worthy life”; he also remarks that journalism at that time was most likely to perform this rhetorical work (473–74). As for deliberative and forensic rhetoric, Genung labels these categories “determinate oratory,” which “contemplates direct and immediate action as its result; that is, action that may express itself in a vote, or in a verdict, or more generally in a change and improvement of life” (472). The most common places for the delivery of determinate oratory, according to Genung, are the courtroom, the legislative assembly, and the church pulpit. In the early 1890s, Central students discovered a new place for performing determinate oratory: the editorial section of their literary magazine. In November 1894, the editors of The Luminary debated the merits of a new school policy. Beginning on a deliberative note, the author (or authors) diplomatically introduce the subject: “As the Luminary’s avowed object is to discuss in a fair and impartial manner all questions relating to the school, so here we wish to treat a topic of

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absorbing interest to all, namely: the new way of arranging the hours. It is not in a spirit of carping criticism that we propose to do this, but in the most just way possible” (“An Editorial Opinion” 9). The author is vague about the new schedule, but apparently the school board and Central faculty had decided to omit the lunch hour, which forced students to attend classes for six hours without a break. The editorial acknowledges that the extra hour of school required students to get up earlier and decreased the amount of homework, but the writer argues that the negative consequences outweigh these benefits. Moving into forensic mode, the editorial accuses the new schedule of causing inconvenience to families, which would need to feed students after school ended at 1:30 p.m. More importantly, the policy prevented students from socializing. As the editorial declares: “Under this regime, it is impossible to maintain any esprit de corps among the Societies, and class spirit must inevitably disappear” (10). Reiterating that the editorial was not meant to criticize school authorities, the author concludes that “we humbly hope someone may deem these suggestions worthy of examination, and perhaps of action” (10). The editorial enacts Genung’s definition of determinate oratory by promoting “action” that would improve the lives of students. Since this topic was not aired in subsequent issues of the Central literary magazine, it must have been resolved to the satisfaction of students. Blurring the already hazy boundaries of Genung’s rhetorical categories, Central student Paul J. Leidigh takes an amusingly provocative position on a controversial topic in both coeducational high schools and late-nineteenth-century society—appropriate gender roles. For the 1895 volume of the The Centralian, the Central yearbook, Leidigh contributed a short essay, “The New Man,” that mocks the model of the “New Woman” and pays homage to the “angel in the house.” The term, “New Woman,” could refer to positive images of independent and welleducated women or negative images of women who defied traditional gender roles (Patterson, Beyond the Gibson Girl 2). In Leidigh’s view, the New Woman clearly was the latter. He begins his commentary: “As we are interested in everything the New Woman proposes to do, and as her chief aim is to ‘run’ the New Man, it might be of interest to conjecture what he will do about it” (26). Signaling his agenda through his sarcastic tone and description of the New Woman’s “chief aim,” Leidigh moves into Genung’s determinate mode: “He ought to decide very soon, for already such ominous forecasts of domestic bliss (?) as the following confront us from the columns of the daily press:—First New Woman: ‘Clara’s husband has a frightful temper.’ Second New Woman: ‘Yes, it’s easy to see who wears the bloomers in that family’” (26). The joke, of course, is that the New

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Woman has adapted the prescribed dress of the day for progressive women— bloomers—and thus, bloomers replace pants as the symbol of familial authority. To credential his claims, Leidigh cites William Dean Howells, asserting that the renowned magazine editor and literary critic “declares that the New Man has not only not arrived, but has not even started yet” (26). The young writer then poses a rhetorical question: “Where, then, we would like to inquire, is the richly decked steed upon which he was wont to prance through the thrilling romances of the last century?” (26). Making veiled reference to the works of writers such as Sir Walter Scott, whom Howells, a proponent of literary realism, criticized as a romantic, Leidigh also appears to mock some of the literary texts that Central students may have been assigned. In any event, he contends that the heroic male of the past has traded his “steed” for a clotheshorse familiar to “all good house-husbands” (26). This emasculated male no longer pursues villains or rescues damsels in distress, according to Leidigh. In his pursuit of the New Woman, the New Man must emulate the female ideal immortalized in English writer Coventry Patmore’s narrative poem, “The Angel in the House” (1854 and expanded until 1862). In a complicated rhetorical gesture, Leidigh manages to disparage the New Woman and the New Man, and praise the angel in the house, who now serves as the New Woman’s model for the New Man. Perhaps using the strategies of epideictic rhetoric that Genung calls demonstrative oratory, Leidigh portrays the “noble, patriotic, and honorable sentiments” of the angel: “The New Woman has fond visions of him [the New Man] enthroned as ‘King of an Ideal Home,’ sheltered by her loving care from the cold, cold world. There, surrounded by all the comforts of life, he will have nothing to do but to clean house four times a year, to do all the marketing, all the shopping, all the dressmaking for the little ones, to train their minds as well as their hands” (26). This catalogue, contained in an extremely long single sentence, goes on to note the angel/house-husband must produce blankets for “the heathen in the tropics,” “attend the sewing circle,” “solve the servant-boy problem,” entertain the New Woman’s friends and clients, and suffer silently when the New Woman arrives nearly an hour late for dinner (26). The New Man must also “keep himself young and pretty so that no matter where she is she will always have the memory-picture of an attractive home and a pretty husband to cheer her darksome hours” (26). Reading between the lines, it seems likely that Leidigh’s mother was an angel, and he empathized with the realities that these ideal women confront: a good deal of domestic labor, numerous social obligations, and the pressure to maintain appearances. It also is likely that

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Leidigh knew Central teachers who could be described as New Women, as well as Central girls who were New Women-in-the-making. Expressing the anxiety created by shifting gender roles, Leidigh seeks to sway public opinion through an essay that encompasses elements of Genung’s two rhetorical categories.

Scott and Denney: Modern Composition-Rhetoric Moving into the 1910s, which Connors identifies as the beginning of  “modern composition-rhetoric,” Central students may have been influenced by the originators of that term—Fred Newton Scott and Joseph Villiers Denney. From 1912 to 1915, Central students were assigned an edition of Elementary English Composition by Scott and Denney, who Kitzhaber suggests were among the original theorists of the period (59). Scott and Denney do not use classical rhetorical terms in their textbook, which is specifically aimed at secondary schools, but they do allude to both epideictic and deliberative theory when they write: “We come now to a kind of composition in which we try to make others believe what we believe or do what we wish them to do. It is called argument” (215, emphasis original). The phrase “to make others believe” alludes to the aim of epideictic rhetoric; “to do” evokes the objective of deliberative rhetoric. Scott and Denney continue: “Frequently all that is necessary to accomplish this is to explain clearly just what it is that we wish him to do or believe, how much it includes, and what we mean by it” (218). Privileging the power of rhetors and the common sense of auditors, the authors admit that there could be audience resistance: “If, however, after we have made our explanation, our hearer is still doubtful or reluctant, we try to furnish him with good reasons or arguments for doing or believing as we wish him to, and when he tells us our objections we try to satisfy these” (218–19). Possibly putting the advice of Scott and Denney to practice in November 1913, Central student David N. Ross argued that school spirit depends on student support for the athletes, debaters, and writers who won acclaim for the school. The issue of school spirit was frequently broached in Central student publications—as well as those of other high schools in the United States—during this period. Historian Reed Ueda characterizes school spirit in this era as a form of patriotism analogous to civic pride (123–26). Extending this comparison, historian Jane H. Hunter links school spirit to early-twentieth-century nationalism, noting that it often centered on male sports, just as nationalism was bolstered by male military deeds (252–53). Indeed, there is a masculine tone to Ross’s rhetoric in his editorial for the first issue of the literary magazine that school year. Ross begins by quoting a Central alumnus:

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“School Spirit,” remarked an old Centralite the other day, “is dead. I blush whenever I pass Eleventh and Locust. I was ashamed to acknowledge my connections with the school when a friend and I passed a group of stalwart sons of Central eating pink ice cream cones and talking of a coming literary contest. Imagine such a state of affairs in an institution whose students in the good old days went to school every morning with a textbook in one hand and a rock the size of a goose-egg in the other. The textbook had a number of purposes, the rock but one, and woe to the unlucky Manualite who stopped the rock.” (3)

Referring to the location of Central in downtown Kansas City, the alumnus, who clearly is male whether he was real or imaginary, lampoons once “stalwart sons” who now are effeminate boys more interested in confections and pursuits associated with girls than the manly duty of protecting Central territory against students from the rival Manual Training High School. Despite this deplorable situation, Ross asserts that school spirit can be revived by the student body. Positing a series of questions that serve the “argument” that Scott and Denney describe, Ross asks: “Are you supporting the athletic team other than vocally? Is an athletic victory worth the price of admission to you? Can you lay aside personal grievances long enough to feel puffed up when a Central student brings some literary honor upon the school? Can you arouse enough enthusiasm to pay to hear the debaters? Are you willing to cheer them on to victory if you do hear them?” (3). Ross tells his classmates that if their answer to these questions is yes, “you have the requisite school spirit. If you cannot answer affirmatively crawl into some deep, dark, out of the way hole and die. You are hopeless. Mum’s the word if you can’t boost [sic]” (3). While Scott and Denney did not advise the use of humor or hyperbole as argumentative tactics, Ross effectively employs both to make his case for school spirit. The rhetoric of Ross complicates Connors’s contention that the modern period of composition-rhetoric was a “period of relative stasis that usually is associated with the pejorative uses of the term ‘current-traditional’” (13). Connors may be right that college textbooks, his main sources in Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy (1997), did not break new rhetorical ground during this time, but clearly Central students were studying and practicing persuasive discourse.

Tanner: The Symbiotic Relationship of Writing and Rhetoric From 1923 to 1930, Central students used William M. Tanner’s Composition and Rhetoric (1922), according to school district records. Tanner’s title clearly evokes

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Scott and Denney’s earlier book, and underscores the symbiotic relationship of writing and rhetoric. Tanner defines composition as “the expression of what we have to say in accordance with the rules of grammar and the principles of rhetoric,” explaining that rhetoric “consists of the study of the principles governing the clear, forceful, and elegant expression of thoughts” (2). Describing the purpose of both oral and written persuasive discourse, he writes that “by employing argument we try to lead them [hearers and readers] to believe as we do and to act as we desire them to act” (2). Tanner amplifies his conception of argument in a chapter about argument and debating, writing that “argument is a course of reasoning designed to convince others of the truth or falsity of something. We are often arguing without realizing it: at home, at school, at work, and at play we are constantly trying to make others think and act as we would have them” (415). To practice argument, he advises students to write editorials for their school newspapers, reinforcing the point that Genung had made three decades earlier about the rhetorical affordances of journalism. Tanner’s recommendations seem to inform the rhetorical efforts of Central student Ruth Tinsley, who coordinated an editorial campaign in the October 1924 issues of the school newspaper to counter the factionalism that was dividing students. Considering the size of the enrollment, which had increased to 2,413 high school students and 1,491 junior high school students by 1924—making Central the largest high school in Missouri—it is not surprising that factions emerged (“Central Leads Other Schools in Enrollment” 1). Students reportedly formed cliques that excluded former friends, established students ostracized newcomers, and high school students banded together against junior high students. To diminish the friction caused by these factions, Tinsley exercises what Tanner explicates as “a course of reasoning designed to convince others of the truth or falsity of something.” Acting as editor of the newspaper, Tinsley either wrote or commissioned a deliberative directive on inclusivity. The editorial, “Don’t Be a Snob,” begins with an astute assessment of Central coalitions: “Too many of us band together in cliques and groups to the detriment of the rest of the school. There are possibly three or four cliques in every fifty students. Wholesome friendship is a fine thing, but most often these groups become clannish and frequently snobbish” (2). Identifying the problem, the editorial also advises the solution: “Never pass up an old friend or acquaintance without at least acknowledging him. Let’s make Central the home of friendliness. Let it never be said, ‘There goes a born snob’” (2). The editorial implies that the reputation of the school was at stake, admonishing students to recreate the goodwill that reigned in the “home,” an idealized

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domestic sphere. Following Tanner’s formula for an “informal argument,” the editorial begins with a general statement of opinion and cites specific examples to support inclusivity. As this analysis of the persuasive performances of Central High School students demonstrates, students learned to argue as well as to punctuate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Motivated by the cultural complexities of a large and relatively diverse student body, these young rhetors negotiated issues of authority, gender, and factionalism as they advocated agency, unity, and school spirit. Their rhetorical performances exemplify Connors’s conception of composition-rhetoric as a constantly evolving tradition that varied among educational settings. That evolution can be seen as Central students may have applied the advice of the leading theorists of the day to their own rhetorical situations and used new print venues to build community and influence their peers in a large Midwestern high school that was representative of such schools of this era. As Schultz advises and as this chapter illustrates, reading textbooks and student texts simultaneously clarifies and complicates our understanding of the history of composition-rhetoric in secondary schools. Indeed, this case study of early-twentieth-century student publications confirms the value of using an array of primary sources to tell new stories about our disciplinary history.

Notes 1. Among the composition textbooks that Central students may have used from 1895 to 1904 was Sara E. Husted Lockwood’s Lessons in English (1888), the subject of Nancy Myers’s chapter in this collection. While Lockwood may have influenced the writing of Central students, she does not specifically address persuasive discourse. The word “rhetoric” appears just three times in the book: once in the preface and twice in a chapter about diction, where Lockwood defines rhetoric as “the science which treats the modes of expressing thought by means of language. Diction is that part of Rhetoric which treats of the selection and the right use of words. The most important qualities of diction are Purity, Propriety, and Precision” (157). Given the limited attention that Lockwood pays to rhetoric, I have not included her textbook in my analysis.

Works Cited Brereton, John C., ed. The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875– 1925. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. Print.

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“Central Leads Other High Schools in Enrollment.” The Luminary 18 Sept. 1924: 1. Print. The Centralian 1907. Kansas City: Standard, 1907. 9–13. Print. Connors, Robert J. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997. Print. “Don’t Be a Snob.” The Luminary 9 Oct. 1924: 2. Print. “An Editorial Opinion.” The Luminary Nov. 1894: 9–10. Print. Fifty-Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary and Treasurer of the School District of Kansas City, Missouri, for the Year Ending June 30, 1925. Kansas City: Capitol, 1925. Print. Genung, John Franklin. The Practical Elements of Rhetoric with Illustrative Examples. 1895. Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1995. Print. Genung, John Franklin. “The Teacher’s Outfit in Rhetoric.” The School Review 3.7 (Sept. 1895): 405–22. Web. 23 Feb. 2012. Hunter, Jane H. How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2002. Print. Latimer, John. What’s Happened to Our High Schools? Washington, DC: Public Affairs, 1958. Print. Leidigh, Paul J. “The New Man.” The Luminary May 1895: 26. Print. Kitzhaber, Albert R. Rhetoric in American Colleges, 1850–1900. Dallas: Southern Methodist UP, 1990. Print. Miller, Susan. “Is There a Text in This Class?” Freshman English News 11.1 (Spring 1982): 20–24. Web. 6 July 2015. Patterson, Edwin W. “Central High School.” The Centralian 1906. Kansas City: Standard, 1906. N. pag. Print. Patterson, Martha H. Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895–1915. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2005. Print. Quackenbos, G. P. Advanced Course of Rhetoric and Composition: A Series of Practical Suggestions. New York: Appleton, 1886. Print. Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies. National Education Association. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893. Print. Ross, David N. “School Spirit.” The Luminary. Nov. 1913: 3. Print. Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2000. Print. Schultz, Lucille M. The Young Composers: Composition’s Beginnings in Nineteenth-Century Schools. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. Print. Scott, Fred Newton, and Joseph Villiers Denney. Composition-Rhetoric, Designed for Use in Secondary Schools. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1897. Web. 27 July 2012.

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Scott, Fred Newton, and Joseph Villiers Denney. Elementary English Composition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1908. Print. Seventeenth Annual Report of the Kansas City Public Schools, Kansas City, Missouri, for the Year 1887–1888. Kansas City: Hudson, Kimberly, 1888. Print. Snyder, Thomas D., ed. 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. Washington, DC: US Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement Statistics, 1993. Print. Tanner, William M. Composition and Rhetoric. Boston: Ginn, 1922. Print. Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Education of the Kansas City Public Schools, Kansas City, MO, for the Year 1894–95. Kansas City: Weber, 1895. Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Public Schools of Kansas City, Missouri, 1895–1896. Kansas City: Lechtman, 1896. Print. Twenty-Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Education of the Kansas City Public Schools for the Year Ending June 30, 1900. Kansas City: n.d. Print. Ueda, Reed. Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print. Varnum, Robin. Fencing with Words: A History of Writing Instruction at Amherst College During the Era of Theodore Baird, 1938–1966. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996. Print. Worley, William. “Historic Lincoln [High] School in Kansas City.” KC Tribune 20 Feb. 2009. Web. 23 July 2009. http://www.kctribune.com.

chapter 2 “Raise Your Right Arm / And Pull on Your Tongue!” Reading Silence(s) at the Albuquerque Indian School

Whitney Myers I am a student of Albuquerque Indian School and I am in my 12th year . . . I am unhappy about decisions board members and principals make. We students have just been chased around too many times. I believe half the student body are adults now. Why is it a student is just pushed around like a little child? Is it because we are Indian students?

— u nhappy senior student, 1975

A

s a compositionist who works with student texts from the third-longest running, off-reservation boarding school in United States history (1881–  1982), I am also an accidental archivist, collecting the material for my project by reconstructing an archive destroyed by fire, flood, and toxic mold. The Albuquerque Indian School archive is now composed of fragments and pieces patched together during the last eight years through an unearthing of a wide variety of sources from both private and public archives. These fragments include student-published school newspapers, yearbooks, school creative writing journals, national creative writing journals, contemporary newspapers, U.S. government and Pueblo reports, scholarly journal discussions about Indian education, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) newsletters, and contemporary oral interviews. My position as compositionist and archivist is exciting and dynamic; I am continually challenged by the complex and contradictory texts I compile. As compositionists, we are experts at reading and responding to student texts. As historiographers, we are at home employing a creative imagining of interpretive stances. We are skilled readers of the primary texts of composition studies— student writing. Yet my experience working with this evolving archive reifies the 42

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need for continual explication of reconstructive feminist methodological strategies that emerge from such historiographic gaps. Yes, Aspasia still speaks to us in powerful ways about interpretive strategies that account for the fact that quite often, as feminist historiographers, we read from remnants in order to construct important, exciting, undermined, and undiscovered ancient histories. But the Albuquerque Indian School archive poses a fascinating dilemma: as relatively recent history, it is still incredibly incomplete. How do such rhetorical histories, their unlikely archival remnants, and the eclectic interpretive methodology they necessitate shed light on the writing classrooms, the curricula, and the values of diverse and overlooked secondary schools, thus moving histories beyond the dominant narratives of institutional and bureaucratic influence? My work with student writing at the Albuquerque Indian School composed during the 1960s and 1970s is aligned with the work of rhetoric scholars like Joyce Rain Anderson, Jessica Enoch, and Scott Lyons, scholars who seek to extend our view of what counts as “history.” Whereas numerous histories of off-reservation boarding schools have appeared (Adams, Cobb, Coleman, DeJong, Ellis, Hamley, Riney) and whereas each of those histories has cited English-language acquisition and instruction as one of the most important, effective, and destructive forces of the U.S. government’s assimilation project, our view into the off-reservation rhetoric classroom has been rather limited. As such, while scholarly audiences are becoming familiar with the boarding school system and its extraordinary abuses through the careful work of historians (Child, Coleman, Lomawaima, Spack), these histories generally frame the Indian student as language victim, a move ignoring the certainty that boarding school students, much like the “Unhappy Senior Student” quoted in the epigraph of this chapter, were and continue to be rhetorical agents quite able to resist, adapt to, and (re)create meaning. This alltoo-present victimization narrative underscores Malea Powell’s astute argument that research in rhetoric and composition does a “pretty good job of not doing a very good job of critically engaging with Native texts” (“Rhetorics” 397). The Albuquerque Indian School (AIS) is a productive place to initiate such analysis. Similar to other off-reservation boarding schools such as Carlisle Indian School, students from a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds populated AIS classrooms. While a valuing of language diversity, along with the preservation of home dialects and community languages, is explicitly present in mainstream composition conversations about writing during the time period of this project (see the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s 1974 position statement on “Students’ Right to Their Own Language”), given what the archive reveals, there was little emphasis on these values in the AIS writing classroom.

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Published boarding school histories present the acquisition of English as implicitly tied to the destruction and suppression of Native languages. In fact, the acquisition of English at boarding schools assumes the destruction of Native languages. As examples, numerous boarding school histories describe policies that encouraged language destruction: not allowing tribal members to room together, enacting physical punishment on students who spoke their home language, and explicitly enforcing English-only policies on campus. However, it is not clear how the AIS administration and students viewed bilingualism or language preservation and such evidence certainly does not appear in the collected archive. Similarly, mention of Native-language retention and Native-language learning in national conversations about indigenous education during this time period is rare, and the vast number of materials gathered in the AIS archive do not include references to language retention.1 This glaring absence is underscored in curricular materials emphasizing English acquisition (and thus, Native-language subtraction) as a language of access to a public. In fact, AIS students are encouraged to use English as a way of moving toward paradoxical goals: (1) to express their own Indianness, and (2) in doing so, become more adept at manipulating the English language (and thus, able to function as participants in mainstream society). This chapter addresses the limitations of our off-reservation boarding school and rhetoric histories and turns to archival remnants to illuminate how a reconstruction of the off-reservation boarding school writing classroom is possible through varied and scant materials, none of which might be termed the “usual” materials historians use to highlight curriculum emphases and values. While English-language instruction is continually emphasized in a large number of historical narratives and governmental policies, the writing teacher in me is interested in the following questions: If language instruction was that important to the mission of the off-reservation boarding school system, what did it look like? What practices were in place in writing classrooms? What strategies did writing teachers employ to engage and instruct their students? And, what can we learn from the writing artifacts students produced? First, I present a brief overview of the Albuquerque Indian School’s consistently shifting institutional history as a means of demonstrating how the success of off-reservation boarding schools was dependent upon Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and national governmental policies. Then, I move to a discussion of administrative emphasis on English instruction at AIS during the 1960s and 1970s through the lens of school yearbook quotations, photographs, and a school report. Next, artifacts from the classroom reveal surprising and creative teacher pedagogies and student work that challenge the narrative of decline the

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institutional history suggests. Finally, I align the Albuquerque Indian School archive with larger arguments regarding the importance of local histories and secondary institutions.

Institutional History Albuquerque Indian School became part of the off-reservation boarding school trend when New Mexico was still a territory and not yet part of the United States. Originally established in 1881 by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions under contract by the U.S. Department of the Interior, the forty-student school was located in a rented adobe hacienda in the small village of Duranes, New Mexico (“U.S. Territorial”). Two years later the school moved to its permanent location in the heart of Albuquerque and was first used primarily as the central point for Presbyterian missionary efforts among the Pueblos and surrounding tribes (Jojola “Narrative”). In 1886 the federal government took over the school, making it part of the federal, off-reservation boarding school system, where it became one of the longest-running boarding school institutions in the history of the United States (Szasz 10). By the 1950s the student population at AIS began to decline and state misappropriation of funds increased in sync with Termination policies and a fully enabled Johnson O’Malley (JOM) policy.2 Although the Albuquerque Indian School did not experience as many disciplinary problems as some off-reservation boarding schools across the nation, admissions policies put in place by the BIA during the 1950s began changing the face of the school, resulting in students with extreme behavioral, academic, social, and family problems (Riding-In 21–22). In 1962 the Santa Fe Indian School merged with AIS in Albuquerque while the Santa Fe site was taken over by the Institute of American Indian Arts. By 1975, 90 percent of AIS’s population had been expelled from another school in the area at least once, the school dropout rate reached a high of 49 percent, and daily class absences averaged 20 percent (23). These figures, along with marked increases in student drinking and fighting, resulted in a shift from the Albuquerque Indian School as a once-flourishing educational institute to a reform school for troubled Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache students (Jojola Come the Red Man). Many of the buildings on campus were condemned and the overall level of education reportedly reached rock bottom. In 1975 the All Indian Pueblo Council, Inc. (AIPC) decided to set its own reform agenda for AIS by pursuing the contracting of the Albuquerque Indian School campus. This move was a direct result of both the poor physical condition of the school and a prevailing belief that the federal government was no longer

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willing to keep the school afloat financially. An Education Committee composed of AIPC members reviewed the problems at the school and presented recommendations to the Pueblo governors. These recommendations consisted of three alternative solutions: (1) the closure of the school, (2) contract management of the school under Public Law 93–638 (The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act), or (3) a reliance and demand upon the Bureau to fix the problems at AIS. After multiple meetings, revisions, and rejections, on 30 June 1977, the contract was signed (Riding-In 23–28).3 The decision of the AIPC to contract the school made AIS the first school contracted under the newly enacted Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.4 One final move in 1981 transferred students from Albuquerque to Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe, where it remains today. As the AIS buildings crumbled and burned, the city of Albuquerque attempted to save what was left of the school by placing three buildings on the National Historic Register in 1987. Unfortunately, the designation was simply too late, and in 1989 the buildings were destroyed as an example of how to successfully raze older buildings. The closing of AIS can be linked to the larger state of federally funded Indian education in the United States during this time period. The decline of the Albuquerque Indian School went hand-in-hand with 1950s Termination policies because of the unwillingness of the federal government to support off-reservation boarding schools financially and the impact of Johnson O’Malley. At the height of the school’s popularity in the 1930s, student population grew to over 1,400 students, 40–60 buildings, and 200 staff members (Logan; Jojola Come the Red Man). By 1978, however, only 156 students remained. Thus, the physical deterioration of the Albuquerque Indian School can quite possibly serve as a metaphor for the history of Indian education in America.

Administrative Patches Similar to other boarding schools, the Albuquerque Indian School curriculum was rather straightforward and unchanging for many years. In the mornings students attended classes concentrated on the 3R’s, and in the afternoons they participated in vocational and extracurricular activities: band, military arts, Indian club, pageants, and athletics.5 While the written and reported histories of the final thirty years at AIS imply a dismal picture of academic performance and instructor turnover and readiness, remnants found in the archive present a different perspective of students, teachers, and school administration. Even in the midst of declining and challenging student populations, insufficient school funding, administrative shifts, and destructive national policies, a certain curricular coherence and

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insistence on educational innovation can be pieced together. The first example of such emphasis is mapped in three student-published school yearbooks and one educational-needs assessment report. These materials illustrate that instruction in reading, writing, and speaking English well was a major focus of the school and English-language instruction, from at least an administrative point of view, and was an important goal set for each student. The school yearbook, the Sandpainter, contains the initial traces of this emphasis. In the opening pages of the 1964 Sandpainter, Principal Samuel Rosenberg declares: “The students [at AIS] . . . are ambassadors of good will . . . they help to inform. TO DO THIS, STUDENTS MUST LEARN TO READ WELL, WRITE WELL, AND MOST IMPORTANT, TO TALK WELL, PARTICULARY IN ENGLISH, for English has been adopted for study and use as a vital second language in all the nations and Indian tribes of the world. . . . We must, therefore, be able to skillfully communicate in English. . . . Your position in the future depends upon it” (4, emphasis original). Rosenberg argues that English proficiency has a dual purpose for AIS students. First, English allows them to “inform.” Rosenberg does not tell these students who they should be informing about what, but his use of the word “ambassadors” can be read in two ways: students acting as ambassadors for their school and students as ambassadors for their tribes. In both instances, the students’ facility in English is helpful to them individually and communally. Second, reading, writing, and speaking in the English language is something that their futures depend upon; their graduation from the school places them into part of the worldwide economy where Rosenberg suggests English serves as a connecting tool among disparate groups of people. Also of note is Rosenberg’s use of the phrase “vital second language” (4). This phrase might indicate an acceptance on the part of the school’s administration that the off-reservation school no longer is in place primarily to assimilate students (replace their indigenous language with English, for example) but instead, prepare them to operate in both worlds. While he does not make explicit mention of this possibility, the trace still lingers and presents a distinct challenge to existing boarding school histories. Two years later, a blurb in the 1966 Sandpainter further emphasizes the importance the school placed on English-language education and its connection to future success. The yearbook states, “Indian young people of today need great knowledge of English language to communicate their thoughts and plans for the future. We need to read newspapers, magazines, and reference articles to understand the world around us” (“English-Literature Classes” 24). This excerpt denies understanding of the world unless the students participate in the reading of newspapers, magazines, and reference articles in English. While the

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sentence itself does not acknowledge any form of literacy except traditional English literacy (a troubling absence for any current rhetoric historian), the use of the pronouns “we” and “us” imply that students have accepted and perhaps even embraced Rosenberg’s declaration two years earlier—in fact, the pronouns situate the students as authors of the quote itself. Three years later the 1969 Sandpainter proclaims, “English Is Part of Our Life,” a quote surrounded by pictures of students working on research papers, taking notes, putting together a bulletin board, participating in a panel discussion, and creating “imaginary conversations” as creative writers (52). All of these rather diverse activities collected under the heading suggest that English-language instruction was not relegated simply to the English or writing classroom, but instead infiltrated every part of the students’ education at the Albuquerque Indian School and was dependent upon varied and active teacher pedagogies. Emphasis on English-language instruction remained strong even during and after the contracting of the school. The Pueblo People’s Educational Needs Assessment of the Albuquerque Indian School, a report compiled by the All Indian Pueblo Council prior to the contracting of the school, contains the results of eighty-one student surveys completed at an AIS morning assembly. Students were asked a variety of questions about topics ranging from the types of courses that should be added to the school program to recommendations for improving the student living situation on campus. While suggestions were quite varied—one student suggested “stop serving tasteless potatoes”—demand for curricular changes and concern for access to stronger reading and writing programs were quite evident among the suggestions compiled (Tonigan 26). In fact, thirty-four students requested “more reading and writing,” twenty-seven “more language instruction,” sixty-eight asked for improved study facilities, and forty-six requested a student newspaper (20–31). These requests perhaps underscore the success of the administration’s focus on student accomplishment postgraduation being linked directly to facility in reading, writing, and speaking English.

Pedagogical Echoes While the reasons for teaching English change (arguments being rhetorically situated), the curricular emphasis is stable over time. Thus, it only makes sense to ask, “If language instruction was that important to the mission of this offreservation boarding school system, what did it look like?” What practices were in place in writing classrooms? What strategies did writing instructors employ to engage and instruct their students? And, what can we learn from the writing artifacts the students produced?

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Conversations about indigenous language and language instruction during the 1960s and 1970s tracked in the Journal of American Indian Education6 and “English for American Indians: A Newsletter of the Office of Education Programs” 7 bring forward a multitude of important educational phrases related to writing: bilingual education, ESL, teacher training, grammatical instruction, and innate language competence. These publications frequently align with mainstream publications in composition studies through their emphasis on personal experience as a basis for creative expression and exploration of how culture affects our understanding of language (see Elbow’s 1973 Writing Without Teachers, Coles’s 1978 The Plural I: The Teaching of Writing, and CCCC position statement).8 There are quite clearly alliances between such disciplinary conversations; however, there are provocative tensions as well: a rejection of freewriting in the bilingual writing classroom and an embracing of current-traditional writing goals (handwriting, punctuation, margins, spelling, paragraph formation, unity, coherence, and organization). Moreover, the JAIE and English for American Indians rarely cite compositionists as contributing authors. Instead, linguistics, literature, reading, ESL, and bilingual specialists all appear in these forums to discuss language, language instruction, and writing. While the national conversation regarding writing and American Indian students is easily visible to a rhetoric historian, the minutiae of teacher reflections, daily lesson plans, curriculum surveys, and student papers from English classes at AIS are entirely absent from the collected archive and thus make a comparison between theory and practice quite challenging. However, the unexpected discovery of a textbook written by a traveling teacher of writing provides a means for “working backwards” into the AIS writing classroom content and pedagogy as well as a potential methodology for reading the remainders of student writing: the 1982 publication, Writing to Create Ourselves: New Approaches for Teachers, Students, and Writers by Terry Diener (T. D.) Allen. This text was the first place where I was able to listen to the voice of long-time AIS English instructor Ann Gulledge.9 It contains excerpts from the correspondence Allen shared with Gulledge, reflections on Gulledge’s classroom, and descriptions of various teaching practices Gulledge employed. Allen enters the national conversation about writing and Native students in the early 1960s as director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Creative Writing Project. A writer, editor, publisher, and teacher in the written arts studio at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, she was asked to travel to BIA high schools and train language arts teachers in writing and reading. In 1970, the BIA extended the Creative Writing Project to nineteen Bureau schools, and

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AIS was one of those early schools that benefited from Allen’s program, which she details in Writing to Create Ourselves. Allen describes the core of her method as “not writing but rewriting. Most teachers assume that high school students will not rewrite. Since I had never taught, I did not know what high school students will not do” (xvi). Allen’s lack of preconceptions about high school students as writers, and in particular Native high school students as writers, is perhaps an important piece of her teaching philosophy. And whereas Allen’s teaching practice with its explicit focus on revision directly links her pedagogy to the process movement gaining ground in composition, she claims an authority based entirely on her own impulses and experiences as a writer, never once mentioning connections to or interest in what is happening in writing classrooms across the country.10 As evidenced by her frequent mention of Gulledge and the presence of AIS student writing in Writing to Create Ourselves, Allen was quite familiar with the AIS writing classroom and spent much time on campus. She includes correspondence and reflection from Gulledge in her book and one particular assignment stands out because of its focus on genre and rhetorical context as well as its unique alignment to contemporary writing classrooms. Allen describes how three sections of Gulledge’s Language Arts classes (sixty-seven students) participated in a letter-writing project, an assignment prompted by Allen’s belief in the power of feedback to motivate students. What Allen appreciates about letters is that they elicit a response, something she argues is essential for new writers. Plus, Allen recognizes the practical nature of the letter-writing assignment as well, remarking that “it [writing letters] provides experience in the mechanics of preparing and mailing correspondence” (Allen 183). Gulledge described the project to Allen in a letter written as part of their correspondence, and Allen includes this correspondence in her text. It is worth citing Allen’s entire explanation of this assignment: We studied all kinds of letters for about a week—business, friendly, formal, informal, notes, and messages of every kind. For fun, we drew names in each class and wrote each other letters for valentines. I put my name in, too. We made one rule for valentine letters: Write good things about each other or what you like about your “name” person. We all had fun. Then I told the three groups about my idea of a letter-writing project to small towns with unusual names. I gave examples such as Nome, Alaska, which got its name from the surveyor’s map. He wrote “NAME?” because he didn’t know the name of the town. The printers left off the question mark and wrote

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“Nome” for the town. Other examples were used, but this one seemed to get enough interest to send the project off to a good start. Each student selected a name from alphabetical lists in the encyclopedias. (It was the first time I’d realized that we have no state beginning with B). Then we all learned to use the zip-code catalog. A sample of the form letter we composed and sent out follows: 907 Indian School Road, N.W. Albuquerque Indian School Albuquerque, NM 87107 Date The Postmaster Town State and Zip Dear Sir: Will you please tell me about your town? I like the name ________ and I hope you will tell me how the town got its unusual name, something about the town’s history, and news of present interest. Please ask several people to write to me because I enjoy reading about real places. I hope to hear from elderly people as well as boys and girls near my age. (Insert here a paragraph telling just enough about yourself to make your reader interested—the “bait your hook” idea.) A self-addressed, stamped envelope is enclosed for your convenience. I will appreciate hearing from you soon. Sincerely yours, Signature We also decided that we should “bait” the self-addressed, stamped return envelopes; we made the envelopes and then drew pictures in color on the backs. So far, we have letters from: Bullhead City, Arizona Ajo, Arizona Show Low, Arizona Coldwater, Michigan Hungry Horse, Montana

Whitney Myers

52 Eunice, New Mexico Tonopah, Nevada Dry Run, Pennsylvania Goodnight, Texas Muleshoe, Texas Marlboro, Vermont Goose Egg, Wyoming Egg Harbor, Wisconsin

We plan to make a large wall map showing names of towns and a scrapbook of all letters received. (183–84)

While there are many interesting components to this particular assignment, the three most important to a historian asking questions about course content and pedagogy are (1) the importance of rhetorical context; (2) instruction in genre conventions; and (3) the emphasis on practicality in constructing writing assignments. First, Gulledge’s assignment emphasizes rhetorical context in two manners. While students are writing the form letter (and in some ways, this form letter echoes the suggested sentence pattern assignments found in the English for American Indians newsletter), they are instructed to write an individual paragraph within the form that tells readers something to make them interested in the person writing to them, thus making readers more invested in the letter and more likely to respond. The significance of audience is further emphasized by the instructions to “bait” the envelope as well. The envelopes immediately stand out—they are made by the students and make use of color and illustration. Second, this assignment also emphasizes genre conventions. Gulledge notes that before writing begins, students spend a week in class studying a variety of letter forms so they become familiar with the genre. She then moves toward providing the students with a form letter that provides space for creativity, but also follows genre conventions in its presentation of both recipient and author addresses, formal and polite tone, block paragraph structure, and closing. From this assignment, students walk away with a firm understanding of appropriate tone, structure, and style in a formal letter. Last, this assignment emphasizes something important for writing instructors —practicality. Gulledge uses this assignment in a variety of ways. She begins giving students time to study the genre. She then moves toward more informal writing—Valentines for classmates. The next step includes the formal writing assignment to postmasters of different cities. The responses are used to talk about

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geography and the assignment concludes with a scrapbook preserving the feedback students received—the feedback that Allen deems is crucial for beginning writers.

Student Traces From a contemporary perspective, AIS exposes literacy agendas that are surprising. The archive suggests that poetry replaced the essay as the most commonly practiced writing genre. In Writing to Create Ourselves, Allen argues that poetry writing is an effective means of writing instruction. More interestingly, she finds the genre particularly suited to boarding school education, and this emphasis can be seen in the Arrow, a collection of prize-winning creative writing entries from Native students in nineteen Bureau schools participating in the BIA’s Creative Writing Project edited by Allen. Eventually, the Arrow would go on to publish the best work from each particular school involved in Allen’s project—six annual contest books in all. In the introduction to the first volume of the Arrow she writes, “Time for writing, within ongoing English classes, is limited. A brief poem often comes in a burst and can be completed in a fragment of time. Even the most disciplined author would find his time and attention fragmented under boarding-school conditions and schedules” (“How This Book Came About” n. pag.). Illustrating the interconnectedness of school writing genres to institutional conditions, poetry is frequently found in all AIS student publications: the Escape (the creative writing journal), the Thunderbird (the school newspaper), the Arrow, and even in the yearbooks. An example of student writing found in a creative writing journal sheds more light on writing practices in place at the school and student employment of those forms. From the perspective of a compositionist attuned to resistance in student work, the following example is particularly thought-provoking. The poem, “Nun Education,” appears in the 1976 edition of Escape, the creative writing journal published yearly at Albuquerque Indian School and inspired by AIS’s partnership with the BIA Creative Writing Project. While the title of the journal contains some rather interesting implications (writing as an escape from reality, school as an escape, etc.), I have been unable to discern why the journal possesses its particular name. Regardless, poetry is a familiar genre in the journal; this particular example showcases a partnership between audience awareness and resistance. “Nun Education” We had done something wrong And had to stay in the classroom

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54 during the P.E. hour. Some boys started to laugh and the mean old nun Grabbed one of my friends by the arm and threw him down. “Stand up!” she hollered. He stood. “Raise your right arm,” she screamed, “And pull on your tongue with your left hand!” He did. then the rest of us did the same. We stood for one whole hour. We felt like dead statues. I stood nine years of beatings and hollerings But got a lot of education. — Andrew Casiquito (Escape 34)

Like the Thunderbird, the Escape was popular among the AIS students. T. D. Allen used the “autographing parties” held at AIS when Escape issues were released to encourage student writing. It is unclear how wide the circulation of the Escape was; however, we can assert that the periodical circulated among the teachers, administrators, and students at school and their families. It is fairly certain that the type of teaching staff described by Casiquito above was a teaching staff that was never employed at AIS. A little history is in order. The Albuquerque Indian School began as a Presbyterian mission school (thus, no Catholic nuns); however, the type of off-reservation boarding school system described in the poem is one these students were most certainly familiar with. St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe (63 miles from Albuquerque) and St. Anthony Indian School in Zuni, New Mexico (131 miles from Albuquerque) were two such schools. And the harsh treatment described in the poem is something students were most certainly familiar with as well—if not from personal experience then by way of experiences and stories told by family members. Casiquito is quite possibly aware of his audience’s familiarity with the scene he describes in his poem. Thus he is able to construct what we compositionists might deem epideictic; he critiques the general off-reservation boarding school system of education before AIS teachers

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and peers without directly implicating AIS proper (thus implicitly separating AIS from the harsh critique of the poem). Of additional interest, Casiquito’s use of language might be read as a form of rhetorical resistance. The title, “Nun Education,” can be read as an ironic pun implying that the education described in the poem was in fact “none education,” in other words, an ineffective form of schooling. Casiquito’s first line, “We had done something wrong,” admits culpability, yet culpability so petty that by common sense it would be unremarkable and undeserving of punishment. As the poem continues, the characterization of the nun (representative of the educational system?) becomes increasingly violent and ill-tempered. She is described rather comically as grabbing and throwing a student down while hollering, screaming, and forcing the students to pull on their tongues (a vicious form of punishment on what might be identified as the physical instrument of language). Her aggressive manner is further underscored by the two times we hear her speak; both times Casiquito’s use of exclamation points intensifies her orders. As the poem draws to a close, readers see the students cooperating with the nun’s instructions. Casiquito writes, “We stood for one whole hour / We felt like dead statues,” a metaphor he develops in the next stanza when he says, “I stood nine years / of beatings and hollerings / But got a lot of education.” Through Casiquito’s repetition of the word “stood,” the poem might be read to imply that the education he received made him feel inactive, statuelike, and thus not human. If readers were asked to define education through Casiquito’s language, words such as “mean, grabbed, threw, hollered, screamed, pulled, dead, and beatings” would come to mind, thus overturning the traditional concept of education as beneficial.

Mapping the Terrain The state of the Albuquerque Indian School archive—recent history, yet still remarkably incomplete—challenges rhetoric historians in a variety of ways. First, it demands activity as a site of imaginative, speculative reconstruction and encourages historians to make evident their processes for working with, and through, archival spaces.11 Second, it raises questions about the importance we place on the local, regardless of whether the rhetorical activity occurs in 500 BCE or 1970. What accounts for the disarray and destruction of such a space? Do we cite the inherent marginalization of Native institutions? The at least doubly marginalized Native student? The negation or rejection of what counts as “history”? What can other voices across classrooms and administrations add to this snapshot of students and teachers (re)creating meaning, inciting activism, and

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encountering resistance in their writing classrooms? And finally, the administrative, pedagogical, and student traces found in the Albuquerque Indian School archive serve to support the larger argument that smaller, local archives challenge commonplaces about who students are, what histories are written, and what we do with the things we are taught. Here, a secondary school diminished in every way possible by national and natural forces—buildings quite literally burning and crumbling, students described as the “worst of the worse,” 12 overworked instructors—offers a new narrative about writing, American Indian students, and the important need to move beyond the dominant narratives of institutional and bureaucratic influence to explore new sites of rhetoric (re)construction. Such work evokes the words of Anishinabe literary critic Gerald Vizenor, who argues that “the English language has been the linear tongue of colonial discoveries, racial cruelties, invented names . . . and the unheard literature of dominance in tribal communities; at the same time, this mother tongue of paracolonialism has been a language of invincible imagination and liberation for many tribal people” (Manifest Manners 105). As the words of the “Unhappy Senior Student” from the epigraph of this chapter demonstrate, language education originally intended to colonize and confine refuses to remain rigidly fixed. The Albuquerque Indian School student texts extend Vizenor’s claim and demonstrate that the importance placed on English-language instruction (and consequently, a devaluing of Native-language retention) at off-reservation boarding schools cannot be read unilaterally as destructive and violent. While the violence of English-language acquisition is definitely present in histories of indigenous boarding schools, the AIS archive argues that a narrow reading of victimization negates the powerful voices we hear in student writing.

Notes I have decided not to regularize the grammatical features of my writing samples primarily because of the desire to display student work as it was published at the institutional level. Moreover, the writing samples included here were often student-selected, edited, and published. Interference at the sentence level might possibly undermine publisher intention and/or awareness (features that are of interest to composition scholars). 1. See, for example, the Journal of American Indian Education and English for American Indians: A Newsletter of the Office of Education Programs. 2. Passed by Congress in 1934 and amended in 1936, JOM policies were still

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in place during the time period of this project. In a 1979 article written for the Journal of American Indian Education, Donald K. Sharpes argues that “the original purpose [of JOM] was to confer upon the Secretary of the Interior the authority to contract with state-supported schools, colleges and universities for Indian education services” (n. pag.) He goes on to note that the legislation was intended to subsidize Native education so that Native children were able to attend public schools instead of tribal schools funded solely by the federal government (Sharpes “Federal Education for the American Indian”). Moreover, the years 1945–1961 mark a period in which several tribes were effectively terminated (that is, legally disbanded) by the federal government as a result of the passage of congressional resolutions and legislation. The desire to reduce and eliminate the federal budget allocated for Indian people is the argument often cited as the reasoning behind these policies. Termination policies affected education in that tribes were defined as “successful” if they indicated a willingness to withdraw from federal services. Educational programs, including contract and boarding schools, were included under the umbrella of federal services. As a result, many more Native students began attending public schools (Sharpes). 3. This process included extensive studies completed by Richard F. Tonigan and Associates, Ltd. (an education consulting firm based in Albuquerque), a rejected contract sent to the BIA, further revision of that contract, the hiring of the new AIS superintendent (Joseph Abeyta from Santa Clara), fundraising, and a split between AIPC and BIA faculty and staff. 4. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act was divided into two different titles. Title I allowed the federal government to contract with tribal governments for federal services, like Education (“Indian Self-Determination . . .”) and replaced many non-Indians with tribal peoples in basic policy-making decisions. Title II made amendments to existing Johnson O’Malley legislation. 5. Many scholars have detailed boarding school curriculum and schedules. These education histories provide important contextual and historical narratives regarding the boarding school experience and life at school. While not all of these texts build history within the context of Native voices, a large number of them do. See David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 and Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences; Brenda J. Child, Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940; and Sally Hyer, One House, One Voice, One Heart: Native American Education at the Santa Fe Indian School. 6. Founded in 1961 (simultaneous to the rise of composition studies and still

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active today), the Journal of American Indian Education publishes three issues annually and focuses its attention on educational questions affecting American Indian/ Alaska Natives, First Nations, Native Hawaiian, Maori, Indigenous Peoples of Latin America, and minority/subaltern groups. The journal seeks to stimulate conversation between researchers and practitioners with regard to educational questions and innovation in the classroom. This periodical is not referenced in composition’s literature, and this exclusion neglects to initiate a conversation between those involved in Native education and composition studies. 7. This publication grew out of a study directed by the Centre for Applied Linguistics that was based in BIA schools. Primarily, the newsletter was interested in the challenges Bureau teachers and students experienced related to English-language instruction. 8. Interestingly, AIS English instruction jumps ahead of contemporaneous composition conversations about writing through a focus on rhetorical context as it relates to style. 9. Gulledge, who worked as an English teacher at Albuquerque Indian School for close to twenty-five years, has proven to be one of the most challenging aspects of this project. While many people I interviewed remember her, or have heard about her, nobody has been able to recall what happened to her once she left the school; thus Allen’s text is the only place I have been able to “see” and “hear” the work of Gulledge in her AIS English classroom. 10. Although resonances between some of Allen’s statements and the National Writing Project are strong, I have no evidence from her writings that explicit connection between the two programs existed. One of the largest gaps the archive highlights concerns Allen, her colleague and consultant John Povey (professor of English at UCLA), and the literature describing the BIA’s Creative Writing Project. All three sources neglect discussion of any contemporaneous explorations of ESL, bilingual education, or composition pedagogical practice(s) in periodicals and educational communities. 11. This line of reasoning is in keeping with the methodology advocated by Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa S. Mastrangelo in their collection Working in the Archive: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. 12. Interview with Dr. Theodore Jojola.

Works Cited Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1995. Print.

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Allen, Terry Diener. “How This Book Came About.” Arrow. New York: Washington Square, 1969. Allen, Terry Diener. Writing to Create Ourselves: New Approaches for Teachers, Students, and Writers. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1982. Print. Casiquito, Andrew. “Nun Education.” The Escape 4.1 (1976). Print. Child, Brenda J. Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000. Print. Cobb, Amanda. Listening to Our Grandmothers’ Stories: The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females, 1852–1949. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000. Print. Coleman, Michael C. American Indian Children at School, 1850–1930. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1993. Print. Coles, William. The Plural I: The Teaching of Writing. New York: Holt, 1978. Print. DeJong, David. Promises of the Past: A History of Indian Education in the United States. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993. Print. Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. Print. “English Is Part of Our Life.” Sandpainter. 1969: 52. Print. “English-Literature Classes.” Sandpainter. 1966: 24. Print. Enoch, Jessica. Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865–1911. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Hamley, Jeffrey Louis. Cultural Genocide in the Classroom: A History of the Federal Boarding School Movement in American Indian Education, 1875–1928. Thesis. Harvard U, 1994. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1995. Print. Hyer, Sally. One House, One Voice, One Heart: Native American Education at the Santa Fe Indian School. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico P, 1990. Print. Jojola, Theodore. Come the Redman, Hear Them Marching: The Legacy of the Albuquerque Indian School. Video. Albuquerque, 2002. Jojola, Theodore. “Narrative, Draft One.” Email interview. 13 Mar. 2006. Jojola, Theodore. Personal interview. Albuquerque, New Mexico. 15 Sept. 2007. Logan, Paul. “Early Schools More Resepectful of Indian Culture Than in East.” Albuquerque Journal. 10 Apr. 2005. Web. 25 Feb. 2006. Lomawaima, K. Tsianina. They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1995. Print. Lyons, Scott. “Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from Writing?” College Composition and Communication 51.1 (2000): 447–68. Print. Powell, Malea. “Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians Use Writing.” College Composition and Communication 53.3 (2002): 396–434. Print. Ramsey, Alexis E., Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa Mastrangelo,

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eds. Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2010. Print. Riding-In, James. “The Contracting of the Albuquerque Indian School.” Indian Historian 11 (Dec. 1978): 20–29. Print. Riney, Scott. The Rapid City Indian School, 1898–1933. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1999. Print. Rosenberg, Samuel. “A Message to the Students.” Sandpainter. 1964: 4. Print. Sharpes, Donald K. “Federal Education for the American Indian.” Journal of American Indian Education 19.1 (1979): 19–22. Print. Spack, Ruth. America’s Second Tongue: American Indian Education and the Ownership of English, 1860–1900. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. “Students’ Right to Their Own Language.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. Special issue of College Composition and Communication 25.3 (Fall 1974): 1–32. Print. Szasz, Margaret. Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination, 1928– 1973. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1974. Print. Tonigan, Richard F., and Associates. Pueblo Peoples Educational Needs Assessment of the Albuquerque Indian School. Albuquerque: Tonigan, 1976. Print. “Unhappy Senior Student.” Thunderbird 14 Mar. 1975. Print. “U.S. Territorial Education, 1846–1912.” Albuquerque Tricentennial: An Illuminating Experience. 10 Mar. 2006. Web. 2 Feb. 2008. Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1999. Print.

chapter 3 Radical, Conservative, Extreme The Rhetorical Education of the Prince Edward County Free School Association, 1963–1964

Candace Epps-Robertson

But our job in the Free Schools is teaching—and teaching must be our way of demonstrating our convictions.

— Neil Sullivan, Bound for Freedom

W

 hen the Supreme Court delivered its ruling on Brown v. Board of Edu  cation on 17 May 1954, many African Americans rejoiced at what   was seen as a major accomplishment; however, equally determined white lawmakers and leaders in Southern states strategized “creative” ways to interpret or resist the mandate to end segregated schooling. Some white Southerners wrote scathing editorials and others suggested more radical moves, such as the abolishment of the Supreme Court or the removal of African Americans from the United States. While the approaches taken by segregationists differed, the objective was the same: integrated education was a threat to the white power structure that must be countered. Prince Edward County, Virginia was the site of one of the most volatile examples of resistance to integration. The story of Prince Edward County constitutes an important alternative history of African American reaction to white Southern attempts to thwart integration. In reaction to Brown, Prince Edward refused to fund integrated schools, resulting in the closure of public schools from 1959 until 1964, an action that required both the African American and white communities to create alternative school options. The decision of Prince Edward County to close its public schools and resist integration in 1963 elicited Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s regretful observation: “The only places

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on earth not to provide free public education are Communist China, North Vietnam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras—and Prince Edward County, Virginia” (Heinemann). Kennedy’s observation astutely put the school closures into a global context and linked this small rural county in the United States with repressive regimes around the world. Immediately following the school closures in Prince Edward County, the African American community responded through tutoring courses, homeschooling, and grassroots networks that placed children in homes outside the community to continue their education. The Prince Edward County Free School Association was established in August 1963 to provide educational access for black and white students in kindergarten through twelfth grade.1 The Free School Association, which operated until June 1964, was created through the cooperative efforts of the Kennedy administration, the African American community of Prince Edward County, and their allies. The charge of the Free School Association was to counter the obstacles engendered by the white community’s movement known as “Massive Resistance” and to prepare citizens to actively participate in a complex world. The school’s mission statement most accurately reflected these powerful intentions: “Literacy presumes more than the teaching of the 3 R’s. It presumes training to think and observe carefully, and the effort to formulate answers that are important to our civilization. Content must influence students to think clearly, so as to be able to sift the truths from the untruths when scrutinizing our democratic processes as well as the governmental processes of other world peoples” (Sullivan, “Philosophy” 3). The Free School’s mission reflected a desire to encourage students to become critically aware and engaged citizens. The school’s mission would materialize through a rhetorical education dedicated to equipping students with tools for community engagement while honoring their home communities. While the school served students aged six to twenty-three in a lower and upper unit, my focus is on the upper unit, the high school known as Moton High.2 Recoveries of rhetorical education that served groups excluded by traditional access to education—African Americans, the poor and working class, women, and a variety of immigrant groups—challenge our conceptions about what pedagogies designed for marginalized groups can look like (Enoch; Gold; Kates; and Logan). The excavations of these classrooms have demonstrated the ways in which rhetorical education was often used to nurture liberatory aims in students. These examples have also demonstrated that while the commitments to social justice may be similar, the methods are inextricably and rightfully tied to the needs of the particular community they serve—and the Prince Edward County Free School was no exception.

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The language arts curriculum of Moton can best be described as an emancipatory approach to the teaching of reading and writing. The curriculum was grounded in a traditional skills-based approach, but was steadfast in its commitment that students would use these skills to engage with the discourses around them.3 The blend of skills and drills as a necessary component to developing critically engaged citizens is similar to the type of emancipatory composition that Bradford Stull describes in Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: Du Bois, King, Malcolm X, and Emancipatory Composition (1999). Stull argues for an understanding of composition instruction as being both conservative and radical. He writes that such a pedagogy “seeks to set free the captives and give sight to the blind, it roots itself in the foundational theological and political language of the American experience. It is radically theopolitical on the other hand, because as it does so it calls into question this language and thus the American experience itself. Hence, it is at once conservative and extreme” (3). Stull’s concept is an extension of Patricia Bizzell’s definition of emancipatory composition, which she characterizes as “speakers and writers who are native to one of the nondominant American cultures but who have also set themselves to master the dominant culture, in order to build rhetorical bridges to the members of this culture and effect social change” (qtd. in Stull 3). Examining the work of Malcolm X, King, and Du Bois, Stull argues for them as exemplars of emancipatory composition. They used the language of their oppressors against them in quests for social justice. Free School teachers, as the epigraph from the school’s superintendent suggests, sought to make the work of the classroom a tool in the struggle for equality. For this particular group, that meant training students in the language and rhetorical strategies of those in power. To understand how the Free School’s instruction and attention to skill building can be interpreted as anything other than a replication of oppressive power structures, we must give careful attention to the historical and cultural context in which this school developed.

Massive Resistance: The South’s Manifesto to the World Virginia set the precedent for the movement that would come to be known as Massive Resistance. Staunch segregationists like Senator Harry Flood Byrd publicly claimed that the Court’s decision “will bring implications and dangers of the greatest consequences” (Smith 84–85) in an attempt to rally emotions and encourage many of Virginia’s lawmakers and citizens to work at all costs to maintain segregation. By March 1956, the Southern Manifesto, introduced to Congress by Virginia’s own Howard Worth Smith, was described as part of the “massive resistance” to the Supreme Court’s integration decree. Outlining the South’s refusal to

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heed to the Court’s ruling, it came to symbolize the segregation movement and served as a model for other Southern states. Virginia’s Massive Resistance package would lead to some 13,000 students (both African American and white) being locked out in different parts of the state during the 1958–1959 school year. The statewide approach to Massive Resistance slowed a year later with the election of a new governor and interference from rulings in the federal courts. In January 1959, Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled the closures unconstitutional and the schools were reopened after four months. These events, however, would provide fertile ground for the growth of Prince Edward County’s resistance. Even with Massive Resistance officially over in most of Virginia, Prince Edward County did not yield. Unlike whites in larger localities, those in Prince Edward County believed they had enough support to create alternative educational opportunities. Anticipating forced integration, the local school board began allotting funds for schools on a month-to-month basis, a practice started in 1955 by a school board expecting integration. On 2 June 1959, Prince Edward County’s school board voted to close all public schools. The board reasoned: “The action taken today has been determined upon only after the most careful and deliberate study over the long period of years since the schools in this county were first brought under the force of federal court decree. It is with the most profound regret that we have been compelled to take this action and it is the fervent hope of this board that we may in due time be able to resume the operation of public schools in this county upon a basis acceptable to all the people of the county” (Smith 151). It would take five years for an “acceptable basis” to be reached. Having long feared integration, whites in Prince Edward County began to discuss a contingency plan shortly after the Brown ruling in 1954. A private segregated academy, The Prince Edward Foundation, was established with a mix of private funds and tuition grants from the state government. The Foundation prepared to start classes for its students in September 1959. The African American community quickly began to galvanize support, create infrastructure, and plan to assist its children. Primarily under the leadership of the Reverend L. Francis Griffin, a noted civil rights leader and well-respected minister of the First Baptist Church in Farmville, members of the African American community of Prince Edward County began to make plans for what they hoped would be a temporary educational program. The Prince Edward County Christian Association (PECCA), composed of local African American churches, established sites in church basements, Mason Halls, and any free space that would house them, to serve as sites for “training centers.” These programs were to provide temporary tutorial services to students in math

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and reading. PECCA made clear that it did not intend sites to become schools because it feared the white community would perceive this as settling for segregation. The American Friends Service Committee provided assistance by placing students in homes in the North to continue their education. Amid continuous stalemates from judges and court orders, grassroots efforts at providing African American students with an education continued until 1963. Having inherited the Prince Edward crisis in 1961, President John F. Kennedy was advised that something needed to be done. He was politely reminded of the need for action when a petition signed by 650 African American parents from Prince Edward County reached his desk. The petition, circulated by Griffin, “called on Kennedy to sponsor a survey of the size of the educational problem in the county and to back a program designed to help the children prepare for the reopening of the schools” (Smith 237). Motivated to respond by fear that Prince Edward’s method of resistance would spread through the South, but bound by the lack of federal precedent, President Kennedy carefully crafted an intervention (Lee 20). The concept for the Free School Association began with research from Michigan State University commissioned by Burke Marshall, the Justice Department’s civil rights specialist, and William Vanden Heuval, president of the International Rescue Committee (Smith 237). With research collected and examined, the group called for a school system that would consist of “an integrated faculty, small classroom units, un-graded instruction, an emphasis on special education and pupil services, and periodic testing” (Lee 25). Kennedy’s administration secured the support of Virginia’s governor and prominent Prince Edward citizens such as Griffin and members of the NAACP to put the school’s creation in motion. The school’s budget would rely on funding from private benefactors and citizen groups. An agreement to lease four school buildings in Farmville provided the school physical space. The Prince Edward Free School began moving from concept to reality within less than a month. Understanding the need to place power and development in the hands of locals, the board of trustees was composed of former Virginia governor Colgate W. Darden, president of Washington and Lee University; Dr. Fred B. Cole, president of Virginia State University; Dr. Robert P. Daniel, president of Virginia Union University; Dr. Thomas Henderson, president of St. Paul’s College; and Dr. F. D. G. Ribble, former dean of the University of Virginia’s Law School. The board of trustees was integrated (Cole, Daniel, and Henderson were African American) and had a twofold objective: to demonstrate the importance of integration and to offer a balance of perspectives in this endeavor. Dr. Neil Sullivan, an educator and school administrator from New York,

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was selected to be superintendent by the board. The Free School Association would be a temporary response to the resistance of the county and an opportunity to provide the children with educational opportunities they had been denied.

The Prince Edward County Free School Association The creation of an educational system for children and young adults who had gone four years without one was the primary concern, especially with less than a month to establish the school. The general organization of the school was based on the understanding that the need for flexibility would be paramount to the success of the students. Under a nongraded system, students were spread among both units, grouped first by age and then by ability. Moton High was established for students aged sixteen through twenty-three. The students in the high school differed from traditional high school students not only in age and ability, but also in experience. Many older students had gone to work, left the area, or started families. Moton faculty and administrators crafted a curriculum with a variety of students in mind. Administrators and teachers decided that literacy would be the primary focus and set out to develop objectives that would support students at all levels to realize their place as citizens, despite racist ideologies that said otherwise. To piece together the ways in which the Free School carried out its mission to teach a critical literacy, I examine several primary documents from the Free School archive: the schoolwide and high school handbooks, curricular bulletins, an application for state accreditation, textbook orders and descriptions, and classroom evaluations composed by teachers. While the Free School archive, located at Virginia State University, consists of a variety of artifacts that document the school’s short existence—correspondence, minutes, teacher files, curricular agendas, testing scores, and financial records—unfortunately, there are no examples of student work. While I realize that each of these documents had an intended purpose and audience and in no way can definitively give us a direct picture of the rhetorical education, I still argue for the importance of working with these texts. As other scholars have suggested, dealing with remnants should not make us abandon our archival work altogether (Swearingen 23). For this reason, I give close attention to the available pieces.

Policy and Procedure: Building a Foundation for Emancipatory Instruction The development of the Free School centered on beliefs about the type of education appropriate for students who had been largely without access to public

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school since 1959. This discussion must also be placed within a larger debate on the most appropriate type of education for African Americans that began in the late nineteenth century and centered on W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Both of these educators were dedicated to advancing African Americans in the face of systematic discrimination; however, their perspectives were grounded in their day-to-day reality of being African American. Washington favored industrial education, based upon his experience as a black person in the South, where the threat of violence from whites was a constant and people could rely only on their own industry and skills for survival (Meier 98). He also believed that if African Americans proved themselves to be productive, assumptions about African American inferiority could be defeated. Du Bois was skeptical that industrial education could assist African Americans in moving from low status in society and might actually exacerbate the problem. He advocated an education complete with arts and sciences so that students could become teachers and professionals to help other African Americans (Meier 192). While Du Bois and others like William Monroe Trotter and Ida B. Wells criticized Washington for trying to appease whites, both Du Bois and Washington believed in excellence, self-respect, and recognition of blacks as full citizens—regardless of method. The Free School’s curriculum can be seen as a mixture of both sides of this long-running debate. The idea of active citizenship leans toward Du Bois’s strategy. The conservative skills-based approach might also be viewed in light of the industrial skills that Washington favored. More importantly, education, regardless of the hypothetical outcome, is a revolutionary act because it increases the capacity for individuals to understand and comprehend the discourses that surround them, and thus to assume and exercise agency. The Free School was part of this continuum. To implement their educational philosophy and provide guidance for how courses would be organized, administrators developed a schoolwide handbook that listed policies and procedures central to running any high school. Instructors were advised about everything from their responsibilities to the students and school to managing the bus line at dismissal. The most important handbook item for this analysis is the attention given to preparation for citizenship through rhetorical instruction. The description of the schoolwide curriculum begins with a call to promote loyalty to America’s democracy: “Content should develop an interest in and understanding of basic American culture along with technological advancements which have affected our way of life. Students should learn that there are obligations connected with our various freedoms if our democracy is to be preserved and perpetuated” (Sullivan, “Handbook” 2). Historically, the primary purpose of public schooling was to help train children to be citizens. That a

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school would make this its mission is not necessarily unique; however, the fact that the citizenship of African Americans was contested in Prince Edward County begs us to direct our attention to the methods it employed to do so. A foundation of respect and an awareness of the commitment to citizenship despite Prince Edward’s stifling climate would need to be addressed through the objectives. An awareness of the complexity of dealing with older students—many of whom were adults—explains the consistent mention of “self ” development that occurs in the high school philosophy statement. The curriculum and teachers placed heavy emphasis on reading, writing, and language arts as necessary for participation in the workforce. No curriculum would be useful for the students if it did not take into account their own experiences. This is why the philosophy did not place an emphasis on testing, but instead on the development of the self: “We believe in the development of ‘self.’” To achieve this goal, community involvement was key: “By nurturing and encouraging ‘self ’ development, we strive to create and maintain a climate of ‘mutual respect’ among students, parents, the administration, and faculty which should produce strong individuals who can meet the challenges of an ever-changing and interdependent world” (Cooley, “Moton Philosophy”). Teachers and administrators knew that inculcating selfrespect was necessary for these students to be successful. Similarly, the school’s statement of philosophy reflects a call for the teachers and administrators to be true representatives of democracy: “The administration, faculty and staff of Robert R. Moton High School of the Prince Edward Free School Association, as vicars of the Democratic Tradition, propose to set forth certain principles of philosophy upon which our program is to be maintained” (Cooley, “Moton Philosophy”). This was not an empty statement; the philosophy highlights the importance of creating a space where respect for students, teachers, parents, and administration could be fostered. There was recognition on the part of teachers and administrators that any curriculum would need to make explicit respect for the students who daily faced disrespect in the broader white community. To claim their role as vicars signaled a desire for a new type of citizen leader to emerge. The schoolwide handbook continues with a list of seven objectives of education: to acquire skills to participate in economic life; understand the duties and rights of citizens and know how to perform them; value the importance of family; comprehend science and its importance; develop and appreciate art, music, and nature; use time wisely; and be able to express themselves clearly and read and listen with understanding. Several of the objectives are key in helping us understand the parameters that helped to set the foundation for writing instruction.

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One objective outlined the intent: “To develop respect for and appreciation of the community in which we live. Content should establish and reinforce an understanding of our historical background and growth. Local resources and resource persons within the community should be fully utilized” (Sullivan, “Handbook” 3). While this objective may appear to promote loyalty to a community that did not reciprocate the respect, it needs to be examined more closely and put into context with the lived realties of Prince Edward County in 1963. This objective was of particular importance because African Americans had limited access to public spaces because of segregation and were often demonized and ridiculed in the public sphere. Teachers were encouraged to incorporate lessons on national African American history, and more explicitly, contributions to Prince Edward by African Americans. Instructors invited guest speakers ranging from locals in the community to people of national prominence: Virginia’s former governor Colgate Darden; Bobby Mitchell, a player for the Washington Redskins; and Robert F. Kennedy (Sullivan, Bound for Freedom 196–99). Field trips gave Moton students the ability to venture outside of Prince Edward County. There were visits to the United Nations and the home of Jackie Robinson in New York, as well as the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. The speakers and trips helped students learn about their history. Allowing classroom content to come from multiple spaces gave students exposure to critical perspectives, different ideas, and a multitude of rhetorical approaches that challenged and resisted the racist rhetoric that permeated Prince Edward. To help students respond to arguments about race that imbued society, one of the objectives stated: “Content should promote mental health to the extent that fear, propaganda, and prejudice will find no base in which to propagate” (Sullivan, “Handbook” 3). To help students discern propaganda from truth, the Free School was committed to teaching students “to think and observe carefully, and the effort to formulate answers that are important to our civilization. Content must influence students to think clearly, so as to be able to sift the truths from the untruths when scrutinizing our democratic processes as well as the governmental processes of other world peoples” (Sullivan, “Philosophy” 3). One might anticipate that this objective would lead to similar pedagogical practices taken by the Black Panther schools or Freedom Schools in the South; however, Prince Edward’s Free School would take a different approach. Administrators and teachers of the Free School believed that to provide students with a traditional approach to the teaching of writing and reading would give them the skills necessary for civic engagement in their communities. That approach is similar to the one that David Gold describes in his examination of

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the rhetorical education of African American students at Wiley University in Marshall, Texas, during the early twentieth century. Gold examines the classroom of Melvin Tolson, a poet, debate coach, and professor, arguing that Tolson’s complex blend of classical, current-traditional rhetoric, and African American rhetoric was a combination that worked well for his students. Gold’s analysis challenges the notion that a current-traditional model of instruction has no benefit and only reestablishes hegemonic ideals and hierarchies: “By focusing on the experiences of students at elite white liberal arts colleges—or even large, public research institutions—we have paid too little attention to how students in other environments might have welcomed instruction in speaking and writing that gave them access to the language of power” (17). Like Tolson, the Free School administrators and teachers envisioned that their students needed this type of traditional instruction after four years of being locked out of school. Offering a “real” high school experience was a radical act in a place so driven by fear of integration that the community closed all schools and denied thousands of children and young adults—both African American and white—an education. The curriculum for the high school was intended to match the requirements for accredited high schools in Virginia, thus allowing students to receive recognized degrees that would be accepted at colleges and universities while dispelling myths about African American intelligence. Moton’s principal, James B. Cooley, worked with Sullivan to complete the state accreditation report. Securing accreditation would allow the school’s graduates to receive diplomas sanctioned by the state and meant that Moton was recognized as a real school. The school’s accreditation report required that the school have a philosophy and mission statement, dedicated library space with a trained staff, licensed teachers, and administrators with some graduate-school training. The report also listed textbooks required by the state’s objectives. The textbook lists from the archive included a variety of traditional English and grammar instruction books: Building Better English: All Around America; Building Better English: Good Times Through L.; Building Better English: Exploring Life Through I.; Building Better English: The U.S. in Literature; and Building Better English: England in Literature. These books, similar to what might have been found in other high schools during the time period, suggest a Eurocentric perspective, not unlike most other high schools during this time. Again, the traditional focus must be read within the context of the school. Learning the language of the oppressor does not always mean replication of the same power dynamics (Bacon and McClish). In Prince Edward, part of what made the traditional approach successful was that it was grounded in recognition of the students’ home communities. In one

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curriculum memo circulated around the school, Ms. Willie Mae Watson, director of the lower unit curriculum, suggested the addition of African American authors such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar and James Baldwin. Teachers were also encouraged to supplement reading materials with contemporary magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers to allow for a plethora of voices and views (Watson).

A Prescription for Action Moton’s handbook encouraged teachers to follow a three-phase plan for their lessons. The first phase, “Orientation,” was intended “to stimulate interest and develop readiness for a school learning situation, and for readjustment in grouping” (Cooley, “Moton Handbook”). This phase gave teachers the opportunity to reassess the students’ progress and make notes about who might need to be moved to another class. The second phase, “Basic Skills,” was described as “instruction [that] should be adjusted to ability levels of students with special emphasis on fundamental skills, health, study skills, and habits, school and social adjustment, until students are brought up to their normal grade level for their ages” (Cooley, “Moton Handbook”). This phase would look different in each class, but was meant to provide students with the minimum ability needed for that particular course, again as a way to move students through classes as quickly as possible so that they might be able to cover as much ground as possible in a year. The third phase, “Regular,” was intended to prepare students to progress at their own pace, allowing them to cover as much as possible: “Students should be grouped according to ability and placed in regular classes in which they follow the Virginia curriculum guides for their grade levels” (Cooley, “Moton Handbook”). These levels and phases were meant to maximize instructional time and allow students agency and control to move up as quickly as possible in a variety of subjects. A teaching bulletin from Superintendent Sullivan, dated 20 November 1963, provides some of the clearest descriptions of what work was valued in the writing classroom and helps us to glean what the classroom experience may have been like for students. Sullivan describes the ways in which teachers might achieve “better results in oral and written language” (“Bulletin” Nov. 20, 4). He begins by highlighting the importance of students understanding why they are doing the work assigned: “Make certain that every pupil understands clearly the purpose of every oral and written language assignment. In other words, he must know why he is doing a given task” (“Bulletin” 20 Nov. 4). This was especially important for the older students, many of whom had already been working and had real world experience—they were not going to be satisfied with worksheets

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or busy work. Teachers were warned against unnecessary testing and evaluation that would further isolate students or make them uncomfortable. Sullivan also encouraged student-led assessment: “Give pupils simple criteria for evaluating their work. Criteria for evaluation of oral language included whether or not the speaker’s topic was interesting or important, if the language was appropriate for the audience and engaged them, whether complete sentences were used and good vocabulary employed” (“Bulletin” 20 Nov. 4). Again, it is important to place these practices in the context of Prince Edward in 1963. In the African American community it was not unheard of for African Americans to find themselves in jail for speaking too directly to whites or for not stepping off the sidewalk for whites to pass by (Brown). These unwritten codes help to demonstrate how a skills-driven approach with attention to appropriate language, good vocabulary, complete sentences, and speaking clearly with eyes on the audience could encourage a stance among students that would inspire civic participation. With regard to written-language activities, Sullivan encouraged teachers to see the similarities between oral and written language: “Written language activities make many of the same demands found in oral language. For example, a child must have something to say and strong motivation for saying it if it is to be done well” (Sullivan, “Bulletin #20”). To contemporary writing instructors, the connection between oral and written work may not seem particularly important; however, the recognition of the interconnectedness between the two shows one way in which teachers were able to tap into the African American rhetorical tradition, a tradition that places a great deal of value on the oral tradition (Anokye 230). Sullivan wanted teachers to value the ideas that students wanted to write about and to allow them opportunities to engage with a variety of different genres. To encourage students to pursue these objectives, he lists summaries, records, story writing, biography, and diaries as possible genres, and encourages revision through proofreading strategies that model a very current-traditional approach, with attention to grammar, mechanics, and good vocabulary. Despite the focus on instruction in grammar and mechanics, Sullivan stresses the importance of not letting rules dampen the creative process: “Never stress the mechanics of writing at the expense of ideas and enthusiasm for writing. Undue emphasis on form crushes the imagination and kills originality. Correct form will come when pupils are taught the mechanics of writing and are encouraged to proofread everything they write” (Sullivan, “Handbook” 6). Once more, this speaks to the curriculum, which while traditional in its approach was not devoid of attention to the student.

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Broadening the Boundaries of the Writing Classroom Asking students to think, write, and respond were not activities limited to the writing classroom. Moton faculty were reminded of the importance of the homeroom period as a time for fruitful work: “This thirty five minute period is designated to allow additional time for guidance. More specifically it is to provide an opportunity for the majority of teachers to share the responsibility for guidance and the implementation of this program” (Cooley, “Moton Handbook”). There were a variety of activities that took place during this period. On Wednesdays, students attended assemblies that often included short films about Africa, African American history, or U.S. government. Teachers were also encouraged to listen to student leaders so that they might be able to organize activities that students were most interested in, again enabling students to be recognized and respected. This period would also be used for special speakers and panel discussions as well as student debates and discussions. Moton students participated in the student government association, school newspaper, and a voter registration drive (Sullivan, Bound 203–4). The success of Moton’s curriculum lay in its ability to not stifle student participation and in its support for students to interact in a variety of discourse situations.

“Be conservative. Be extreme. Be radical.” The students of Prince Edward were denied formal education for four years. For these students, access to the language of power, the very language used to construct the obstacles placed in their path, was radical. Paulo Freire warns against too readily dismissing teaching the oppressor’s tongue: “The liberating teacher teaches standard usage in order for students to survive while discussing with them all the ideological ingredients of this unhappy task” (qtd. in Shor 71). African Americans in Prince Edward County did not need to be schooled in the ways of white supremacy or dominance—they lived it daily. They knew how language was used to construct their realities. Instead, they wanted an opportunity to have what was denied them—what whites felt was too dangerous—an opportunity to learn the language being used to oppress them so that they might, as Stull says: “Be conservative. Be extreme. Be radical” (125). Educating was radical in Prince Edward in 1963. The traditional teaching practices and conservative curriculum were intended to equip students with the ability to participate in multiple discourse communities. Equally extreme was the practice of giving these students an education in a county that challenged their status as citizens. We cannot know exactly how the work of the Free Schools was ultimately

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received and enacted by the students. As is the case with many archives, student work was often not saved for posterity. It is possible, however, to see the contemporary manifestations of civic engagement from former Free School students. For example, the alumni—Armstead Reid is current vice-mayor of Farmville (the only town within Prince Edward County); Mickie Carrington is involved in community efforts to support the Moton Museum; Reverend Edmond Berryman frequently speaks in courses taught on African American history—demonstrate an ongoing legacy of Free School students as agents for change. These people may not be known nationally, but for those of us who are part of the Prince Edward community and are descendants of students who were locked out of education, they are our living legacies. While their work cannot be directly tied to the Free School, it is significant that they are committed to civic projects. In an interview, Reid recounted his days working with those who were active in the African American community’s efforts for equitable education, such as Rev. Griffin. What first motivated him was his home community: “They encouraged me to serve.” The Free School was a reflection of many of the commitments already found in the African American community. The level of engagement envisioned for these students has been realized in the work and spirit of former students. Their tenacity is a testimony to the resolve and resilience of African Americans in their quest for equitable and just education.

Notes 1. The Free School was open to both African American and white students. Enrollment records show that of nearly 1,500 students, only eight were white. For more on the school’s integrated population see Jill Olgine Titus, Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia (2011). 2. The high school was named after the area’s only black high school, Robert Russa Moton High. This school was also the site of the 1951 walkout led by sixteen-year-old Barbara Rose Johns in protest against unequal education. The NAACP would become involved and the subsequent case, Davis v. Prince Edward County, would become one of the five cases folded into Brown v. Board of Education. 3. The terms rhetoric or rhetorical education do not appear in any of the Free School documents; however, I am using Susan Kates’s definition of rhetoric, which includes “education in speaking, reading, and writing” (2) to describe the English/Language Arts curriculum of the upper school.

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Works Cited Anokye, A. K. “A Case for Orality in the Classroom.” Clearing House 70.5 (1997): 229–31. Print. Bacon, Jacqueline, and Glen McClish. “Reinventing the Master’s Tools: NineteenthCentury African American Literacy Societies of Philadelphia and Rhetorical Education.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30.4 (Fall 2000): 19–47. Brown, Brenda. Personal interview. 5 June 2012. Cooley, James B. “Moton High School Philosophy.” August 1963. Prince Edward County Virginia Free School Association. Box 33, Folder 12. N.d. Virginia State University Special Collections, Virginia. Print. Cooley, James B. “Prince Edward County Free School Association Robert R. Moton High School Handbook.” Aug. 1963. Prince Edward County Virginia Free School Association. Box 33, Folder 12. N.d. Virginia State University Special Collections, Virginia. Print. Enoch, Jessica. Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865–1911. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Gold, David. Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction 1873– 1947. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Heinemann, Ronald. “Moton School Strike and Prince Edward County School Closings.”   Encyclopedia  of   Virginia,   http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Moton _School_Strike and Prince Edward County School Closings. 26 Feb. 2012. Hicks, Terence, and Abul Pitre, eds. The Educational Lockout of African Americans in Prince Edward County, Virginia (1959–1964). Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2010. Print. Kates, Susan. Activist Rhetorics and American Higher Education, 1885–1937. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2001. Print. Lee, Brian. “We Will Move: the Kennedy Administration and Restoring Public Education to Prince Edward County, Virginia.” The Educational Lockout of African Americans in Prince Edward County, Virginia (1959–1964). Hicks and Pitre 19–32. Print. Logan, Shirley Wilson. Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in NineteenthCentury Black America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880–1995. Ann Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P, 1969. Reid, Armstead. Personal interview. 25 Sept. 2012. Shor, Ira. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1986. Print.

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Smith, Bob. They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951–1964. Farmville, VA: Martha E. Forrester Council of Women, 1996. Print. Stull, Bradford. Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: DuBois, King, Malcolm X, and Emancipatory Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. Print. Sullivan, Neil. Bound for Freedom: An Educator’s Adventures in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Boston: Little, 1965. Print. Sullivan, Neil. “Bulletin #20” 20 Nov. 1963. Prince Edward County Virginia Free School Association. Box 19, Folder 13. Virginia State University Special Collections, Virginia. Print. Sullivan, Neil. “Prince Edward County Free School Association Handbook.” Prince Edward County Virginia Free School Association. Box 18, Folder 1. N.d. Virginia State University Special Collections, Virginia. Print. Sullivan, Neil. “Prince Edward County Free School Association Robert R. Moton High School, Statement of Philosophy.” Prince Edward County Virginia Free School Association. Box 18, Folder 1. N.d. Virginia State University Special Collections, Virginia. Print. Swearingen, Jan. “The Politics of Historiography.” Octalog. Rhetoric Review 7.1 (Autumn 1988): 5–49. Print. Titus, Jill Olgine. Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2011. Print. Watson, Willie Mae. “Memo to English Faculty.” Prince Edward County Virginia Free School Association. Box 34, Folder 11. N.d. Virginia State University Special Collections, Virginia. Print.

chapter 4 “These Parts of People Escaping on Paper” Reading Our Educational Past Through the High School Diary of Pat Huyett, 1966–1969

Jane Greer

I

n the summer of 1966, Pat Huyett, a fifteen-year-old girl in Shawnee, Kan sas, was preparing for her first year of high school. With a keen eye and  energetic pen, she began what would become a 502-page, loose-leaf diary that chronicles her experiences over the next three years as a student at Shawnee Mission North High School in suburban Kansas City. In addition to writing about her friends and family, budding romances, and the details of her daily life, she devoted considerable attention to her experiences in school. She rails against “horrible” English classes in which she takes tests on the symbolic meaning in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories and is irrepressibly enthusiastic when her psychology teacher encourages her to write a research paper on social class at her high school. She is confident that her English teacher will applaud her essay, “Rain: A Personal Impression,” and she nervously submits a short story dealing with abortion to the school literary magazine. She laments having to study the Cavalier poets in school, but revels in reading on her own, using her diary to celebrate her textual encounters with a wide range of authors, including J. D. Salinger, Fyodor Dostoevsky, James Baldwin, Emily Brontë, and Harper Lee. She develops “a love for words,” and through reading and writing, she engages with “these parts of people escaping on paper” (22 March 1968).



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While Huyett’s diary had great significance in her life as a teenager, this more than forty-year-old text also provides a unique opportunity, I believe, to enrich our histories of high school writing instruction. To date, histories of rhetorical education in high schools and normal schools have focused primarily on teachers, textbooks, curricular materials, and official documents from professional organizations and publishers (Applebee; Carr, Carr, and Schultz; Lindemann; Stock). Students’ voices have entered the conversation most typically through classroom papers or through cocurricular publications, like school newspapers, club records, literary magazines, and yearbooks, all of which bear the institutional imprimatur of the schools that published them (Fitzgerald; Ostergaard; Wood).1 Rarely have historians of rhetoric and writing instruction had access to high school students’ perspectives that are unmediated by their awareness of parents, teachers, and school officials as potential audiences for their work. Shared only with her closest friends, Huyett’s diary is not modulated in tone or content for an audience of adults in positions of authority. As such, it stands as both an intriguing commentary on and artifact of the rhetorical education she was receiving in the classroom as well as her autodidactic efforts as she engaged with the world beyond the halls of her suburban high school. More specifically, Huyett’s diary affords a glimpse into a high school student’s lived experiences at the very time when a presumed “foundational” event (Yancey xiii) reshaped how scholars and researchers envisioned the English classroom. While Huyett was preparing for her first year of high school in the summer of 1966, some fifty educators from the United States and Great Britain convened at Dartmouth College for a month of debate about English as a school subject. Concerned that teachers of English at all levels were dealing with a variety of critical issues, NCTE, MLA, and NATE cosponsored the Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English, and the Carnegie Foundation provided the funding.2 According to Herbert J. Muller, who was appointed to write an official report on the conference for a general audience, the seminar “opened and ended its discussions with the seemingly elementary question: What is English?” (Muller 4). In the intervening weeks, the conference participants divided into working groups to consider topics such as language standards and the role of linguistics in English education; students’ engagement with literature as a form of moral education; the value of drama in the classroom; the training of secondary school teachers; and the needs of “disadvantaged” students (Working Papers). The discussions at Dartmouth were particularly vigorous because American and British representatives brought profoundly different priorities to the conference. The Americans seemed most keenly interested in how to transmit an

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Anglo-American literary heritage to students and in what sequence the component skills of reading and writing should be taught; British educators were concerned about a more fundamental reconceptualization of English studies that would place students’ needs and interests at the center of the curriculum. As Muller observes, “The British and Americans . . . had passed one another in mid-Atlantic. The Americans were upholding the traditional British ideal of intellectual discipline, the British were clamoring for the individual freedom that Americans have always prized in theory” (13). Ultimately, the British agenda seemed to carry the day as John Dixon, a leading advocate for a student-centered curriculum, was asked to author a report for fellow professionals on the key points of agreement among conference attendees. As Joseph Harris observes, Dixon’s Growth Through English (1967) is, however, “less an account of what was argued at Dartmouth than a brief for a particular view of teaching” (632). Thanks in large part to Dixon’s book, the Dartmouth Conference has been figured as “a kind of Copernican shift” when “[a]n old model of teaching centered on the transmission of skills (composition) and knowledge (literature) gave way to a ‘growth model’ focusing on the experiences of students and how these are shaped by their uses of language” (Harris 631). Even as participants were packing their bags and departing from New Hampshire, though, questions about the impact of the Dartmouth Conference and Dixon’s “growth model” were being raised. Wayne A. O’Neil opened his 1969 report on the conference in the Harvard Educational Review with a striking quote from James Sledd—“‘Great noise and little wool!’ the devil said as he was shearing a pig!” (359). O’Neil went on to argue that the conference was hopelessly out of touch with the social realities faced by many teachers and should have its “‘findings’ ignored” (361). In 1971, Ann E. Berthoff issued her now famous critique, “From Problem-Solving to a Theory of the Imagination,” which castigated Dixon and other Dartmouth participants for an unnecessary “separation of intellectual and creative modes” of writing. From Berthoff’s perspective, this separation is both “disastrous pedagogically” and “politically suspect” (645). By the 1980s, many composition scholars were turning away from the “expressivism” associated with Dartmouth, calling instead for a “social turn” that would focus on the complex social, economic, cultural, and institutional realities in which students and their texts were enmeshed (Trimbur, “Social Turn” 109). Writing in 2002, Peter Smagorinsky summed up the long-standing concerns of many writing instructors about the emphasis on students’ interests and personal development, which seemed the most tangible legacy of the Dartmouth Conference: “Personal growth is valorized without attention to the social responsibilities that

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accompany growing and participating in a society. In Growth Through English, personal growth is viewed as an educational end in itself. Both Dixon and many contemporary educational writers appear to assume that this growth will always be noble, respectful, and socially constructive” (26).3 Attempting to reach a definitive assessment of the Dartmouth Conference’s impact and its place in our histories of rhetorical education is beyond the scope of this essay. But by affording historians an opportunity to return to the final years of the 1960s and to share in one student’s lived experiences, Huyett’s diary poignantly and powerfully reminds us of the importance of the model of literacy education promulgated by Dixon and his colleagues, even though that model has been rightly challenged in subsequent decades. From Huyett’s perspective, the English classes at her high school were too narrowly focused on understanding great works of literature and their place in an Anglo-American cultural heritage, and her attempts to connect writing assignments to her own interests and needs were generally met with responses she found unsatisfying. Huyett’s distaste for these classroom experiences contrasts sharply with the passion she brought to reading and writing in other contexts and the capacious range of resources she tapped into as she crafted a literate identity for herself. To apprehend the richness of these resources, I will start with a brief biographical sketch of Huyett before turning to her diary.

Coming of Age in the 1960s: Working-Class Roots/Suburban Schools Patricia Lee (Pat) Huyett was born to Charles and Amy Eaton Huyett on 27 April 1951, in Kansas City, Kansas. Charles Huyett had earned a bachelor’s degree from Missouri Valley College in 1933, but he spent his life working as a millwright and member of the local union of grain workers in Kansas City, Kansas (Huyett, “Three Generations” 10–11). To his daughter, Charles’s employment in the mills seemed incompatible with his college education, but she recalled fondly that her father always read “everything he could get his hands on” (10). Pat’s mother, Amy, was twelve years old when the stock market crashed in 1929 and devastated her family (16). Economic necessity forced Amy Eaton to leave school five weeks before her eighth-grade graduation. She went to work as a live-in maid and babysitter, earning $3 a week plus room and board. When Charles married Amy in 1940, he legally adopted her son from a brief, unsuccessful marriage, and the couple went on to have three daughters—Nancy, Pat, and Cindy. Influenced by her father’s union membership and her sense of the economic privations her mother had endured, Huyett felt she was part of “a working class

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family in wealthy Johnson County” (27). Her keen perception of socioeconomic hierarchies would loom large in her educational experiences. In a family history she wrote as an adult, she described her younger self this way: “I was bright, but I had a bad attitude towards school . . . . In the 8th grade I was placed in an accelerated learning program with kids who had ten mohair sweaters to my one and lived at fashionable addresses. . . . I hated those ‘rich kids.’” She went on to note that “The teacher in the ‘enriched’ class informed me that [I] was getting a ‘C’ in her class. I shrugged. I didn’t give a shit and neither did my parents. A ‘C’ was okay. My father and mother thought a high school education was important, but college was a luxury. My father had never really used his college education. To this day, they think it’s nice, but not essential. The counseler [sic] at the junior high told me I was an ‘underachiever’” (27–28). When Huyett reached the end of her high school career, she had no interest in participating in graduation ceremonies, but Nancy reined in her younger sister, telling Pat that, “Not everyone in this house is lucky enough to have graduated from high school. It won’t kill you and it means everything to Mother” (29). Huyett’s journey from entering sophomore to graduating senior is meticulously documented in her diary from summer 1966 through spring 1969. Speaking from the pages of her journal, Huyett invites historians of rhetoric and writing instruction to appreciate the limitations of the skills-based curriculum she encountered in her high school English classes. Dixon’s Growth Through English presents the work of some fifteen students, including the delightfully detailed diary entry of a ten-year-old boy who likes to catch newts (4–5) and a carefully crafted poem about the domesticated nature of Britain’s parks and common spaces by an eighteen-year-old (53). These briefly heard student voices serve Dixon’s ends, functioning as powerful testimony for his argument about the seemingly innate, creative linguistic abilities of young people. Huyett’s eloquent diary can also serve as affirmative evidence for the observational powers of young writers and their abilities to engage readers. But her diary also offers a pointed critique of a curriculum focused on the transmission of a literary heritage and the development of the component skills of writing. By offering readers a sustained encounter with Huyett’s voice, I seek to remind historians of rhetoric and writing instruction of the salience of the ideas of growth theorists in the 1960s. And as we shall see, in Huyett’s final year of high school, curricular innovation and pedagogical experimentation did afford her space to fuse her personal interests with social critiques of the institution where she spent so many hours each day—her high school. Huyett’s experiences thus counter the received narrative that in revising their curricula to become more responsive to

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students’ interests, post-Dartmouth educators fostered the production of solipsistic student writing untethered to social realities. To be sure, Huyett’s diary itself is a complex layered text, and her account of her literacy experiences during her high school years is interested and idiosyncratic. Her teachers, school administrators, and fellow students would certainly have their own stories to tell. Moreover, the historical interpretation of Huyett’s diary that I offer here is inevitably “fraught and varied, tense, duplicitous and difficult” (Dolmage 113). I attempt, though, to follow the lead of Jay Dolmage in putting forward a rhetorical history of Huyett and her diary, a narrative of the past that acknowledges its own processes of “gathering and parsing” and that is open to “celebrating . . . contestation” (113). I will first sketch how Huyett’s diary documents her literacy life outside the classroom before turning to her experiences in school.

“Penworthy, my dear friend”: Tracking a Teenager’s Literacy Life Through Her Diary Pat Huyett’s diary, which she names “Penworthy” and frequently addresses as “my dear friend,” documents her abilities to use language to engage with other people and with the wider world in deeply emotional and intellectually sophisticated ways. Indeed, many educators would find much to applaud in Huyett’s chronicle of her activities as a reader and writer. Huyett mentions reading over forty authors in her diary. Her tastes are eclectic, ranging from drama (Member of the Wedding; Streetcar Named Desire) to fantasy (The Hobbit) to popular magazines (Ingenue, Look, Cosmopolitan) to local newspapers. Among the poets she reads are Burns, Byron, Dickinson, and Cummings. Her favorite poet is Carl Sandburg—she notes on 19 November 1966: “I simply adore Carl Sandburg and mustard sandwiches and watching old Mae West movies.” When Sandburg passed away in July 1967, Huyett taped a copy of the poet’s obituary into her diary, adding this annotation: “Feeling so depressed. My favorite poet died yesterday. Ah well, at least we’ve volumes of his stuff in the library. And Daddy’s got a record of Carl Sandburg reading some of his famous poems” (23 July 1967). While much of Huyett’s reading focuses on well-known authors, she also sought out new voices. She was powerfully moved by a telecast of The Angry Voices of Watts (1966), a documentary about Budd Schulberg’s attempt to address the Los Angeles riots by offering creative writing workshops in a converted coffeehouse. She also combed bookstores and libraries for texts like the anthology New Negro Poets and James Baldwin’s Six Tales from the Jazz Age.

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The most significant author in Huyett’s life was J. D. Salinger. Her diary contains repeated references to Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, and most importantly, Catcher in the Rye, which Huyett read at least four times before her junior year. Indeed, in one of her first diary entries of 1968, Huyett lists her significant accomplishments of the past year and includes that she had “thoroughly studied J. D. Salinger” (4 January 1968). And just as Salinger’s rebellious adolescent protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has a deft touch as a writer, so does Huyett find the pen to be a ready tool in her hand. For Huyett, writing fulfills various functions in her life. She writes when she feels “troubled” (31 July 1966) and to process complicated experiences. For example, she spends an afternoon being physically intimate with a young man who is in a relationship with another girl and then writes, “I have to admit something I find it hard to put down on paper, but I’m afraid that if I don’t, I’ll never get it out of my system. I can’t stop thinking about that afternoon with Jim” (7 February 1967). For Huyett, writing and rereading her own texts are opportunities for self-reflection: “[W]ords! O, you can always turn back to words and see what made you what you were and are. For thought writing is brain writing, emotion writing” (19 October 1968). Such self-reflection, though, is but one of writing’s functions in Huyett’s life outside of school. Huyett also uses writing to build relationships. The products of her pen often become gifts for her friends. In March 1967, she begins to write a “novelet” for her best friend (15 March 1967), and after presenting another friend, Jan, with an original book of poetry at her birthday party, Huyett “almost cried” as Jan declared the poems the “best part” of the festivities (8 May 1967). Beyond her local peer group, Huyett built an extended network of friends through her writing. She was an active pen pal with Liz in England and Serge in France. She especially prizes letters from Liz: “She’s the coolest pen pal I have . . . . She also gave me a list of the marvelous Lancashire slang. It’s fantas, as she would say” (26 October 1966). When Huyett writes to Serge, she tells him “about Halloween and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations” (26 October 1967). While Huyett’s diary charts how writing fulfills affective needs in her life, it also chronicles the intellectual work she accomplishes as she tracks her own evolving abilities. Huyett documents her growing awareness of genre and the development of her standards for effective writing. Four months after she began writing the diary, she notes: “When I began this diary I failed to mention what I looked like, neither did I enclose a picture of myself. All good diarists . . . no matter how humble, should do one of the two. Anne Frank, in her diary, enclosed a picture of herself of ‘how I would like to look always or if I ever wanted to go to

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Figure 4.1. Pages from Pat Huyett’s diary

Hollywood,’ or something like that” (4 December 1966). By penning a self-portrait and including a photo (see Figure 4.1), Huyett complies with expected textual features of diaries and positions her text within a wider network of such texts. An entry about Ingenue magazine, to which Huyett submitted some of her own poems, reveals her efforts to develop and test her standards of “good” writing: “I just got the August issue of INGENUE. The entire issue was supposed to have been written by teens. There were four stories written by kids, and they were all poorly written. And the poems were really poor, except for this one a girl of fifteen wrote. It wasn’t too bad. I’m not saying I’m any literary genius, but I have a pretty fair idea of what’s good and what isn’t” (5 August 1966). Huyett also relied on her friends to help her understand the strengths and weaknesses of her texts. In January 1967, she shared a short story—the interior monologue of a girl who has had an abortion—with some classmates. She records that two boys thought it was “great”; one boy thought it was “really good”; and one girl assumed Huyett was a “man-hater” (12 January 1967). While Huyett’s diary reflects her engagement with other authors and with readers as she worked to develop her writerly skills, she also reread her own work with a critic’s eye. In November 1966, she observes: “I used the words, really, simply, cool, boring, love, funny, and weird too much.” And near the end of her

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sophomore year, Huyett pauses to evaluate her work: “Also within a year, I’ve done more writing than I’ve ever dreamed I’d do: this diary, a few short stories, over a hundred poems, and an uncompleted novelet. I do think think [sic] the quality of my stuff has improved, too. My poems aren’t near as gushy or overlydramatic, and a couple of my stories have actually had some sort of meaning behind them” (16 May 1967). In sum, Huyett’s diary documents a remarkably rich literacy life for a high school student. She accesses a wide range of texts and is surrounded by friends who support her engagement with texts. All the literacy tasks she undertakes reflect her desire to understand not only herself but also to understand the lives of people living in places like Los Angeles, England, and France. She reads both extensively—sampling a wide array of texts—and intensively when she discovers books, like Catcher in the Rye, that repay repeated readings. As a writer, she positions her work within broader textual networks, seeks feedback on her work-in-progress, hones her style, and evaluates her progress. Given Huyett’s engagement with language, her passion for reading, and her efforts as a writer, one might expect she would embrace her high school English classes. For Huyett, though, her English classes, particularly during her first two years, seemed to offer a less-than-satisfying experience.

“Pat, are you working on your poet”: Writing in the Classroom Enrolling around 2,300 students in grades 10–12, Shawnee Mission North High School prided itself on offering the best educational experience possible in the 1960s (Shawnee Mission High School District). Seventy-five percent of the graduating seniors matriculated to college, and in 1966, the school district boasted that it “produced nearly one-fourth of the National Merit semifinalists in Kansas” (Indian 1968 13). Over 60 percent of the 111 faculty members at Shawnee Mission North had master’s degrees, including Huyett’s three English teachers— Norma Bone, Arlene Carter, and Kay Blair (Indian 1969). During Huyett’s sophomore and junior years, the view that American educators brought to Dartmouth seemed to be the basis of the English curriculum at Shawnee Mission North.4 The study of English focused on providing students with knowledge of a common core of literature, largely British classics, and with helping them advance through progressively more complex writing tasks. Sophomores studied Julius Caesar (Indian 1967 62) during a semester devoted to literature; their second semester focused on composition, and “With the use of their previous experiences in grammar, [the students] wrote many colorful themes” (Indian 1967 62). Juniors “progressed from the mythological AngloSaxon land of Beowulf and Grendel to the modern world of Pygmalion and

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the miracle of Dunkirk” (Indian 1968 36). They read Macbeth and “used their extended vocabularies and grammar study in creative writings” (Indian 1968 36). The curricular objectives for seniors included “learning to read with discernment, enlarging vocabularies, developing reasoning powers, and increasing abilities in self-expression” (Indian 1968 36). Seniors read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet (Indian 1967 62), and they also “analyzed prose and poetry, discovered hidden symbolism and varying interpretations.” All seniors were required to complete a term paper, which “climaxed the toil for college preparation” (Indian 1968 36). Photographs in the school yearbook provide further insight into the English curriculum during Huyett’s first two years of high school. The 1966 yearbook includes a photo of a teacher and her students peering intently at a model of the Globe Theatre. The 1968 yearbook includes a candid shot of a smiling young woman with pen in hand: the caption explains “Dayna Wunderlich smiles at Shakespeare’s wit” (38). While not curricular guides, syllabuses, or lesson plans, these yearbook descriptions and photos provide a measure of insight into what the students found most memorable about their English classes. For Huyett, the treatment of literature as an artifact of a revered cultural heritage and the focus on the more mechanical aspects of writing were decidedly unsatisfying. From early in her sophomore year, Huyett seemed aware of a misalignment between her experiences as a reader and writer outside of school and the expectations she encountered in her English class. Writing in her diary on 11 October 1966, Huyett complained, “Mrs. Bone, my literature teacher gives me a pain. She gave me a 90 on book report. I think I deserved a better grade than that! The book I reported on was “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J. D. Salinger. Maybe she didn’t approve of it. (I used three swear words.)” A few weeks later, Huyett records another uncomfortable moment when she takes up her most beloved poet in the classroom: “*Read aloud in literature today a poem by Carl Sandburg, entitled ‘To a Contemporary Bunkshooter’ from Chicago Poems. Exciting poem. Class loved it. It has two ‘hells’ and one ‘damn.’ *Am furious with Mrs. Bone. She laughed when I read it, and it is NOT a funny poem, dammit” (14 November 1966). The disapproval Huyett infers from her teacher’s reaction may have centered on the use of “swear words” in an academic setting, but there is also a sense in Huyett’s writing that her enthusiasm for and affective connection to authors like Salinger and Sandburg must be checked at the classroom door. By the end of the semester, Huyett seems completely disengaged from studying literature in high school: “My literature teacher is such a dope. We’re having a test over Silas Marner next week. I haven’t read one word of it” (13 January 1967). Huyett’s frustration continued into her junior year. She was particularly

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emphatic about her distaste for the ways in which Shakespeare seemed to dominate the curriculum, writing this entry in November 1967: “I HATE SATYRDI NITES WHERE ALL YOU DO IS READ SHAKESPEARE FOR SOME GODDAM ENGLISH CLASS!!!!!!!” (4 November 1967, capitalization in original). In the end of her junior year, Huyett was a bit more circumspect, but still quite critical of how literature was studied in high school: “Perhaps the fault is in me. I cannot see what these phenomena of English classes prove. Especially when one studies English literature as if it were history. The history [of] the novel, the English drama, Romanticistics [sic] poetry” (22 March 1968). For Huyett, the curricular focus on literary history pulled in the opposite direction from her desire to engage with writers in ways she finds more meaningful. As she opines in her diary about two of her favorite authors: “J. D. Salinger is a minor genius . . . [and] Carl Sandburg is a wise old man. Wish I knew them both personally—yet in a way, I do know them” (13 March 1967). For Huyett, an author she reads becomes a “writer-friend” (22 March 1968), and from her perspective, the curricular focus of her high school English classes obscured this significant element of her engagement with literature. Huyett’s reaction to the writing instruction she received was more complex. In her sophomore year, her ability to meet Mrs. Bone’s high standards was a source of pride. She noted in her diary that “Even though I haven’t gotten above a C in English, Mrs. Bone doesn’t think I’m a completely lost dope. I’ve gotten A’s on all my compositions . . . . Mrs. Bone is a tough grader, so I feel very proud of myself.” Huyett then created a four-column chart in her diary that lists her writing assignments (two book reports, two short stories, an essay on Julius Caesar, a personal reflection, and a play report); the points possible; the points she received; and the due date. Before concluding this entry, though, Huyett offers this telling detail: “Most of my errors were in spelling, neatness of paper, grammar, left out words, junk like that” (9 March 1967). Just a month later, Huyett wrote this entry, apparently during her English class: “Ask me how I’m doing Penworthy. I dare ya to ask me that stupid, dumb question . . . . Ask me how it goes? . . . Rotten, dear friend, rotten. We are analyzing sentences here in English, and believe me, it’s so boring” (9 March 1967). And later that month, this entry appeared in Huyett’s diary: “Mrs. Bone and I do not agree when it comes to creative writing. I hand her a minor masterpiece, just dripping with professionalism and what does she scribble on it? A 94! Because I used both 1st and 2nd person in it. My theme on rain was beautiful, I thought. After giving me a 98 on a play report which was largely a bunch of quotes any way! I’ve met some dumb English teachers, but . . .” (ellipses in original) (29

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March 1967). Huyett recorded a similar reaction to lessons in composition her junior year. With a world-weary tone, she writes: “So we learn of 20th century essays; breaking them down by quote structure, tone, etc.” (14 May 1968). Though Pat earns As—scores above 90—on her compositions, the only teacher feedback she mentions are comments on the surface features of her writing (e.g., spelling, consistency of pronoun usage, typographical errors). This contrasts sharply with the complex, affective reactions Huyett has described receiving when she shares her work with friends and classmates. Moreover, Huyett’s descriptions of class time devoted to “breaking . . . down” sentences and essays suggests she was dissatisfied with the sort of skills-based experiences that were promulgated by the American educators attending the Dartmouth Conference. Intriguingly, the school yearbook from 1969 mentions significant curricular changes for students in English classes at Shawnee Mission North, including “a new language text” that “became a dramatic new element in the sophomore program.” Juniors shifted their focus to American, rather than British literature, and they too “utilized new composition books to create masterful themes” (Indian 1969 24). And while the senior class—of which Pat Huyett was a member—was supposed to have seen “few actual course variations this year” (Indian 1969 24), there were some significant opportunities, both in English classes and in other subjects, for Huyett to become more engaged with the curriculum in her final year at Shawnee Mission North High School. Huyett’s English teacher her senior year, Kay Blair, followed the tradition of requiring students to write a term paper as part of their preparation for college. Huyett chose to write on “idealism and materialism,” and by the time she submitted the paper in late February, she referred to it as her “goddamn term paper for English” (23 February 1969). Huyett also continued to feel that the approach to literature she encountered in the classroom enervated the experience of reading. She describes a moment when Ms. Blair noticed she was off task: Yesterday in English we were given time to do what we wanted to. Well, we were supposed to be working on either our book report or our poetry project . . . . Blair says—“Pat, are you working on your poet.” The question sounded so absurd I had to smile . . . I sort of stammered a no and went back to my Edgar L. Masters book. But I wrote down on a piece paper first—Dear Edgar Lee Masters, how would you like it if you knew I was working on you? Hmmm? After the major surgery of English teachers on most poets, it’s a wonder any of them have survived. (17 April 1969)

But in late February of her senior year, Huyett wrote these cryptic lines: “learn[ed]

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of an independent study thing that Blair is working up for eight of her students. No English for awhile” (24 February 1969). Her diary entry of 3 March 1969, provides a few more details: “No English class. I am a member of a special seminar where we investigate the education subject. It’s very interesting, but I think I’m the only liberal.” In this special seminar, Huyett and seven of her classmates researched innovative approaches to education from around the globe, and Huyett undertook tasks such as “reading an article on a free form school in England where the kids don’t even have to go to classes if they don’t want to” (17 April 1969). She also enjoyed the opportunity to discuss organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) with her teacher and a small cohort of other students (5 March 1969). In late April, after six weeks of researching, reading, and writing, Huyett and the seven other students participated in a districtwide “seminar at S.M.E. [Shawnee Mission East High School] on education, that is relevancy in the curriculum.” For Huyett, “It was beautiful. Students and teachers meeting together. Aware . . . . Learning should help us to grow into sensitive human beings aware of our world around us” (21 April 1969). Along with this opportunity to think critically about the nature of education and to share her findings with a wider audience of students and teachers from across the school district, Huyett had another positive experience with academic writing her senior year—in her psychology class. Throughout her adolescence, Huyett expressed frustration with social hierarchies and income inequality in the middle-class suburb where she lived. In her senior year, she had the opportunity to undertake an academic investigation of these issues. Her enthusiasm practically bubbles off the page: “Absolutely fantastic. I am planning a fabulous psych term paper, and my teacher is very excited about it. It’s going to be [a] research paper on the social strata of the school. I plan to take 500 surveys (approx. 20 to 50% of the student body). I’m going to interview half the teaching staff (50) and then I’ll interview representative and non-representative students of these groups” (14 November 1968). Later in the month, she reported, “Psychology—I hafta work for my B, but it’s really great . . . . Mrs. Dibbens—my nutty red-headed Psych teacher is really excited about my project” (18 November 1968). Unfortunately, the diary does not contain any other mention of the surveys, interviews, or final research paper Huyett produced, but it may be telling that the one high school writing assignment Huyett did save through the years was from her psychology class, not the project on social hierarchy in her school, but a seven-page essay titled “Self in Personality” in which she examined how family, religion, the media, and gender stereotypes shaped her dispositions and behaviors. For Huyett, then, the most meaningful academic literacy performances of her

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high school years allowed her to engage with the social realities that shaped her world—the structures of school and socioeconomic hierarchies. As her teachers began moving away from lesson plans designed to inculcate knowledge of a literary heritage and the component skills of sentence-building and essay writing, students—at least students like Huyett—did not necessarily turn inward and focus solely on interior explorations of their personal interests and desires. With a critical eye and a heart committed to social change, Huyett embraced opportunities to extend her talents as a reader and writer as she encountered new texts, addressed new audiences, and experimented with deploying new argumentative techniques, such as marshaling evidence derived from surveys and interviews. In these moments, Huyett’s literacy life in school comes closest to matching the richness of her literacy life outside of school. Though certainly imbued with adolescent angst, Huyett’s sharply worded critiques of the more traditional curriculum she experienced help to justify the urgency with which Dixon and the “growth theorists” at Dartmouth pressed for a vision of English studies that would privilege the experiences and needs of students—rather than bodies of knowledge and skills. For scholars interested in the history of rhetoric and writing instruction, Huyett’s diary is valuable, allowing us to return to a crucial moment in the history of our field and to experience English classes through the eyes of a student in the late 1960s. For twenty-first-century educators, who increasingly find themselves placed in a stranglehold by high-stakes testing, one-size-fits-all curricula, and narrow definitions of college readiness, Huyett’s diary stands as a poignant reminder that students may well be leading their most interesting literacy lives in spaces far removed from our classrooms. If we hope to remain relevant to our students, we need to develop more nuanced understandings of the rich diversity of their literate activities and to consider how we might best mediate between the limited horizons defined by testing and standardized curricula and the limitless possibilities that come with developing “a love for words” and seeing texts as “these parts of people escaping on paper.”

Postscript: After high school, Pat Huyett enrolled at Kansas State Teacher’s College in Emporia, but she dropped out after three semesters. In 1979, Huyett found her way back to higher education and enrolled at the University of Missouri– Kansas City to finish her bachelor’s degree; she stayed on to complete a master’s in English and was hired by the university as a lecturer, responsible for teaching freshman and sophomore composition classes. She ended her twenty-nine-year

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teaching career in spring 2011, when metastatic breast cancer made it impossible for her to devote herself to her students. She passed away in October 2011. In Huyett’s brief—just 114 words—obituary, her family included one telling detail: “On one of her favorite shirts was written: ‘I touch the future. I teach’” (Patricia L. Huyett). In donating her high school diaries and other papers to University of Missouri–Kansas City Libraries, Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections, Huyett further extended her pedagogical legacy. By allowing scholars to touch the past through her words and papers, Huyett continues to teach future generations about the history of rhetorical education in the United States and how students perceived the opportunities for literate action available to them in and beyond the walls of their high schools at a crucial time in the history of composition studies.

Notes 1. Important exceptions include Kenneth Lindblom, William Banks, and Risë Quay’s examination of letters written by Abbie Ripley Reynolds and her brother John Reynolds to assess Albert Stetson’s impact on composition pedagogy at Illinois State University in the 1860s, and Patricia Sullivan’s reading of notebooks kept by Lena Roadruck, a “star pupil” at Buck Creek High School in rural Indiana in the 1920s (371). 2. NCTE is the National Council of Teachers of English, the primary professional organization in the United States for English teachers from pre-K through college. MLA is the Modern Language Association, representing postsecondary faculty in English and foreign languages, primarily in the United States. NATE is Great Britain’s National Association for the Teaching of English. 3. For other attempts to assess the impact of the Dartmouth Conference both in the United States and Great Britain, see Allen; Harris; Trimbur, “Geohistory.” 4. My efforts to find official curricular documents from the Shawnee Mission School District have proven unsuccessful. Fortunately, school yearbooks from Shawnee Mission North High School in the 1960s included two-page spreads on each academic subject, and I am relying on these accounts to sketch the English curriculum. I would like to thank Donna Hobbs, a retired teacher from the Shawnee Mission School District, for sharing her recollections with me.

Works Cited Allen, David. English Teaching Since 1965: How Much Growth? London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980. Print.

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Applebee, Arthur N. Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English: A History. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1974. Print. Berthoff, Ann E. “The Problem of Problem-Solving.” College Composition and Communication 22 (1971): 237–42. Print. Carr, Jean Ferguson, Stephen L. Carr, and Lucille M. Schultz. Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print. Dixon, John. Growth Through English. Reading, UK: NATE, 1967. Print. Dolmage, Jay. “The Circulation of Discourse through the Body.” Octalog III: The Politics of Historiography in 2010. Rhetoric Review 30.2 (2011): 113–15. Print. Fitzgerald, Kathryn. “The Platteville Papers: Inscribing Frontier Ideology and Culture in a Nineteenth-Century Writing Assignment.” College English 64.3 (2002): 273–301. Print. Harris, Joseph. “After Dartmouth: Growth and Conflict in English.” College English 53 (1991): 631–46. Print. Huyett, Patricia Lee. Diaries, 1966–1969. Box 2, Folders 13–16. Pat Huyett Collection. MS 193. University of Missouri-Kansas City Libraries, Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections. Print. Huyett, Patricia Lee. “Three Generations.” Box 2, Folder 23. Pat Huyett Collection. MS 193 J. University of Missouri-Kansas City Libraries, Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections. Print. The Indian. 1966–1969. Yearbooks. Shawnee Mission North High School, Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Lindblom, Kenneth, William Banks, and Risë Quay. “Mid-Nineteenth-Century Writing Instruction at Illinois State Normal School: Credentials, Correctness, and the Rise of a Teaching Class.” Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition. Ed. Patricia Donahue and Gretchen Flesher Moon. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P Digital Editions, 2007. 94–114. Web. 10 Mar. 2012. Lindemann, Erika, ed. Reading the Past, Writing the Future: A Century of American Literacy Education and the National Council of Teachers of English. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2010. Print. Muller, Herbert J. The Uses of English: Guidelines for the Teaching of English from The Anglo-American Conference at Dartmouth College. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967. Print. O’Neil, Wayne A. “Conference Report: The Dartmouth Seminar.” Harvard Educational Review 39.2 (1969): 359–65. Print. Ostergaard, Lori. “ ‘Translating Good Impulses into Action’: Rhetorical Education in a High School Girls’ Club, 1916–1926.” Peitho 13.2 (2010): 12–16. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.

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“Patricia Lee Huyett.” Obituary. Kansas City Star 15 Oct. 2011. KCStar.com. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. Shawnee Mission High School District. Report to Moody’s Investor Services. Apr. 1967. Print. Smagorinsky, Peter. “Growth Through English Revisited.” English Journal 91 (2002): 23–29. Print. Stock, Patricia Lambert, ed. Composition’s Roots in English Education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2012. Print. Sullivan, Patricia. “Inspecting Shadows of Past Classroom Practices: A Search for Students’ Voices.” College Composition and Communication 63 (2012): 365–86. Print. Trimbur, John. “The Dartmouth Conference and the Geohistory of the Native Speaker.” College English 71 (2008): 142–69. Print. Trimbur, John. “Taking the Social Turn: Teaching Writing Post-Process.” College Composition and Communication 45 (1994): 108–18. Print. Wood, Henrietta Rix. “Transforming Student Periodicals into Persuasive Podiums: African American Girls at Lincoln High School, 1915–1930.” American Periodicals 22.2 (2012): 199–215. Print. Working Papers of the Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English at Dartmouth College (Dartmouth Seminar). Hanover, NH. 20 Aug. to 16 Sept. 1966. ERIC ED 082 2200 to 082 216. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Foreword: Remembering Composition.” Composition’s Roots in English Education. Ed. Patricia Lambert Stock. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2012. xi–xv. Print.

Part II Normal Schools

chapter 5 “Stand ‘Mum’” Women’s Silence at the Lexington Academy, 1839–1841

Melissa Ianetta The scholars made some gross blunders—There is great want of language among them—They have no Power at Communication; can explain nothing. What will they do in the day they are called for? Stand “mum.” Several have no great desire to make teachers and a few have not the power.

— Cyrus Peirce (1839)

W

 hile the language may seem archaic, the problems nineteenth-century  educator Cyrus Peirce articulates are familiar ones; all teachers on  some occasion have wondered why their students refuse to speak. In this vein, one of the overarching themes in the classroom accounts of Peirce and his student, teacher-trainee Mary Swift, is a resentment regarding the lack of spirited discussion among the students at the Lexington Academy between 1839 and 1841. As the epigraph above illustrates, Peirce frequently—and acerbically— attributes this classroom silence to his students’ lack of ability or motivation. And yet, if we compare the commentaries of Peirce with those of Swift, there are links that connect this schoolroom silence to the problematic relationship between long-standing, traditional notions of rhetoric as an elite masculine public discourse and newer nineteenth-century understandings of women’s role in education. Thus, the difficulties encountered by the students of the Lexington Academy when attempting to master the rhetoric of the classroom as defined by Peirce can be seen as a direct result of their limited elocutionary training rather than the lack of effort or intelligence that Peirce identifies. A careful examination of the historical records related to the nation’s first normal school reveals even more than the cultural limitations imposed by nineteenth-century gender roles; however, such an inquiry also challenges our

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conflicting contemporary narratives of women’s participation in the nineteenthcentury classroom. On the one hand, we have the provocative, if not always compelling, essentializing history offered by Robert J. Connors, for whom the entry of woman and her innately nonconfrontational and collaborative discourse into higher education instigates the downfall of classical oratory. On the other hand, recent reassessments by Jessica Enoch and Beth Ann Rothermel have worked to revalue women’s roles in nineteenth-century rhetoric, complicating Connors’s history by arguing that nineteenth-century women’s rhetorical education was in some cases “more a remolding of the rhetorical tradition than a truncation” (Rothermel 39), and, in fact, a means for some women to “challenge and counter education norms” (Enoch 118). Offering the reader an understanding of the ways in which rhetorical education could—and did—empower some female students, such work plays an important role by complementing and correcting Connors’s account, even as Connors’s account of women’s silence continues to shape our contemporary historical accountings.1 The present essay, however, works to further enrich our understanding of the education offered in nineteenth-century normal schools by mapping a third way through this history. Such an approach synthesizes elements from recent work in the rhetoric of silence with historical studies—both Connors’s seemingly downward vector that cites women’s entrance into the classroom as the end of rhetoric, as well as those upward historical trajectories that valorize women’s contributions to institutionalized education. Juxtaposing these critical perspectives, this essay thus examines the rhetorical training offered at the first teacher-training institution in the United States as a story of neither success nor failure, but rather as a series of conflicts between opposing forces: students’ professional aspirations and their academic preparation; a teacher’s lofty ideals and daily disappointments; and a society’s literacy needs and its cultural expectations. Focusing on the ways these oppositions played out in the nineteenth-century classroom thus foregrounds the everyday struggles encountered by teacher candidates, and frames their (non)response as a purposeful deployment of the rhetoric of silence. For, in contrast to Peirce’s view of student silence as a form of inertia, Cheryl Glenn has shown that “a rhetoric of silence . . . can be empowered action, both resistant and creative” (154–55). Viewed through the lens Glenn offers, the silence that thwarts and exasperates Cyrus Peirce can be understood as a historically overlooked, but highly reasoned, response to the paradoxical rhetorical exigency of the normal school. Ultimately, then, this essay argues that the Lexington Academy was neither a realm of feminist empowerment nor a Connoresque gravesite for the end of oratory. Rather, it served as a site of a historically important conflict in which

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student silence was a strategy both to resist teacher demands and to articulate passively the conflicts inherent to the normalites’ professional and gender roles.

“Rusty” Students and Educational Opportunity: Expectations and Reality in the Normal School On 3 July 1839, Cyrus Peirce opened the nation’s first state-run teacher-training academy in Lexington, Massachusetts. While his goal was to improve the primary education offered at the state’s common schools by enhancing the training of its teachers, Peirce’s institution also presented a previously unknown educational opportunity for many women: although teacher trainees had to pay for their own board and books, they received free tuition in exchange for an agreement to teach in a public school upon completion of their course of study. As might be expected, then, such institutions were primarily appealing to women who had few other educational opportunities and who viewed the Lexington Academy as a means to a better life: “The expectation [was] that attendance, however brief, would improve a girl’s opportunities for seasonal employment or, in the case of necessity, a woman’s chance to earn a livelihood. The normal schools thus appealed to children of farm and other blue-collar families. Both farm and nonfarm blue-collar families together amounted to a little more than two-thirds of all normal school students” (Herbst 81). While the normal school thus presented a new venue of opportunity, many women who sought teacher training found themselves ill prepared for such an undertaking, for “[e]xcept for a few who had been able to attend a grammar school or other private school, none of them had been exposed to formal educational influences after their graduation from common school. Instead, they had spent from four to five years at home or at work” (Herbst 69). In response to this deficit in their students’ education, nineteenth-century normal schools were often compelled to play a role that was largely remedial, using their yearlong curriculum to train students in basic disciplinary content rather than disseminating effective pedagogies and teaching strategies, as had been their original intent. Such seems to have been the state of affairs at the Lexington Academy, where Peirce groused despairingly in his journal that “some of them seem to have been out of school until they have grown rusty,” and elsewhere avers that they have “come to learn the Common Branches rather than learn to Teach them” (Peirce, “Journal” 41, 45). In light of his lofty ideals, Peirce’s frustrations are understandable, and yet his own professional history stands in stark contrast to the limited educational opportunities of his female charges. Like many of the Academy’s students, Peirce came from a farming family and had used education to expand his professional

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opportunities. Contrasting his women students’ often minimal educational options, Peirce had the chance to continue his education beyond primary school and to establish his professional life unimpeded by the social restrictions imposed on the students of the Lexington Academy. Unlike even the most academically talented woman of the period, for example, he had access to the highest levels of the American educational system, first attending Harvard College, and then Harvard Divinity School. During this time, he taught during the winter session in order to pay his tuition and support himself while attending classes. He then served as pastor for North Reading Unitarian Church and school principal in Nantucket, Massachusetts, before arriving in Lexington at the age of forty-nine. Peirce’s impressive credentials thus offer a sharp contrast to the piecemeal education of his women scholars. And yet, given his own accomplishments and similar background, his shock at his students’ lack of preparation was perhaps inevitable; he is simply unable to believe that his women students could appear passive when given the opportunity to achieve academic excellence. A notable exception to Peirce’s derogatory assessment of his students is his approbation of Mary Swift, who was seemingly the star pupil of the Academy’s inaugural class. Swift was originally Peirce’s student when he served as principal in Nantucket, and at his suggestion she joined his first group of teacher trainees in Lexington. It is no wonder that Peirce encouraged her to continue her education: both her personal writing and her academic accomplishment testify to Swift’s remarkable talents. Her schoolroom journal documents her confidence as a scholar and ability as a writer, and the accolades she received as a teachercandidate indicate his recognition of her abilities. Further illustrating her intellectual gifts is her success later in life: when she left the Lexington Academy at the age of twenty, she was hired by the Perkins School for the Blind to assist Samuel Howe with the education of Laura Bridgman, the first blind and deaf person to learn language. Swift would later document her experiences as Bridgman’s constant companion in the widely read Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman (1881). As a teacher and writer, then, at least one of Peirce’s students managed to meet, if not surpass, his high ideals. Before she attained those achievements as a teacher and as the author for which she is best known today, however, Swift was a student in Peirce’s class of fledgling teachers, where she was required to maintain a journal to record the day-to-day workings of the school.2 Her instructor periodically assessed her efforts, offering an occasional marginal comment and, even more rarely, a fully developed terminal comment. Swift’s journal is thus invaluable not only as a firsthand account of the nation’s first normal school, but also as a classroom

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record that documents the teacher-student interaction that results from Peirce’s pedagogy. Further, Swift’s record is not the only description of this historic institution: aware of the import of his undertaking, Peirce maintained a private journal of school activities as well. Comparing the accounts of teacher Peirce and student Swift provides great insight into the pedagogy and practice of one of the earliest public educational institutions for American women and gives voice to those conflicts that inevitably arose when the skills mandated by the students’ vocation conflicted with established cultural norms. For instance, Peirce repeatedly complains that these girls “want language” (Peirce, “Journal” 7, 12, 56), and both he and Swift chronicle his attempts to find a hybrid of rhetoric that suits his pupils’ occupational needs, and yet remains faithful to their culturally defined role. Unfortunately, in his version of a feminized rhetoric, Peirce unwittingly trained his students in a manner that seemed to guarantee their inability to succeed in the other parts of his curriculum, leading to the struggles and conflicts that surrounded rhetorical training at the first state-funded normal school.

“A young lady can do no better”: The Paradox of Women’s Rhetoric at the Lexington Academy In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the formal scholarly discipline of rhetoric was still associated with the public, civic discourse practiced by men of the senate, the pulpit, and the bar. This long-standing conceptualization of rhetoric as a masculine realm, however, conflicted with women’s encroaching dominance of the common school, a civic space that was simultaneously constructed as a private sphere and an area in which teachers—who, prior to the rise of public education, had been men—prepared young boys for participation in public life. As increasing numbers of women entered the teaching profession, the nineteenth-century classroom conflated the masculine civic rhetoric long foundational to the educational enterprise with those cultural discourses that limited woman’s role to the domestic, creating dissonances between this long-standing familial identity and women’s new professional roles as teachers (Ogren 12). As Nancy Hoffman notes, on the face of it, such ideological dissonance was at least partially ameliorated by ostensibly connecting the notion of woman as caregiver to her new role as teacher, even as, in reality, teaching substantially increased women’s public agency: “[B]ecause women were taking teaching jobs at just the historical moment when the doctrine of separate spheres issued from pulpits and printed tracts, public rhetoric exaggerated women’s motivation to lead children to virtue and downplayed the commonalities they had with male professionals in the labor market. In truth, women were public employees, negotiating contracts

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with school committees, exercising authority over children and adolescents (often young men), and leading public school exercises before the gathered townspeople” (7). While their professional role was thus ideologically connected to extant discourses of womanhood, practically speaking, such individuals would need a fully developed set of rhetorical skills in order to conduct their professional duties successfully. For example, although the women of the Lexington Academy were excluded from formal rhetorical training by gender, their future roles as teachers would require them to be proficient elocutionists, both for the general practice of their vocation, and, more specifically, to instill the first precepts of rhetoric into their young charges. Mediating between women’s domestic roles and their need for the arts of public discourse, Peirce rationalized training his women students in a limited form of rhetoric by omitting the arts of traditional, implicitly male, oratory, and instead teaching a feminized form of public speech under the aegis of a reading class. As noted by Swift, and illustrated in her journal entry of 21 December 1839, reading aloud was often the subject of Peirce’s lectures: “[According to Peirce’s lecture] the art of reading is the correct utterance of written composition.—It not only gives the meaning, but the force of the sentiments, without the help of the eye or arms. It differs from oratory, and is almost synonymous with elocution. A young lady can do no better than to confine the eye, and read without gesticulation. There are two kinds of reading, grammatical & rhetorical.—The first expresses the sense and the second expresses the sense, and all we can do with the voice without the eye or arm” (Swift 173). Rather than fully training these women in the rhetorical arts, then, Peirce restricted their oratorical education, particularly in regard to the mode of delivery. Instead of embracing rhetoric’s traditional realms of persuasion and debate, the feminized rhetorical instruction of this classroom decorously emphasized the woman rhetor’s emotive function. As it is focused on the emotional aspects of the text, by nineteenth-century standards this form of oratory is sentimental and seemly, yet, from our modern perspective, in the emphasis on the speaker’s immobility and demurely downcast gaze, eerily passive and powerless. According to Swift’s summary, Peirce calls attention to the feminine nature of this mode of delivery—“a young lady could do no better”—and so maintains woman’s culturally mandated role even while attempting to prepare his students to train young men fated for public discourse. Indeed, as Swift describes Peirce’s lectures on rhetorical reading, such feminization extended even to historical revision: “It is the foundation of good speaking; & though in this part young ladies are not particularly interested, yet they must train those who are to be orators of the next

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generation.—All that relates to good articulation, modulation, intonation and enunciation are looked for in good reading as well as good speaking.—Much more depends on the voice than we think: this is what Demosthenes & Cicero meant by action” (174). Swift’s misidentification of Demosthenes and Cicero’s comments on the canon of delivery ironically underscores the diminished rhetoric offered in Peirce’s classroom, for neither ancient orator would have suggested a mode of delivery in which the rhetor does not look at the audience nor gesture at all. In this truncated form of rhetoric, Peirce helps to widen the students’ expertise in selected elements of public discourse even while barring their access to its most powerful tools of persuasion. By grounding women’s public speech in the realm of the emotions, Peirce’s curriculum for the art of reading extends the argument of such influential educational proponents as Catherine Beecher and Horace Mann from abstract theory into rhetorical practice. That is, these nineteenth-century educational reformers often framed a woman’s role at the front of the classroom as a natural extension of her domestic function as moral guardian. Accordingly, in his Fourth Annual Report as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Horace Mann writes: “That females are incomparably better teachers for young children than males, cannot admit of a doubt. . . . They are endowed by nature with stronger parental impulses, and this makes the society of children delightful, and turns duty into pleasure” (qtd. in Sugg 74). If, as Mann argues, woman’s predilection for teaching derives from her maternal sentiments, it reasonably follows that her ethos as classroom orator would also spring from the emotive faculty. As such, it stands to reason that Peirce’s rhetoric would locate the speaker’s power in “the force of the sentiments” (Swift 173, emphasis original), not in any agonistic modes of logic or debate. Peirce’s limitation of women’s rhetoric was not restricted to their speech, however. As seen in Mary Swift’s journal, the form of writing validated in his classroom was primarily descriptive and places little emphasis on argument or analysis. Although “[p]roviding a first-rate record of lessons in the academic disciplines, lectures on pedagogy, and field trips,” as Hoffman notes, Swift’s journal “rarely revealed her own thoughts” (85). Moreover, as Peirce repeatedly evaluated this record, his laudatory comments further reinforce this depiction of writing as a means of capturing information rather than a tool of critical thinking. That is, Swift’s journal is interpolated with commentary from her teacher, all of which falls under one of three categories: (1) grammatical correction or admonitions to pay more attention to grammar (Swift 129, 130, 132, 179, 220); (2) remonstrance to spend less time writing in her journal (Swift 147, 166); or (3) vague praise that

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her writing is “rather fine” (Swift 123, 147, 190). Nowhere does Peirce question the strictly descriptive nature of Swift’s account of events, nor does he ever probe for the analysis behind her observations. Despite Peirce’s comments elsewhere that “Much attention is paid to the manner in which the pupils set forth or state their propositions” (Peirce, “To Henry” l), this attention to form deals primarily with mechanics rather than any focus upon logical structure or critical analysis. Peirce’s marginal commentary, paired with Swift’s enumeration of the written abstracts, summaries, and factual short answers that comprised the daily lessons, depicts the writing curriculum here primarily as a tool for the transcription of facts. The students’ writing instruction, like their elocutionary training, appears to have ignored persuasion and analysis, focusing instead on communication as the transmission of descriptive data.

“They choose to remain in the dark”: Classroom Rhetoric and Student Resistance Unsurprisingly, Peirce’s writing pedagogy had its limitations. Most significantly, by depriving women of the most powerful rhetorical tools, Peirce inadvertently assured that their words, both oral and written, would lack power, and the students themselves exhibit an awareness of this deficiency. Throughout the journals of both diarists, the antipathy of the students for most forms of public discourse is a repeated sore point for both student and teacher. Swift was one of the few who seemed unperturbed by public performance, but she nevertheless observes the anxiety of those around her: “It is only the associations connected with Composition that renders it so difficult to scholars as it almost invariably is” (106). Peirce takes a similarly dismissive tone when discussing resistance to the oral presentation of essays: “Scholars make much ado about reading Composition. This seems to me childish and unreasonable” (“Journal” 76). Juxtaposing the manner in which these authors trivialized the students’ concerns about even reading aloud, however, is an opposing opinion that represents the vast majority of the student body. A vote on the question “Is it expedient to have Compositions read in School?” (43–44), for example, clearly demonstrates the students’ distaste for this sort of public performance: “Affirmative 5—Negative—14” (44). Apparently, most of the teacher trainees did not place the same value upon reading aloud as did their teacher. Although Peirce and Swift dismiss this resistance as unreasonable, such passages in their journals also give us a peripheral view of those students whose training and inclination ran contrary to the public rhetorical performance prized by their instructor. The students’ aversion to public reading is akin to Peirce’s repeated complaints

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about a further weakness: their refusal to speak aloud in class. According to Massachusetts’s then-governor, Edward Everett, one of the most important points of a teacher’s “practical education” was developing the “[c]apability of imparting instruction intelligibly” (Swift 125, 126). Throughout his journal, Peirce frets about the students’ inability and disinclination to develop this prerequisite for effective teaching. For example, in his entry for 24 and 25 September 1839 he writes: “I think it is a great desideratum in school to make scholars free in their inquiries; to bring them out, to express what they know, and make inquiry about what they do not know. In this I fail. Scholars will not inquire. They are evidently in the dark in regard to many things. They choose to remain in the dark. I am doubtful, whether they understand enough of some subjects even to ask questions about them. It will be a long time before some of them will make good teachers” (Peirce, “Journal” 53–54). In this desire to actively engage his students in both critical inquiry and the attendant involvement in classroom discussion, Peirce sounds surprisingly modern. Rather than emphasizing rote memorization as a pedagogical principle, he constantly strives to engage his students’ interest and willing participation, and through this method, he hopes to model the means by which these women can one day encourage independent thinking in their own classrooms. Peirce’s comments, unfortunately, also show both his despair at ever inducing this sort of response from his scholars and his belief that their refusal to engage in open investigation is an obstinate decision to “remain in the dark.” Nonetheless, a close examination of the classroom activities meant to incite discussion exposes the manner in which Peirce’s highest pedagogical goals actually ran counter to the rhetorical training that he offered his students. From the moment Lexington Academy opened its doors, Peirce attempted a variety of unsuccessful strategies to encourage his students’ participation in vigorous inclass analysis and discussion. Both his and Swift’s journals, for instance, detail the manner in which he attempted to use extensive question-and-answer sessions, extemporaneous speaking, and weekly discussions to engage his pupils in classroom inquiry. Notwithstanding these efforts, the accounts of both journal writers demonstrate Peirce’s own inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that the larger situation in which he was requiring his students to perform relied precisely upon the very rhetorical skills he was not teaching them. As the oratorical training of these women was based on the passively emotive aspects of reading aloud, for many of them public discussion and debate would be problematic, if not impossible. Accordingly, when examining the in-class public speeches of these women, the further Peirce attempts to lead them from a strictly informative model of speech, the more unsatisfactory their performance becomes. Thus, what

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both Peirce and Swift saw as stubborn resistance on the part of the students is more accurately understood as the result of a fundamental flaw in the pedagogy, and a flaw that neither of these teachers recognized. By contrast with his frustration over their engagement in discussion, Peirce often voices pleasure in their oral performance during question-and-answer sessions. Again, his response is a logical outcome of his pedagogical approach, for the training of these women narrowed public rhetoric to simple reading and transmission of a prepared text. In this exercise, the instructor would give his charges approximately a hundred questions related to the subject matter under discussion, and the students would be responsible for researching the answers in their textbooks or at the school library. The staggering length of these research lists, the intricate detail of the questions, and the brief amount of time the students were given to complete them (about five days) predicated long hours of preparation, and yet Peirce rarely expresses dismay with his students’ performances in these oral-report sessions. Neither does he voice those claims of petulance and sloth he expresses at some of their other oral exercises; instead, he often notes his satisfaction. Despite his stated desire to improve his students’ oratorical skills, this sort of recitation is a far cry from the extemporaneous airing of one’s opinions that Peirce holds as his educational ideal, a fact articulated by Swift: “I think we should learn even more than by a recitation if we express ourselves freely upon every subject” (Swift 103). As she rightly recognizes, the student participating in this sort of exercise is not expressing herself freely, but instead reading from a rehearsed script. Despite the performance aspect of this exercise, then, it also reinforces the passivity engendered elsewhere in the academy’s oratorical training. Only when reading from a laboriously prepared text in a situation focused on the regurgitation of “right” answers, as opposed to any attempt at persuasion, do the women of Lexington Academy perform in a manner that appears to satisfy their instructor. Along with these rehearsed question-and-answer recitations, Peirce attempted to enhance his pupils’ oratory through exercises in extemporaneous speaking. He was sensible of the students’ deficiency in communication, a concern reflected in his journal entry of 10 September 1839: “They want language—they want the power of generalization, and of communication” (Peirce, “Journal” 7). The day after voicing this concern, he began a new exercise in public discourse: “reciting stories, giving descriptions or whatever kind of recitation we chose provided it was not taken from the ordinary school exercises” (Swift 109). Admittedly, due to its extemporaneous nature, this exercise was a step removed from the questionand-answer sessions; it was nevertheless, a world away from the classroom dia-

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lectic Peirce meant to encourage. As each student simply related “a story, anecdote or fact—in her own language” (Peirce, “Journal” 7), this was an exercise in narration, and so it engaged the powers of description rather than analytic or argumentative abilities. By avoiding any acts of rhetorical assertion, this form of speaking is comparable to the passive, emotive elocutionary style embodied in the Reading class. In both instances, the students are telling a story, not persuading a group of people; in both forms of speech, there is no motive beyond the informative, and so there is no attempt to invoke a persuasive frame. Like the question-and-answer sessions, this sort of oration did not address the students’ primary problem in classroom discussion—that of persuasion. Perhaps the failure of the students’ training most clearly surfaces during that exercise Peirce termed “Discussion.” Each Saturday, he would gather the students together to undertake what he hoped would be a spirited discussion of some issue pertaining to education. The students were assigned the topic early in the week, but were required to engage in extemporaneous conversation rather than reading prepared pieces aloud, as they did in Composition. Here, Peirce was attempting to incite a genteel form of debate among his scholars—most tellingly, when describing his curriculum to Henry Banard, Peirce refers to the Saturday Discussions as “regular debate” (Peirce, “To Henry” lii), yet neither he nor Swift ever refer to it as such in their journals. With rare exceptions, both authors use the word Discussion, or occasionally Conversation, thereby side-stepping the label associated with a traditionally masculine form. Nevertheless, this activity seems to take the form of a debate, with students picking sides of an issue and attempting to present their perspectives in a persuasive fashion. Despite the noncombative connotations of this activity’s name, then, Peirce’s original intention seems to have been a debate held under a name more fitting for a nineteenthcentury woman’s school.

“With such ‘lacking,’ what can we be expected to realize?”: The Effects of a Truncated Rhetorical Pedagogy Regardless of Peirce’s lofty aims, the realization of this exercise often fell flat, and he never fully understood his own role in contributing to its failure. Peirce repeatedly expresses his dissatisfaction with students’ rhetorical performance, rebuking “those who do habitually decline taking any part in the discussion” for not stirring “to make themselves teachers,” for example (Peirce, “Journal” 73). On other occasions, Peirce labels the discussion “dull” or “indifferent,” and likens the discussants to vegetables (72, 30, 57). In one of his most detailed catalogs of the scholars’ shortcomings, he expresses both a growing disenchantment with

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their ability and exasperation with their level of effort: “All the Solomons in the land, I fear, would not be competent to make them successful teachers. They lack interest and they lack ability; and with such ‘lacking,’ what can we be expected to realize? . . . I hope I shall do them all justice, so that if they fail, the fault shall not be mine” (57). At this despairing moment, Peirce attributes his students’ inability to partake in discussion to stupidity or laziness. But, because he blames the students’ motivation or reason, and so locates the debating expertise in the will or the native intellect, he never examines the shifting rhetorical situations—narrative, expository, or persuasive—in which he places these women. Despite this disparity between the students’ training and the expectations of their performance, both Peirce and Swift gloss over the conflicting genre demands presented in classroom exercises, and so lump all forms of rhetorical performance—oral and written, persuasive and narrative—into a single category, without taking into consideration the changing demands upon the normal school women. Swift, for example, says: “I think that it is about as easy to read one’s ideas as to speak them as we do every day of our lives” (Swift 106), and so denies the difference between private, extemporaneous speech and prepared, public oration. Peirce proves similarly blind regarding the exterior factors that affect student communication, stating: “Some of the young ladies seem very sensitive and easily disturbed at trifles. I can hardly express an opinion or rather give free utterance to my sentiments, but someone seems stricken. I am friendly to a free expression of views,—and cannot yet consent to relinquish the practice” (Peirce, “Journal” 17). Here, “Father Peirce” (the title by which these women referred to their teacher) ignores not just the limitations of the elocutionary training he has given his charges, but even the basic power construct of the classroom. The assumption that these women would be able to effortlessly discard the gender roles of nineteenth-century America, the truncated rhetorical training of the Lexington Academy, and the subordination inherent in their relationship with “Father” Peirce seems improbable, at best. Peirce’s contradiction between his means and his ends leads to frustration and misery for both teacher and students. In his journal, Peirce repeatedly exhibits a sort of curmudgeonly disbelief at the ease with which his women students are reduced to tears (50, 55). And yet, reviewing his teaching methods, one cannot wonder at his students’ reluctance to engage in even the most straightforward exercises in reading aloud: “Reading I teach by oral inculcation of the principles . . . and by example, reading myself before the whole class; hearing pupils read, and then reading the same piece myself, pointing out their faults, and calling upon them to read again and again, and even the third and fourth time” (Peirce,

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“To Henry” lii). The aversion to teaching women agonistic rhetoric notwithstanding, receiving training in the gentle art of reading was clearly a grueling public ordeal. While dismissing any resistance as “girlishness,” he is also forced to admit to Banard, “This is a most difficult art to teach” (lii). Peirce’s employment of a feminized alternative to the traditional masculine realm of rhetoric is by no means unique, however. This gendered division between the male orator and the female reader was pervasive in the educational system throughout much of the nineteenth century, as can be seen in Sandra D. Harmon’s description of oratory at the Illinois State Normal University: “Throughout the nineteenth century, men’s themes were denoted orations and women’s themes were essays. While both men and women appeared on the platform to make oral presentations . . . there was a clear distinction between masculine and feminine styles. Men orated, women read” (94). Thus, nationwide at early teachers academies, a gender-specific elocutionary style was emerging that remained faithful to the doctrine of separate spheres. Moreover, as Robert J. Connors details, throughout the nation, woman’s entrance into nineteenth-century education affected the study as well as the practice of rhetoric: “Just as it seemed Aristotelian argumentative rhetoric was picking up steam . . . teachers began to find themselves facing classes of women. Such rhetoric was dangerous, and it could be fed to women only in harmless bits and pieces, stripped of its popular uses. This situation of rhetorical instruction for women mirrored the attitude that women’s proper sphere was private, minimizing the traditional agonistic oral forms and maximizing analysis and composition” (Composition-Rhetoric 53). Of course, for those women training to be teachers—orators of the classroom—this strippeddown form of rhetoric was particularly problematic, for the style of teaching advocated by Peirce eschewed corporal punishment and was instead based in persuading children to learn. Women teachers who attempted to implement Peirce’s sort of pedagogy would need persuasive oratory, not just those “harmless bits and pieces” of rhetoric that were offered to women at this time. In addition to suggesting the inadequacy of the truncated rhetorical system offered to woman-teacher candidates, an analysis of Peirce and Swift’s journals substantially questions Connors’s claims for an essential difference between male and female rhetoric. Connors suggests that manly rhetoric is naturally agonistic, for “masculine consciousness tacitly perceives most of life from the perspective of a contest” (Composition-Rhetoric 25): The primary effect of co-education was the quick decline of public contest as a staple of college life. As Ong argues, the agonistic impulse is a purely

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Melissa Ianetta male-against-male impulse. . . . Males perceive it as honorable to struggle ritually—either physically or verbally—with other males. Even to be bested in such contests preserves honor, if one has obeyed the rules of the contest. The winner and the loser can shake hands. But to struggle in a ritual contest with a woman? It was unthinkable. There was no precedent for it, no psychological rationale. Fighting with a woman, for the agonistically charged male, is ignoble on the face of it. To be victorious in such a contest would confer only slightly less shame and loss of face than to be defeated. (Connors, “Women’s Reclamation” 265)

With its interesting slippage between past and present tense, Connors’s argument here provocatively conflates the notion of socially constructed gender roles with an innate male drive. While an array of arguments against Connors’s position has been rehearsed elsewhere,3 Peirce’s and Swift’s journals seem to suggest that any missing overt agonism among women rhetors of the nineteenth century might be attributed to a lack of training in argument and opportunity for practice, not a biologically driven need for cooperative discussion. Indeed, viewing the response of Peirce’s students using a lens from the rhetoric of silence yields a subtle flavor of agonism from the seemingly still classroom.

“Another fit of not speaking”: The Rhetoric of Silence and the Lexington Academy The silence in Peirce’s school is not only attributable to the teachercandidates’ insufficient rhetorical training, for as Cheryl Glenn’s recent work has shown, such silence can be a rhetorical act in itself. As Glenn describes, silence is no tabula rasa to be overwritten by the discourses of the dominant powers, but in fact is composed of a range of communicative tactics and strategies that resist external definition by another: “For those rhetors who practice the art at its deeper levels, as a means of rhetorical delivery, [silence] can be empowered action, both resistant and creative. . . . [S]ilence continues to be, too often, read as simple passivity in situations where it has actually taken on an expressive power and has, in fact, transformed the rhetorical situation itself. . . . The delivery of silence . . . can be a way of refusing to take responsibility all the while appearing to be compliant” (155). While Connors might read the women students’ mute resistance to the “free exchange of ideas” in Peirce’s classroom as an example of woman’s innately nonconfrontational rhetoric, then, Glenn’s work helps us to understand that the normalites’ silence can in fact be read as itself an act of rhetorical agency.

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Peirce’s oft-expressed frustration seems to impart a sense of silence as an assertion of will: whether resisting collectively, as when the students “stand ‘mum’” (Peirce, “Journal” 56), or individually, as when “Miss M had another fit of not speaking” (55). In other words, his record of these performances of the rhetoric of silence does not read as demurely irenic, but as agonistic refusals to speak in an exigency that they did not seek, and for which they were not prepared. Indeed, given their lack of rhetorical training, silence may well have been their most eloquent means of communicating their frustration with their instructor’s pedagogical approach. Nineteenth-century agonism, it seems, could take many forms, encompassing not only “manly” debate, but “womanly” silence as well. Considering the narrow scope of his proffered rhetorical training, it should come as no surprise that Peirce’s attempts to elicit critical response from his students during classroom discussions met with unsatisfactory results. As these women were being schooled to communicate stories and facts without any attempt at argument or analysis, it would be difficult for them to assert an opinion or interrogate a proposition without transgressing the precepts of their own elocutionary training. That very ideal of the woman rhetor as the motionless reader with demurely downcast eyes, which was put forward in Reading class, precludes Peirce’s notion of the active scholar. When he describes this deficiency, however, he simply expresses aspersion rather than communicating any comprehension of its origins: “They neither ask nor answer questions. It would be well, if the scholars would note questions, queries and difficulties for considering, proposing and answering” (Peirce, “Journal” 60). Here Peirce clearly demonstrates a frustrated awareness of the contrast between his academic ideal and the reality of the classroom. The active rhetor Peirce seeks for his in-class discussion, however, would need access to the tools of persuasion and analysis, not simply a passport to the realm of the sentimental and the decorous. Accordingly, while ostensibly attempting to train his students for the classroom situation, Peirce is actually sending conflicting messages: speak like “a woman” but think like “a man”; achieve a passively becoming feminine elocutionary style, but on command instantly engage in animated classroom discussion. In many ways, then, the Lexington Academy was thus a microcosm of the mid-nineteenth century, for those forces that engendered conflict in this classroom were indicative of the changing role of women in rhetorical education. Comparing the journals of Cyrus Peirce and Mary Swift charts the manner in which traditional notions of eloquence were ill-suited and, in fact, downright damaging to those women attempting to expand their domestic role into a public

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realm. Until women employed the full array of rhetorical tools, it was guaranteed that, as Peirce himself said, their words would lack power, and the women themselves, wanting the language they were denied, would remain “mum,” silently resistant yet seemingly passive, in their frustration.

Notes 1. As examples of Connors’s ongoing influence on conversations in the field, see recent discussions by Hagood, Hanlon, Ramsey, and Shaver. 2. For further biographic information on Swift, see Freeberg and Glitter. 3. For critiques of Connors’s analysis, see Bordelon, Connors, Crowley, Mountford, and Ricker.

Works Cited Bordelon, Suzanne. “Contradicting and Complicating Feminization of Rhetoric Narratives: Mary Yost and Argument from a Sociological Perspectives.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 25.3 (Summer 2005): 101–24. Print. Connors, Robert J. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997. Print. Connors, Robert J. “The Rise and Fall of the Modes of Discourse.” College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 444–55. Print. Connors, Robert J. “Women’s Reclamation of Rhetoric in Nineteenth-Century America.” Feminine Principles and Women’s Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. Ed. Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. 67–90. Print. Crowley, Sharon. Rev. of Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy, by Robert J. Connors. Rhetoric Review 16 (1998): 340–43. Print. Enoch, Jessica. “Resisting the Script of Indian Education: Zitkala–Sa and the Carlisle Indian School.” College English 65.2 (2002): 117–41. Print. Freeberg, Ernest. The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. Print. Glenn, Cheryl. Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print. Glitter, Elizabeth. The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001. Print. Hagood, Grace. Rev. of Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women’s Tradition, 1600–1900, by Jane Donawerth. Women’s Studies in Communication 36:1 (2013): 113–15. Print.

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Hanlon, Christopher. “Embodied Eloquence, the Sumner Assault, and the Transatlantic Cable.” American Literature 82.3 (Sept. 2010): 489–518. Print. Harmon, Sandra D. “‘The Voice, Pen and Influence of Our Women Are Abroad in the Land’: Women and the Illinois State Normal University, 1857–1899.” Nineteenth-Century Women Learn to Write. Ed. Catherine Hobbs. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995. 84–102. Print. Herbst, Jurgen. And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989. Print. Hoffman, Nancy. Women’s “True” Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching. 2nd ed. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist, 2003. Print. Hosford, Francis Juliette. Father Shipard’s Magna Charta: A Century of Coeducation at Oberlin College. Boston: Marshall Jones, 1937. Print. Johnson, Nan. Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in North America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991. Print. Kitzhaber, Albert R. Rhetoric in American Colleges, 1850–1900. Diss. University of Washington, 1953. Print. Lamson, Mary Swift. Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman, the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Girl. 1881. Rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1975. Print. Mountford, Roxanne. “Feminization of Rhetoric?” Rev. of Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy, by Robert J. Connors. Journal of Advanced Composition 19 (1999). Web. 1 Oct. 2005. Norton, Arthur, ed. The First State Normal Schools in America: The Journals of Cyrus Peirce and Mary Swift. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1926. Print. Ogren, Christine A. The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print. Ong, Walter. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981. Print. Peirce, Cyrus. “The Journal of Cyrus Peirce.” Norton 3–80. Print. Peirce, Cyrus. “To Henry Banard.” 1 Jan. 1841. Norton xlviii–lvi. Print. Ramsey, Shawn. “The Voices of Counsel: Women and Civic Rhetoric in the Middle Ages.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 42.5 (2012): 472–89. Print. Ricker, Lisa Reid. “‘Ars Stripped of Praxis’: Robert J. Connors on Coeducation and the Demise of Agonistic Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review 23 (2004): 235–52. Print. Rothermel, Beth Ann. “A Sphere of Noble Action: Gender, Rhetoric, and Influence at a Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts State Normal School.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 33.1 (Winter 2002): 35–63. Print. Shaver, Lisa. Beyond the Pulpit: Women’s Rhetorical Roles in the Antebellum Religious Press. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2012. Print.

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Sugg, Reddings, Jr. Motherteacher: The Feminization of American Education. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1978. Print. Swift, Mary. “The Journal of Mary Swift.” Norton 81–226. Print.

chapter 6 “Shall the Courses in Composition and Literature Be Divided? Yes” Curricular Separation at the Illinois State Normal University, 1892–1916

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n her 2010 article “Lone Wolf or Leader of the Pack?” Lisa Mastrangelo en courages disciplinary historians to recognize that the most powerful voices  privileged in our histories of the field may represent only a small fraction of a larger chorus of teachers and scholars at the time. Mastrangelo challenges the “lone wolf ” status the field has ascribed to Fred Newton Scott, encouraging historians to recover networks of early compositionists and suggesting that the hero figures who populate our foundational histories of the field may have been far more emblematic than exceptional (251). Mastrangelo calls for the construction of more complex histories of the field that may reveal networks of individuals— both famous and unknown—who contributed to this discipline’s intellectual heritage. While Mastrangelo suggests that we seek networks of early teachers in the archives of composition, Jessica Enoch urges historians to “create new opportunities for listening to new voices” through local research (62). Enoch suggests that by changing the methods we use to research and construct our histories of the field, by “listening to new voices and learning about new pedagogies . . . we change our histories” (62). In this chapter, I take up Mastrangelo’s and Enoch’s calls by analyzing the early-twentieth-century separationist arguments made by one pioneer compositionist, June Rose Colby, a professor at the Illinois State Normal University (ISNU)1 from 1892 to 1932. Colby’s story demonstrates how

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alternative histories examining the archives of lesser-known teachers both enrich and challenge our understanding of composition’s complex past. Kelly Ritter’s 2011 article, “‘What Would Happen If Everybody Behaved as I Do?’: Mary Bush, Randall Jarrell, and the Historical ‘Disappointment’ of Women WPAs,” suggests why our histories of the field tend to seek out the kinds of hero narratives that Mastrangelo associates with Fred Newton Scott, and why historians may continue to eschew less-well-known curricular and extracurricular archives. Thus, when Ritter analyzes the archives of two early faculty at her university—writing program administrator Mary Bush and creative writer Randall Jarrell—she does so to demonstrate how the “rising star of creative writing courses and faculty” casts a shadow that obscured and marginalized the work of this early compositionist and her academic writing program (14). Ritter suggests that stories, like those of Bush, have also been obscured by our histories of the field because of our desire to view composition-rhetoric “as a site for social and intellectual change” rather than as a site of “individual or collective failures” (13). She encourages composition historians to research histories of failure in order to recapture “the collective lost voices of WPAs,” like Bush, whose academic careers speak of struggle, “disappointment,” and loss (14). Ritter’s observation that we wish for our histories to document success, rather than failure, may explain much of the historical silence surrounding the early-twentieth-century movement to separate composition and literature. While this movement may not have altered attitudes or curricula on the national level at the time, I believe we have much more to learn about how this presumably failed initiative to remove literary texts from the composition classroom impacted individuals and institutions on the local level. Colby is well placed to provide us with an understanding of how curricular separation was successfully argued for and enacted on the local level in the early twentieth century. In a 1916 polemic denouncing the use of literature to teach writing, for example, Colby asserts that the goal of composition instruction should not be “to make writers of literature or even literary writers or even, in the main, more appreciative readers of literature” (3). Instead, Colby argues—as Erika Lindemann would some three-quarters of a century later—that the composition course should prepare students for writing in a variety of academic disciplines. In the work that follows, then, I analyze three pieces of Colby’s composition scholarship that demonstrate how this early educator’s commitment to separating composition and literature helped her to improve and promote writing instruction at her university. Ultimately, Colby’s example is significant to our understanding of composition history because it reveals the kinds of curricular changes that were

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possible a century ago when individual writing faculty and programs designated composition as an independent [from English] academic discipline with its own theories, practices, and curricula distinct from literary study.

Colby’s University Archive Before examining Colby’s early-twentieth-century separationist efforts, it is important to acknowledge how local archives may help us to construct alternative histories of our discipline. Alternative histories, like Ritter’s, speak kairotically to composition-rhetoric at particular junctures in its disciplinary evolution, provide more complicated and nuanced narratives of the early field, and include new locations, new voices, and new methods in our constructions of history. Thus, David Gold, in a book that explores writing instruction at three Texas colleges, argues for the inclusion of a “diverse range of student bodies and institutions” in our histories of rhetorical instruction because “institutions [that operated] outside the traditional circles of political and academic power” may represent the first sites for “innovation and progressive change” in the field (7). As with the sources for many such alternative histories, June Rose Colby’s academic archive provides us with a revealing contrast to prevalent historical characterizations of college composition. Sharon Crowley observes that early English faculty at the elite universities she studied were unable to recognize composition as an “independent [i.e., from literature] discursive or pedagogical practice” (103), but Colby stands as a counterexample in her 1916 assertion that “composition is important enough to claim its right to an independent footing” in the university (“Shall the Courses” 9). More importantly, Colby’s scholarship, teaching, and administration of composition at ISNU reflect her embrace of separation during a time when our histories of the field suggest this movement failed to result in significant reforms to the teaching of college composition. My analysis of Colby’s archive focuses primarily on her published and unpublished manuscripts,2 but in the course of my research, I have also consulted ISNU’s course catalogues, yearbooks, and the university’s daily newspaper, as well as published histories of the university, correspondence included in Colby’s files, and her obituaries. While no course notes, assignment descriptions, or student papers exist that might provide us with a window into Colby’s daily classroom practices, the works preserved in her university archive form a picture of Colby as a competent and successful scholar, an engaged member of her university community, and a committed pedagogue. The works collected in Colby’s files, testimonials on the occasion of her retirement, and jokes in the student yearbook suggest that Colby was wholly dedicated to her normal university’s mission

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of preparing future teachers to work in the state’s public schools, and that she was invested in improving her classroom instruction and the instruction of English educators around the country. On the surface, Colby’s academic career may appear to follow a fairly typical trajectory for the time—from advanced student of literature to university English professor—but Colby may have had more in common with her normal university students than with her contemporaries professing literature at elite universities. She began her career as a teacher of high school English, Latin, and algebra, periodically interrupting her teaching to pursue a number of advanced degrees. In 1878 she earned a bachelor’s degree in literature, science, and the arts at the University of Michigan; from 1883–84 Colby attended the Harvard Annex, where she took classes in Greek literature and Chaucer; in 1884 she returned to the University of Michigan to earn a master’s degree in English; and in 1886 Colby became the first woman to earn a doctorate from the University of Michigan.3 Colby’s literary scholarship during her early career is notable in its scope, illustrating both her dedication to the study of literature and her expertise in a broad range of literary periods and genres including Elizabethan tragedy, contemporary novels, and children’s literature. Colby’s dissertation examined Some Ethical Aspects of Later Elizabethan Tragedy: Preceded by an Examination of Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy, and she composed an impressive number of publications during her forty-year academic career, including an Illinois Association of Teachers of English (IATE) Bulletin article on Hamlet as the fool (“A Fool”) and an English Journal article on “Training Teachers of Appreciation.” Colby also published a number of books during her career, including a text about teaching literature in the elementary schools that John Dewey initially encouraged Colby to publish and the composition of which Ella Flagg Young—the first woman elected to be president of the National Education Association—“offered [Colby] help of many kinds with” (Literature and Life in the School iv). Colby also published a critical edition of Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward and coedited a critical edition of George Eliot’s Silas Marner. Colby was, thus, a dedicated literary scholar and teacher, but unlike the literary scholars populating the faculty (and ultimately the historical archives) of elite universities, she was also deeply invested in improving the way writing was taught at her university. As I illustrate in the sections that follow, like many of her contemporaries—Gertrude Buck, Sophie Chantal Hart, Adeline Knight, and others—Colby’s scholarly interest in literature did not preclude her from developing a progressive writing curriculum and raising both the visibility and the status of composition at her university. In particular, I analyze the three pieces of Colby’s

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scholarship that specifically address the teaching of writing. I believe these works demonstrate both Colby’s commitment to composition and her embrace of curricular separation. The first work I analyze is a speech Colby gave before the ISNU faculty in 1899, in which she argues for offering the university’s rhetoric course earlier in the degree process, reducing the size of this class, and developing a writing curriculum that would help ISNU students develop more formal writing skills. I then discuss an essay Colby wrote for The Educational Bi-Monthly in 1908 in which she argues against combining instruction in composition with literary instruction and promotes, instead, a campuswide focus on writing. And finally, I turn to an essay Colby published in a regional English teachers association journal in 1916 that argues for the separation of composition and literature and for an acknowledgment of composition as a distinct field of study at the university. As I have found, Colby’s archive enriches our historical understanding by drawing our attention to the separationist arguments of the early twentieth century and revealing the ways in which this failed national movement may have shaped composition’s disciplinary status, practices, and curricula on the local level. Colby’s efforts to separate composition and literature at her own university and her published polemics denouncing the practice of combining these two subjects are both deserving of our historical attention, but it is important to note that Colby’s was not the only voice speaking out against using literature to teach composition at the time. In his 1914 presentation to the National Council of Teachers of English, Edwin L. Miller, principal of Northwestern High School (Detroit, Michigan), went so far as to argue that the field of English studies had become divided into two camps: those in favor of separation and those opposed to it. In his speech, Miller observes the futility of teaching both subjects at once, noting that English teachers were “trying at one and the same time to teach two things which, while superficially related, need to be attacked by radically different methods” (501). In her response to Miller, Ellen F. P. Peake of the State Normal School in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, concurs, noting that “there is but little more reason why [composition and literature] should be combined in one course than any other two subjects as loosely related; as, for instance, geography and history, French and Latin, drawing and writing” (515). While an article in the 1917 issue of the School Review refers to the separation debate as “the great war” and proposes a single course uniting literature, American history, and composition (Church 488), an impressive number of English educators used national journals to describe their success dividing the course in multiple—primarily secondary-school— contexts. For example, in a 1917 English Journal article, J. Roy Struble discusses the benefits of separation at the Charles City, Iowa, high school, noting that

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separating these subjects into two classes with two instructors helped to minimize “the use of literature as subjects for composition which can lead students to think of composition as something artificial and not at all connected with real life” (474). Thus, while Colby’s archive reveals how the separation of composition and literature at ISNU helped her to elevate the status of composition and develop a more effective, elective writing curriculum at her own university, her example also emphasizes the need for a broad range of archival studies to determine what influence the early-twentieth-century separationist movement may have had on local classroom practices and writing curricula around the country.

A “Very Inadequate” Composition Class When Colby joined the faculty at ISNU in 1892, composition was not a central part of the university’s mission to prepare new teachers for work in the public schools. First-year students at the university were not required to take any writing classes. The normal university offered only one rhetoric course4 that was required of third-year students, but this was at an institution where most students completed only a two-year degree. In 1892, the first year Colby taught the university’s rhetoric course, the catalogue suggests the course would help students to develop “purer diction . . . ; greater enjoyment of good English in books; and an appreciation of the fundamental qualities of good composition” (Thirty-Fifth Annual Catalogue 47). However, by her seventh year at the university, Colby composed an address to the Faculty Club at ISNU revealing her discontent with the way writing was being taught at the university and proposing dramatic changes to the goals of the course and to composition’s place in the normal university’s curriculum more broadly. Colby demonstrates her intellectual investment in reforming the way writing was taught at her normal university by critiquing the pedagogical shortcomings of the university’s only rhetoric class. In fact, her response to the practical challenges she faced demonstrates a key departure from the responses of her contemporaries at Harvard and elsewhere. Robert J. Connors suggests that many early composition instructors lacked the wherewithal, authority, and ability to critique composition practices, noting that what might amaze us today about our predecessors is the “relative lack of direct complaint we hear from them” about their working conditions (“Overwork/Underpay” 113). But in this 1899 speech, Colby demonstrates her possession of both the determination and the authority to critique how composition was administered at her university. She argues that “the course offered in composition is very inadequate” (“What Does the Department” 38) and, presaging our contemporary critiques of the early-twentieth-century

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composition class, she notes that “under present conditions, with our large numbers of students, our short course, and one teacher, I confess I see small opportunity to better it. Add to this the fact . . . that the course is not offered till the fifth term . . . , and it is evident that the department of rhetoric has but little influence upon the teaching power of the great body of students enrolled in the school” (38–39). Colby then proposes a number of solutions to these problems, including moving the course earlier in the curriculum: she suggests that either composition be made a first-semester course or “if the number of hours given to [other subjects] be reduced to four per week, as has been suggested, it may be found possible to spare one hour a week for instruction in composition during all the first year” (40–41). The English professors Crowley researched did not express much, if any, interest in improving composition instruction (125), but Colby’s 1899 speech demonstrates her belief that composition instruction was important enough to occupy ISNU students—and their English faculty—for all of the first year of college. Colby’s expressed commitment to composition instruction in this 1899 speech represents a striking contrast between this normal school pedagogue and her elite university peers; nevertheless, Colby’s faculty club address also suggests that her composition practices and her theories of language were anything but unique for the time. Indeed, at the turn of the twentieth century, Colby’s practice was very much current-traditional. Like the faculty who Crowley suggests regularly complained about their students’ spelling, punctuation, and sentence errors, Colby bemoans her students’ lack of preparation for college composition, and offers the familiar complaint that “comparatively few [ISNU students] have a clear notion of the functions of the paragraph [and] not many have even any practical mastery of the sentence as an instrument in expressing thought” (“What Does the Department” 27). In response to these perceived deficiencies, Colby’s currenttraditional composition pedagogy emphasized helping students perfect their language usage, not preparing them to write in a variety of rhetorical contexts. In this 1899 speech before her colleagues at ISNU, Colby also endorses the theory that language transparently represents thought, and she argues that “thought must precede speech” (15). The notion that language served only to represent, not to construct, thought aligns Colby with early figures like Harvard’s Adams Sherman Hill. Thus, she insists that “when the writer really knows what [he or she] thinks and what [he or she] feels, the problems of composition are reduced to the one problem of making language tell the truth” (27). As James A. Berlin contends, current-traditional rhetoric emerged from this very notion of knowledge as prior to language and from the belief that “language is arbitrary

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and enters into meaning only after the truth is discovered, [requiring that] the writer must take pains that language not distort what is to be communicated” (9). Like many college composition faculty around the country, then, Colby’s writing instruction focused more on error correction than on effective communication. The contrast between Colby’s work and the rise of composition at the elite university becomes evident, however, when we look at the impact of writing pedagogy advocates such as Colby and Harvard’s Barrett Wendell. In a 1995 article, Sue Carter Simmons writes that “as hard as Wendell worked to improve the teaching of composition at Harvard, he never had the institutional authority to define—or to redefine—the work he did. At Harvard, both the teaching of composition and the teachers who taught it occupied positions of low status” (347). This was not the case for Colby, whose status at the university was affirmed with her appointment as department chair in 1899, and in the years following her 1899 polemic to the faculty club at ISNU, some of the reforms Colby advocated for in this speech were put into practice. For example, the required rhetoric course was made a first semester, rather than fifth semester, course and the university hired an additional faculty member to teach composition. More significantly, following Colby’s 1899 speech, her literature and rhetoric department was empowered to develop an elective composition curriculum that would provide ISNU students with instruction in writing beyond the first year. Not only did Colby feel privileged to speak, then, but her words were also heard and heeded by her university community. Similar evidence of Colby’s influence appears in the dramatic transformations made to ISNU’s rhetoric course at this time—transformation from a course that taught “purer diction” and literary appreciation (Thirty-Fifth Annual Catalogue 47) to a course focused on the more elementary aspects of composition and one that offered no literary instruction whatsoever. Thus, by 1899, the catalogue description for composition illustrates the course’s new focus on sentence and paragraph construction, as well as its “brief study of the specific forms of discourse: Narration, Description, Exposition, and Argumentation” (Annual Catalogue 1899 30). This current-traditional focus for the composition class at ISNU is not surprising given how Colby describes the goals of the course in her address to the faculty club that same year. What is surprising and significant is that ISNU students were no longer taught to enjoy books or to appreciate the published compositions they read as models in their rhetoric course (Thirty-Fifth Annual Catalogue 47). Here, then, we see both the impact of Colby’s advocacy and an exception to the rule that “the use of literary texts in composition instruction was simply taken for granted during the first three decades of the twentieth century” (Crowley 97).

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Because of Colby’s influence, students who enrolled in ISNU’s rhetoric course at the turn of the twentieth century could expect to encounter some fairly static modal genres—narration, description, argument, exposition—and some standardized and decontextualized views of “correct” sentence and paragraph constructions. However, they would not have been asked to appreciate, analyze, or emulate literary works. .

From Separation to Expansion: ISNU’s Elective Writing Classes When she advocated successfully for removing literature from the composition course at ISNU, Colby also set the stage for an expansion of her university’s writing curriculum. In her 1899 speech before her ISNU colleagues, Colby provides an extended explanation of her instruction in the required rhetoric course, detailing the work students performed to develop sentences and paragraphs over the course of the semester and complaining that this work left little time to introduce students to longer narrative, descriptive, expository, or argumentative compositions. Colby also suggests that most of her students could not retain what they had learned in her required course because skill in writing “requires far more time and more practice in composition than present conditions make possible” (“What Does the Department” 34–35). While these complaints may have been offered as a defense for the class, as an explanation for why students at the university were not better writers as a result of their enrollment in the fifthterm rhetoric class, it seems more likely that Colby viewed her 1899 speech as an opportunity to argue for elective writing classes designed to supplement the required course. Colby’s argument on this occasion appears to have been successful, for the following year a three-semester sequence of composition classes was established. Thus, while ISNU’s 1899 catalogue details a single rhetoric course, the 1900 catalogue mentions “three terms in composition” that included “constant practice in theme writing, together with instruction in the elements of rhetoric” (Annual Catalogue 37). And the 1901 catalogue provides additional descriptions of these classes: the required first-year course was described as “an elementary course based on Scott and Denney’s Elementary English Composition”; the university’s elective course in rhetoric was based on John Franklin Genung’s Outlines of Rhetoric, Part II (40); and ISNU’s “more advanced [elective] course” in the “Science of  Discourse” used Barrett Wendell’s English Composition and Herbert Spencer’s Philosophy of Style (41). ISNU’s class in the “Science of Discourse” mirrors many of the advanced writing classes detailed in Katherine H. Adams’s book, A Group of  Their Own. For example, to enroll in the university’s advanced writing course, ISNU

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students were required to take a minimum of three semesters of English, and the best works composed in this class were regularly published in the university’s newspaper, The Daily Vidette. More significantly, the 1908 catalogue reveals a rhetorical focus for ISNU’s writing classes and at least a partial rejection of the arhetorical, currenttraditional approach that Colby had embraced less than a decade earlier. In the opening paragraphs describing “Composition and Rhetoric” at the university, the 1908 catalogue description observes that “[t]he best practis [sic], in composition is not in miscellaneous ‘exercises’ with no purpose or value outside of the practis [sic]. It is obtained rather in writing and speaking matter that would need to be written and spoken even if there were no class in composition” (53). This description further includes an allusion to writing as a skill that should be taught by teachers across the curriculum, a theme that Colby takes up in her articles for The Educational Bi-Monthly and the IATE Bulletin, discussed below. The evolving curriculum reflected in these catalogue descriptions illustrates a radical change in how composition was taught at ISNU during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and it suggests there may have been a related elevation in the status of composition at this university.

Pedagogical Evolution: A Tale of Two Colbys Colby’s university archive illustrates the dramatic transformation of her own ideas about language and composition instruction, as she moved from enacting a decidedly current-traditional practice to endorsing a campuswide writing initiative that Kenneth Lindblom and Patricia Dunn suggest was similar to the language-across-the-curriculum programs of the 1960s (53). These transformations are evidenced both in ISNU’s revised writing curriculum and in Colby’s own polemical article, “English in the School,” published in The Educational BiMonthly in 1908. In this article, Colby outlines some of the problems complicating English education, arguing that “the primary cause of our present weakness and general ineffectiveness, as I see it, is a widespread failure to see the true nature of English and its consequent relation to all other subjects” and bemoaning both the “faulty isolation” in the higher grades, where language study was offered separately from study in the content areas, and a more general “tendency to confound English with literature” (3). Colby suggests that when language study is separated from the study of other disciplines, language teachers may become focused on trivial details like grammar and spelling: “In the language class [the teacher] grows critical of speech forms—critical possibly in the narrow and popular sense of merely fault-finding. It is commoner certainly to meet here with corrections

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of faulty forms than with incitements to adequate and vigorous expression. In some cases written language becomes mainly a drill in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. The form side, in short, of value only as an aid in expressing, [which eliminates] from teacher and pupil the necessity of having something not entirely inane to express” (14). Colby’s 1908 dismissal of a superficial obsession with “forms” and her championing of “vigorous expression” at the expense of “narrow . . . fault finding” seems like a departure for a pedagogue who, in 1899, complained that “[c]omparatively few [of her university students] have a clear notion of the functions of the paragraph [or] any practical mastery of the sentence as an instrument in expressing thought” (“What Does the Department” 27). By thus signposting her own professional evolution, Colby complicates our understanding of the early-twentieth-century English professor by illustrating that such a category is, of course, little more than a useful fiction. Colby’s 1908 essay demonstrates the maturation of her thinking, as she moves from her earlier, formalist stance to condemn the artificial separation of English-language study from the study of all subjects in the curriculum. Thus, in their research into Colby’s work with the ISNU Committee on English, Lindblom and Dunn observe that in this 1908 article, Colby distinguishes “between language as mere expression and language as a means of learning—a distinction usually credited to the language across the curriculum movement in 1960s Britain” (53). Colby asserts that students need much more than a rudimentary understanding of the discourse practices of other disciplines when she contends that all teachers must become engaged in the teaching of writing. She suggests that “the end to be attained, the honest mind thinking intelligently and expressing itself in words adequate to its thought, is a thing too great, too many-sided, too difficult to be attained without the service and cooperation of every subject in the course” (“English” 6). Colby argues further that “all training in language and composition is necessarily a training in thinking in some definite field and expressing a body of related thought belonging to that field” (11), and she contends that writing should be taught in all academic subjects because it may aid students in “the acquiring of further knowledge” in other fields of study (3). This theory of composition instruction appears in ISNU’s 1908 catalogue as well. In a description that anticipates writing-in-the-disciplines approaches to composition instruction, Colby’s catalogue copy suggests that “[e]very teacher who insists upon logical thinking and clear statement is a teacher of composition” (Annual Catalogue 53). Colby’s 1908 advocacy of new methods for composition instruction puts her in good company at the time, alongside both famous figures in the field and those who have yet to find their way into the historical record. For example, Colby’s

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article echoes the work of James Fleming Hosic, a leader in the field of English studies and another normal-college proponent of a writing-in-the-disciplines (or cooperative) approach to composition instruction (see Russell). But her example also demonstrates what we may learn of the early field by recovering the work of lesser-known academics such as George Starr Lasher, the first president of the Michigan Council of Teachers of English, who advocated developing a first-year university writing curriculum focused entirely on students’ semester-long investigations of their chosen vocations (“Roast Beef ”). Thus, Colby may be emblematic of dozens of unacknowledged early-twentieth-century English studies teacherscholars who contributed to the creation of a remarkably forward-looking intellectual corpus of composition pedagogy at the time, but whose individual theories and practices we may have yet to discover in the archives. In just under a decade, Professor June Rose Colby moved from a “textbook” case of current-traditional pedagogy to a richly nuanced—and startlingly “twentyfirst century”—revisioning of composition practice. She made a similarly remarkable and related transition from her 1899 belief that writing serves no purpose beyond presenting “the thought of the speaker or writer exactly as it exists in [his/her] mind” (“What Does the Department” 13) to, in 1908, adopting the theory that language study is “training in thinking in some definite field” (“English” 11). Colby’s plea for the separation of literature and composition—and her complementary pleas for writing classes to adopt the “questions . . . objects and scenes” of other disciplines as material for composition (4)—demonstrates what more we may learn of our discipline’s early history when we study the ways in which failed national movements, like separation, may have succeeded in local academic contexts.

“Shall the Courses in Composition and Literature Be Divided? Yes.” Colby’s background was in literature and she maintained an undeniable commitment to literary instruction and scholarship throughout her academic career; however, her archive suggests Colby did not approve of the use of literary texts in the writing classroom. Her theoretical and pedagogical approaches to writing transformed dramatically over the course of her career, but Colby’s belief that literary texts had no place in the composition classroom remained constant. I conclude this analysis of Colby’s archive with a consideration of her most vigorous argument against the use of literature in the composition classroom: Colby’s 1916 IATE Bulletin article, “Shall the Courses in Composition and Literature Be Divided? Yes.” Here, Colby both rejects the use of literature to teach composition and advocates for a multidisciplinary approach to the class. She argues that using

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literary texts to provide students with both subjects for, and models of, composition would not prepare them for writing in other disciplines or for purposes other than literary criticism and appreciation (3). Instead, Colby advocates a theory of language and a complementary approach to composition instruction intended to help students gain possession of their ideas and learn to organize and present those ideas in any rhetorical context. Colby contends that students’ written work may “be in any field whatever and no more frequently in the field of literature and criticism than of mathematics, history, natural science, business, or sport . . . [because] the relation of composition to literature is exactly the same as its relation to geometry, to physiology, to ancient history, or to any other subject” (3). Colby concludes that if the practice of combining composition and literature in a single course were to continue, “it would be far better to drop literature altogether for a term or a term and a half each year and give the time unrestrictedly to composition” (8). By thus privileging composition instruction over literary study, Colby complicates the belief that early-twentieth-century English faculty were apathetic, at best, in their administration of and instruction in composition. As Colby argues, composition and literature are separate disciplines and considerable expertise is required for composition faculty who must teach writing as a foundation for study in all disciplines at the university. Colby asserts that the programming of composition, its oversight, should be the charge of an expert with an understanding of composition pedagogy, suggesting that composition instruction at the university should be the “charge of a special teacher who, feeling the relation of [his or her] subject to all the fields in which thinking and the expression of thought are required, will not limit to one field [his or her] efforts to help students to think clearly, logically, and truly, and to express themselves fitly and effectively. [His or her] work will be quite as much along what are called practical lines as along literary” (9). Thus Colby acknowledges that the “method of programming composition” should be the work of an expert in the teaching of writing, someone who “will not limit” students to a study of the writing performed in only one academic field (9). While Connors observes that after 1910, composition instruction was viewed as “intellectually valueless” in the research universities he studied (Composition-Rhetoric 100), it is clear from this 1916 article that Colby, the normal school pedagogue, appreciated the range of disciplinary knowledges required to administer and teach composition.

Toward New Voices in Composition History It may be tempting to dismiss Colby’s story as too idiosyncratic and localized to speak to the larger history and values of the discipline—after all, Colby is an

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academic whose career never reached the historic heights of Fred Newton Scott or Gertrude Buck. But as Ritter’s work reminds us, it is “the voices of [those] who didn’t ‘make it’” who may be ideally positioned to provide us with an understanding of, and appreciation for, this field’s diverse history (15). Colby’s example is significant because it helps to reveal small pockets of consensus regarding curricular separation in the early twentieth century, bringing to light “a networked group of teachers and scholars with shared goals and teaching practices” who have heretofore remained invisible in our constructions of history (Mastrangelo 251). Colby’s story also demonstrates how more inclusive disciplinary histories— including those that examine the evolution of writing pedagogy on the individual level—have the potential to inform our contemporary debates about everything from classroom practices to disciplinary and curricular relationships. Colby’s archive provides us with a new way to read our discipline’s long struggle for separation from, and professional parity with, literary study in the university. Rather than view the early-twentieth-century separationist movement as a failure because it did not significantly alter attitudes or curricula on the national level, we should learn more about how this movement may have impacted individuals and institutions on the local level. Colby’s advocacy of composition was essential to the development of ISNU’s advanced writing curriculum: the university’s elective writing classes and interdisciplinary approach to writing instruction may not have been possible in an institutional culture where composition was both marginalized by and hopelessly wedded to literary study. Colby’s story suggests that we need to know much more about our academic forebears, about those early pedagogues and scholars working on the local level who may have made it possible for us to imagine a discipline of composition with “an independent footing” in the university (Colby “Shall the Courses” 9).

Notes 1. ISNU was dubbed a “university” to meet the needs of educating future teachers and to include the “agricultural, mechanical and commercial interests of the state” in an effort to appease lawmakers who supported a competing proposal for a new industrial university (Harper 49). 2. This research was funded through the support of an Oakland University Faculty Research Fellowship. I am indebted to Dr. Jo Ann Rayfield, former archivist at Illinois State University, for her research support; and to Melissa Ianetta and Jim Nugent for patiently responding to countless drafts of this chapter. 3. Colby would have been an advanced graduate student when Fred Newton

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Scott enrolled at the University of Michigan, but there is no record of any personal or professional contact between them. 4. The composition course at ISNU was referred to as a “rhetoric” course, although archival evidence suggests that this course did not include a focus on classical rhetorical theory or practice in spoken discourse.

Works Cited Adams, Katherine H. A Group of Their Own: College Writing Courses and American Women Writers, 1880–1940. Albany: State U of New York P, 2001. Print. Annual Catalogue and Course of Study of the Illinois State Normal University. Illinois State University. Normal, IL, 1899, 1900, 1901–1902, 1908–1909. Print. Berlin, James A. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900–1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. Print. Church, H. V. “An Experiment in Third-Year English.” School Review 25.7 (1917): 488– 94. Print. Colby, J. Rose. “English in the School.” Educational Bi-Monthly (Oct. 1908): 1–11. Print. Colby, J. Rose. “A Fool Steps in: Being a Partial Restatement of an Old Case.” Illinois Association of Teachers of English Bulletin 19 (1923): 3–14. Print. Colby, J. Rose. Literature and Life in the School. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1906. Print. Colby, J. Rose. “Shall the Courses in Composition and Literature Be Divided? Yes.” Illinois Association of Teachers of English Bulletin 8.6 (1916): 1–10. Print. Colby, J. Rose. Some Ethical Aspects of Later Elizabethan Tragedy: Preceded by an Examination of Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy. PhD thesis. University of Michigan, 1886. Print. Colby, J. Rose. “Training Teachers of Appreciation.” English Journal 14.4 (Apr. 1925): 277–87. Print. Colby, J. Rose. “What Does the Department of Literature and Rhetoric Contribute to the Equipment of Our Students?” Address to the Faculty Club. Illinois State Normal University. 18 May 1899. June Rose Colby papers. Box 1. Dr. Jo Ann Rayfield Archives. Normal, IL. Print. Connors, Robert J. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997. Print. Connors, Robert J. “Overwork/Underpay: Labor and Status of Composition Teachers Since 1880.” Rhetoric Review 9 (1990): 108–25. Print. Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 1998. Print. Eliot, George. Silas Marner. Ed. June Rose Colby and Richard Jones. New York: Appleton, 1902. Print.

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Enoch, Jessica. “Changing Research Methods, Changing History: A Reflection on Language, Location, and Archive.” Composition Studies 38.2 (2010): 47–73. Print. Gold, David. Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873–1947. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Harper, Charles. Development of the Teachers College in the United States. Bloomington, IL: McKnight, 1935. Print. Lasher, George Starr. “Roast Beef Instead of Hash.” English Journal 6.10 (Dec. 1917): 664–76. Print. Lindblom, Kenneth, and Patricia Dunn. “Cooperative Writing ‘Program’ Administration at Illinois State Normal University: The Committee on English of 1904–05 and the Influence of Professor J. Rose Colby.” Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration: Individual, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline. Eds. Barbara L’Eplattenier and Lisa Mastrangelo. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2004. 37–70. Print. Lindemann, Erika. “Freshman Composition: No Place for Literature.” College English 55.3 (1993): 311–16. Print. Mastrangelo, Lisa. “Lone Wolf or Leader of the Pack?: Rethinking the Grand Narrative of Fred Newton Scott.” College English 72.3 (2010): 248–68. Print. Miller, Edwin L. “Separating Composition from Literature in the High School.” English Journal 3.8 (1914): 500–12. Print. Peake, Ellen F. P. “Discussion.” English Journal 3.8 (1914): 513–15. Print. Ritter, Kelly. “‘What Would Happen If Everybody Behaved as I Do?’: Mary Bush, Randall Jarrell, and the Historical ‘Disappointment’ of Women WPAs.” Composition Studies 39.1 (2011): 13–39. Print. Russell, David. “Writing Across the Curriculum in 1913: James Fleming Hosic on ‘Cooperation.’” English Journal 75.5 (1986): 34–37. Print. Scott, Sir Walter. Quentin Durward. Ed. June Rose Colby. New York: Appleton, 1912. Print. Simmons, Sue Carter. “Constructing Writers: Barrett Wendell’s Pedagogy at Harvard.” College Composition and Communication 46.3 (1995): 327–52. Print. Struble, J. Roy. “The Advantage of Separating Composition Teaching and Literature Teaching.” English Journal 6.7 (1917): 473–74. Print. Thirty-Fifth Annual Catalogue of the Illinois State Normal University. Illinois State University. Normal, IL, 1893. Print.

chapter  7 “A Home for Thought Where Learning Rules” Progressive Era Students and Teacher Identity at a Historic Normal School

Beth Ann Rothermel

I

n her 1889 article “Spots of Weakness in Training,” English teacher Adeline Knight defines the “real teacher” as “a person of quick, deep sympathies” (13). She also voices criticism of the teacher “who makes no practical application of facts, and merely teaches textbooks thoroughly. Concerning political questions, foreign news, the work of the world, she knows nothing. . . . Neither teacher nor taught can be called literate. The teacher has absolutely no resources beyond ‘the English branches’” (16–17). For such “weaknesses,” Knight blames teacher training, which must do more than provide subject area content to future teachers. It must also give teachers the complex intellectual resources that they will need to “set thought and fancy flashing between soul and soul” (13). A half decade later, Knight would bring these convictions about teacher identity development to a state normal school in Westfield, Massachusetts, helping to shape a Progressive Era institution where students might grow both intellectually and professionally. In its desire to provide teachers with more than just content, Westfield was not alone. Progressive Era normal schools around the country cultivated programs that made explicit links between intellectual growth and professional development. As Christine A. Ogren shows in her recent history of American normal schools, these institutions implemented programs that “provided in-depth technical and experiential training, a broad liberal background in the field, and

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emotional inspiration” (149). Intellectual and vocational development were interconnected processes, “incorporat[ing] each student’s hand, head, and heart” (149). As a teacher of writing pedagogy in an English education program at the comprehensive institution that replaced the Westfield State Normal School, I experience moments of envy as I read Ogren’s history and consider the history of my own school. Scholars such as Janet Alsup are among those who have powerfully shown the ways in which teacher training today often fails to help students develop “integrated, holistic professional selves” (5). Indeed, today’s students graduating from Westfield with a concentration in English education often express a well-defined sense of themselves as “English majors”—readers and writers of varied texts. Less apparent, though, both before and after they complete their student teaching, are the ways in which they see themselves as teachers of English or literacy workers, capable of engaging in transformative intellectual work in the classroom. Studying the history of my own institution inspires me, as I see at times more complex conceptions of teacher education at work.1 Yet my time in Westfield’s historical archive also reveals institutional practices that might have led to some of the more limiting conceptions of teacher identity often critiqued today. More specifically, archival materials show that Westfield’s Progressive Era students frequently employed both curricular and extracurricular writing to develop and express their understandings of professional identity. My sources for this chapter include student essays and outlines, written between 1903 and 1911 for varied courses, and bound into collections by school faculty and administrators. Especially significant are two volumes of student writing in the field of child study (Genetic Psychology) as well as a 1911 collection, Essays in Sociology. Other archival sources include two issues of a student journal, The Normal Exponent, as well as yearbooks from the 1910s and 1920s. In these student writings, I identify moments where future teachers use varied rhetorical practices to adapt and enact certain scripts that may have worked against “integrated, holistic professional selves” and that may dictate professional life even today—scripts such as those that perpetuate a belief in the teacher as an autonomous, isolated, and authoritative expert (Alsup 5; see also Britzman 448). But I also explore moments where preservice teachers engaged in more transformative discourses—discourses that define teacher expertise as a space for social critique, learning, and collaboration. Furthermore, through their writing, normal school students do not just represent the varied discourses of their field and institution; rather, they actively participate in shaping understandings of teacher identity that both limit and lead to growth.

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The Normal School Mission The first coeducational public normal school in this country, Westfield was among those schools founded by Horace Mann, who hoped that they would fill the demand for teachers in newly established common schools. These new teacher-training schools would “drill” students in the subjects they would teach, verify that the students were “of good moral character,” and teach them how to keep order in the school (Herbst 12–31). However, normal schools like Westfield evolved more complex missions over the course of the nineteenth century, arguing assiduously that a rigorous curriculum focused on intellectual growth, not just occasional remediation, was essential to a teacher’s success. Christine A. Ogren argues that more traditional course work in the sciences and humanities provided future teachers, many of whom were the children of laborers and farmers, with “cultural capital”—a “store of prestigious knowledge” that would give them “cultural-class standing,” even if it would not improve their “social class standing” as poorly paid teachers (118–19). Yet course descriptions as well as the writings of instructors such as history, writing, and literature teacher Adeline Knight show Westfield asserting that such “cultural capital” would lead to more effective teaching—to powerful personae in the classroom. Westfield sought to cultivate dispositions they saw as important to “becoming a teacher”—to assuming a powerful classroom identity, thus fusing academic work in the sciences and humanities with pedagogical training and experiences. For example, students of the 1890s studied geology, anatomy, mathematics, rhetoric, literature, and history. As part of these courses, faculty covered approaches to and theories about teaching, making visible connections between disciplinary knowledge and pedagogy. Knight’s history students engaged in detailed study of early American history, but also collaboratively created a series of lesson outlines that drew on that learning (Colonial). Students also took genetic and experimental psychology, completing field-study projects in conjunction with these courses. First offered in 1908, John Hockenberry’s sociology course allowed students to explore the connections between issues such as child labor and education. Additionally, students did fieldwork, as the normal school opened a training school where students would observe and student teach. Teachers hired for the training school were part of the Westfield faculty, working closely in conjunction with each other. Students were not, thus, sent to schools around the community, but rather expected to embody the identity of the teacher within the same spaces where they had been studying pedagogical theory. The “Report of the Committee on Normal Schools” described the work of these in-house

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training schools as intellectual work, places where students would go beyond “illustrating” and “testing” what they had learned to “originating theory of education” (14).2 As part of this complex process of development, students did a great deal of writing. Archival sources confirm how important writing was for students within and outside the classroom throughout the Progressive Era, but particularly between the years 1894 and 1915. Graduation programs from the 1890s list essays on varied civic and educational topics delivered orally each year. While students no longer delivered graduation addresses after the early 1900s, each had to write a thesis to graduate, a practice that continued until at least the 1930s. For these essays, students were encouraged to draw on “work in European and American Pedagogy . . . in Psychology and Child Study; in School Economy and in Pedagogics; in Natural Sciences” (“Westfield”). Although this is not explicitly indicated, some of the essays bound into collections in the archive, such as A. Caro Balcom’s 1911 “Child Labor in America,” may have been submitted as theses. Students also wrote outside the classroom, producing feature articles, editorials, poems, and humorous vignettes often on pedagogical topics for The Normal Exponent, a student journal from the 1890s, and school yearbooks. These writings reveal the cultural capital students were acquiring as well as the pedagogical theories to which they were exposed. Yet in the topics they chose and the rhetorical practices they employed, students also embodied their institution’s mission of engaging in professional development through intellectual work. I argue that through their writing they explore and express issues central to the development of their identities as teachers. As with any discourse, the writers are a product of that writing, but they are also its creators; the writing these students create serves as a space in which they adopt, adapt, reject, and help craft cultural and institutional discourses on who and what the teacher should be.

Teacher Identity and Normal School Discourse Drawing on the teacher-identity scholarship of Deborah Britzman, Jane Danielewicz, and Janet Alsup, my analysis of Westfield student writing rests on the assumption that it reflects the multiple and contradictory cultural, educational, and institutional discourses in which the students’ lives were embedded—that writers are not unified or essential beings, even if they believe this to be the case, but rather have fluid and multiple identities that are continually under construction. In exploring the idea of the “teaching self,” Danielewicz offers this helpful elaboration of identity: “Though identities are fluid, individuals do have recognizable selves. We might think of a person’s identities as points of fixation, temporarily arrested states, that are achieved moment by moment in the course of

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relations between individuals” (3). Janet Alsup, similarly, conceives of teacheridentity development as a process of becoming, “inclusive of the intellectual, the corporeal, and the affective aspects of human selfhood” (6). The developing teacher must constantly “negotiat[e] conflicting subject positions and ideologies” (6). Yet Alsup draws on the work of Jim Gee, suggesting that while these conflicting discourses “determine the kind of speech an educator can engage in on a daily bases and still be part of a community,” educators still bring their own “subjectivities” to the process, and may in that space find ways to “integrate multiple subject positions” and “enact change” (9). In the writing of the normal school students, I look for both “points of fixation” and moments of “flux.” Their contributions to institutional discourse suggest that being a successful teacher meant mastering varied kinds of discourse, including third-person reports aimed to inform, like the 1903 Laboratory Study of Authors written for Knight’s literature course, or Laura Gibbs’s 1907 essay on the geology of the Connecticut River Valley. In sociology essays such as Lena B. Ripley’s 1911 “The Wage Earning Woman,” students also employed argument, drawing on research as well as observation. Fieldwork observations also informed student writing, such as in Miriam Thomas’s 1903 “Child Study Outline,” completed for her genetic psychology course. While not a major focus of this essay, oral communication skills, developed through dramatics and debates, were also important institutional discourse practices, as were the extracurricular writing students did for periodicals like The Normal Exponent and The Normalite, places where students seemed keenly aware of their relationship to an audience. Although I have little access to what the students felt about this discourse they produced, in studying these materials I see the students as invested writers, actively participating in the process of identity construction. In other words, they were writing themselves into their identities as teachers just as their identities were being written by the discourses around them. Although they explore different issues besides teacher identity, Kathryn Fitzgerald and Patrice K. Gray have applied similar lenses to the writings of normal school students. Drawing on the work of Lucille M. Schultz, Gray urges readers to hear in their writing more than just “instructional and institutionalized voices of rhetoricians, of teachers, of textbook writers, of education reformers” (qtd. in Gray 169). Gray’s analysis of essays written by Fitchburg students in the 1890s reveals how student writing “suggests their lived experiences with the ongoing changes and debates about the curriculum and the mission of the school” (178). They are active shapers of and contributors to the discourse on normal schools. Similarly, in her article “The Platteville Papers Revisited,” Kathryn Fitzgerald

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considers the shaping power of genre on student expression. She identifies ways that students may have “subverted” school genres, but also how “genres . . . discursively constrained access to diverse subject positions and silenced the perspectives they could have imparted” (133). Subversion and constraint are both evident in the teacher-identity discourses the Progressive Era Westfield students produced. In their written discourse they take on and construct identities that today we often critique for the ways they limit both student and teacher growth—assuming the position of the teacher as “already completed, as an omnipotent knower, and as the key actor in the drama of education” (Britzman, “Is” 71). But they also embody identities more like those teacher educators currently hope to foster—as learners, social critics, and collaborators.

Constructing “Experts” In her seminal 1986 article, “Cultural Myths in the Making of a Teacher: Biography and Social Structure in Teacher Education,” Deborah Britzman identifies certain recurring cultural assumptions that may have devastating consequences for teacher development: the teacher as “self-made expert,” upon whom “everything depends” (448). Teachers must independently “predict, contain, and thus control student learning” (449). Teacher “experts” must also be “certain in their knowledge,” and “have nothing to learn” (450). Knowledge, furthermore, comes in “discrete units to be acquired,” and “any condition of uncertainty” is a “threat to the teacher’s authority” (450). Britzman proposes that to break from this “naïve cycle,” we embrace Aronowitz and Giroux’s “concept of the teacher as transformative intellectual,” and, thus, “enable prospective teachers to reconsider the cultural images which student teachers bring to their teacher education” (454). In embracing this call, scholars in varied fields have not so much cast off the idea of “expertise,” but worked to redefine it. More recent research on teacher identity presents the “expert teacher” not as omnipotent authoritarian, but as self-reflexive, able to critique the contexts in which s/he and her/his students work and live, and then act in response. S/he is still confident, but more often represented as a facilitator—a learner in a classroom space that is messy, as students and teachers work critically together to constitute knowledge. For Alsup, such teachers have also found ways to integrate their personal and professional selves. Others, such as Jonna Perrillo, a Writing Project scholar, have contributed to this redefinition by suggesting that in the face of “political mandates” that deny and negate teacher “expertise,” educators should embrace “opportunities to make their professional knowledge, beliefs, and inquiry processes visible and

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meaningful to the public” (11). For Perillo, “editorializing” about educational issues when writing for the public is a means to professional development (18). Progressive Era normal schools evince a similar belief that writing is a pathway to professional development. The 1899 “Report of the Committee on Normal Schools” claims that “[t]eachers should be trained to write and speak. They should be at home on the page of the periodical and on the platform. They should not only have ideas and theories, but they should acquire the power to impress them upon others” (30). As noted, Westfield students did write often. But what, more specifically, do the topics they chose, the discourse they produced on those topics, and the rhetorical practices they employed say to us about how normal school students may have understood what it meant to be an “expert teacher”? Christine A. Ogren suggests that writing both in and out of the classroom helped to build the confidence of students, many of whom came to the normal school with limited educational experiences. This likely held true for Westfield students, who were often the children of laborers and farmers, as well as sometimes first- or second-generation Americans (Brown 32–33). Writing was a way to engage in the “self-activity” that Westfield leaders had thought critical to their development since the school’s founding (Rothermel). But writing academic essays also gave students, and the normal school, a way to show their “certitude” that they were acquiring coherent knowledge in a variety of subjects, some of which they would be likely to teach. According to catalogue descriptions of Hockenberry’s sociology course, students were required to complete a “study” and an “oral report” and to treat their topic “as exhaustively and intensively as the time and the materials will allow” (“Catalogue,” 1910 and 1911, 24). Preserved in the archive are such “exhaustive” essays from the early 1900s for varied subjects, including geology, physiology, literature, child study, and sociology. The writers of many of these essays, especially the ones for science and literature courses, employ third-person “objective” voices, presenting detailed explications of poems by famous literary figures; essays classifying the local geology; and expositions showing the causes of current diseases. Much of the writing done for sociology and psychology courses draws on student textual research. Students, however, rarely quote from the sources, instead paraphrasing and summarizing in ways that suggest their own “command” of the material. In her 1911 essay “Child Labor in America,” Amy Caro Balcom, a “special student” at the normal school who was simultaneously a teacher at the training school, uses almost twenty sources for her sixty-five-page sociology study, but seldom quotes. The essays are also models of correctness, written in “standard English,” with few

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usage and grammatical errors. We have few records that tell us anything about the students’ drafting processes—what sort of coaching they might have received as they wrote. But among the writings in the archive are full-sentence teaching outlines created for Knight’s history course, and recorded with these outlines is the feedback students gave one another after presenting the material. “Errors” in facts and language use are frequently noted, and the presenters are encouraged to be “vigilant” and “self-correct.” Most of the essays and outlines preserved in the archive were clearly selected by school officials to serve as models, perhaps as a means to demonstrate to normal school critics the students’ “certitude,” “exhaustive study,” and “self-activity.” But student writing also suggests links between academic writing and their development as “performers,” able to win the attention of an audience, both in school and out. In his 1896−97 official report on the normal school, secretary of the Board of Education Frank Hill wrote that the “normal school experiences should start from your intelligence, not your ignorance. It wants your energies for the science and art of presentation, not for the conquest of what is already known” (Annual 514). Throughout the era students had opportunities to “present” their work to varied audiences. As mentioned, until the early 1900s students presented essays at graduations attended by people from the wider community. They also wrote for school periodicals, such as The Normal Exponent, which was shared with alumni and other normal schools. Their writing shows frequent attention to “artfulness.” Student Laura Gibbs ends her 1907 essay on the geology of the Connecticut River Valley by musing poetically: “Progress, rapid progress, is the law of nature. Forms have developed and perished, and geology is still unfinished” (22); J. A. Treanor (one of the few men to attend the school during the Progressive Era) begins his 1897 Normal Exponent article, “The Human Soul,” by defining it “as that fundamental principle by which we feel, think, and will, and without which we would be as nought” (2); and in essays for their 1903 literature class’s Laboratory Study of Authors, students vividly retell stories, such as Holmes’s “The Story of Elsie Venner” and “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.” Westfield students write, in fact, a great deal of narrative. In her 1903 Outline of the One-Term Course in American History for the State Normal School, Adeline Knight writes that “mere memorizing of assertions does not create a taste for historical study” and encourages future teachers to “do your best to carry forward the class without undue dependence upon any particular text-book” (iii). While future teachers must read “the authorities,” after doing so “a little art is necessary” if they are to engage the interests of their pupils in history (iii). This means employing storytelling as a means to give their pupils “impressions.” Among her

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“rules for storytelling” are that they should be “simple in language and manner” and possess “dramatic fire” (78). They should be so convincing that “the teller” is “forgotten in the story” (78). Expert teacher-storytellers, thus, are aware of their particular audience, but as in the objective, third-person essays described above, they must be authoritative, presenting their vision of history (a disturbingly ethnocentric one at that) as certain truth. Examples of such vivid and “selfless” narratives appear in the teaching outlines on early American “natives,” “explorers,” and “settlers” that students prepared for her class and then presented to each other for “critique” (Colonial). Yet not all of the narratives students produced seem “selfless.” In a “Class History” for the 1909 yearbook, The Normalite, Septa Lynn engages in gentle parody of members of the Westfield faculty. While she writes fondly of “Mrs. Knight,” she also pokes fun at her high expectations: “We learned from her that in our apperceptive step, our presentation, and our generalization, we must be cheerful, positive and animated, have good distribution of questions and, horror of horrors . . . keep the attention of the class” (22). Similarly, student essays for courses are not just third-person accounts written to inspire confidence in their “exhaustive knowledge” or their ability to “perform”; students also craft arguments, using narrative in these arguments as evidence and for emotional appeal. These works suggest faith in their power to be well-informed social critics, able to employ the tools of argument to bring about change—change that will affect them and their students both in and out of the classroom. This is especially true in the essays students write for sociology. They treat their subjects exhaustively, but also express impassioned opinions, making contributions to important social debates. In “The Wage Earning Woman” (1911), Lena B. Ripley writes mainly in a third-person voice, and gives facts and vivid stories of women’s experiences gathered from varied sources as if lecturing; but she also editorializes, defining wage-earning women as the “economic force with whom we have to deal. They give their entire thought, time and strength to the furtherance of the employers’ interest, and the maintenance of life itself ” (104). She argues: “These women are not in industry for pin-money, in light occupations or for part of the time. It is a daily sweating system indeed” (106). Amy Caro Balcom’s 1911 “Child Labor in America” makes similar use of facts and stories to show that the issue requires urgent attention. Unlike Ripley, she writes in the first and second person, drawing on her own personal experience as a teacher to suggest that American education is complicit in supporting child labor. She critiques curriculum, for instance, pointing out the “utter lack of appeal of the curriculum to the working boy of thirteen or fourteen” (41) and the

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system’s failure to educate “the whole child” (45). She also uses artful metaphor to critique the government, which “exempts” manufacturing from child labor laws because “their materials and products . . . are perishable. It does not seem to have been considered by the legislators who established this standard that the children who were working in the canneries were also perishable” (49). Although when writing about class and gender students often editorialize in the name of social justice, their writings about race and ethnicity are far less enlightened and bring to mind the image of the white middle-class teacher who, uncritically aware of his/her own white privilege, sees ethnic and racial diversity as a “problem” to be “solved.” In her 1911 essay, “Phases of the Race Question,” Ruth E. Craig presents eugenicist Alfred Schultz’s polemics on the supposed damage immigration from Southern and Central Europe was doing to America, especially to the English language. While agreeing with some of Schultz’s arguments, Craig takes issue with his call for limits on immigration, suggesting that such calls are motivated by “prejudice.” Yet she still subscribes to beliefs about the superiority of Anglo-Saxon culture, asserting that “newcomers will assimilate” and that education will prevent other languages from “endangering” English (330). Similarly, Ruth Ann Bartlett’s 1911 essay, “The Negro Problem,” shows her mastery of racist discourses common to her day. She asserts that the “industrious Christian negro is no problem” and praises the attitude of “white people to negro education” which is more recently “favorable. . . . The negro is to be educated anyway. He is here to stay and we shall have to make the best of him” (482). For a reader who frequently hears today’s Westfield administrators praise the early institution for challenging barriers to race, gender, and class, I recognize through this student writing the blinders we continue to wear when considering our own histories. Given the discursive barriers students encountered at Westfield in the 1910s and 1920s, it is no wonder that only a handful of students of color attended the institution. Anna C. Chapman’s 1911 essay on “Social Parasites” similarly constructs “difference” as a social problem to be “solved,” and yet in her essay we hear her pushing more against certain assumptions her community made about “poor” and “dependent” people. She begins her essay with personal anecdote—a critique of a local exhibition for presenting a definition of the “parasite” that was too “narrow. The majority of parasites are not responsible for their condition,” she asserts (7). Although she affords impoverished people little agency, she makes attempts throughout the essay to direct the reader’s attention to the social circumstances that lead people into poverty. She expresses particular concern about the situation of widows.

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The zest for editorializing, especially about educational issues, shows up also in their student journal The Normal Exponent. In her 1897 piece “Kindergarten: Froebel’s ‘Mother Plays,’” Mary H. Bingham extols the benefits of an early education focused on play in the face of public “scorn” (20); and in “The Purpose of Our Model School,” also from 1897, Rose Barton takes on those “incredulous people who ask ‘of what use it is to compel pupils to spend a whole term with the children in your model school when in a short time they will have schools of their own’” (7). She answers those critics: “[S]urely it would be foreign to the purpose of our normal schools to send forth graduates inexperienced in developing a subject before a class” (7). While emphasizing the importance of theory, she suggests that without practice the theory remains “superficial.” “Teachers must make a beginning and why not begin under those who will plan the lessons and suggest the best ways of presenting them?” she asks, reminding her audience that teachers have much to learn from fellow teachers (7). Here she also represents her education as a process—a place of beginnings. This characterization resembles that of the journal more generally, which on the opening page of the same issue represents itself as a space for experimentation, “an embryo journal” published in the “interests of ” Westfield students (1). In “Memory Test,” for example, L. B. Allyn shares the results of psychological experimentation done by students in relation to “memory,” hoping that while not providing “conclusive proof ” it might “at least be suggestive” (4). Experimentation and expertise go hand in hand in writing students do for certain courses as well. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, while studying experimental educational psychology under a well-known education scholar, Will S. Monroe, Westfield students had opportunities to engage in their own research in child study.3 Students were to spend a summer observing a child they knew and to write up a detailed outline describing what they had witnessed. Monroe writes that this “practice in the study of subjective phenomena . . . deepens and broadens the students’ concepts of the subjective states of childhood” and helps them “ascertain how the child-mind acts under given conditions” (Catalogue, 1899 and 1900, 15). A 1903 collection of these studies is available in the archive (Genetic Psychology: Individual). The introduction to the collection states that students followed a “general outline touching on the important facts to be observed,” but they seem engaged in more than just an exercise. They write vividly about what they observe in relation to the child’s “perception, memory, and imagination.” Even though they occasionally voice hasty conclusions, their thick descriptions create complex portraits of the children they study; and they often use methods that position themselves as “learners,” not problem solvers.

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Miriam G. Thomas, for instance, performs certain prescribed tests related to sight and hearing, as well as using scripted questions about memories also used by her peers (e.g., “What happens to the moon and the sun when they are not out?”). But in gauging the attention span of the child she observes, she also draws on informal interactions, noting: “Flowers attract her attention the most. One day coming home from Sunday kindergarten she asked her mother 32 questions about a chickweed blossom found on the sidewalk. How was the blossom made? Why it was white? What did it eat? . . .” While Thomas and her peers do not build into their portraits any critique of their own biases as observers, they do suggest conceptions of the teacher as one who “inquires”—who watches and learns from the children s/he teaches. Cora Streeter, similarly, adds complexity to her study by choosing to work with two boys, one adopted by her family, juxtaposing the descriptions of the two on opposite sides of the page. Monroe also required his students to write “papers on personal reminiscences,” describing the development of their own sense perceptions and imagination (Catalogue, 1899 and 1900, 20). Only one such essay is available in the archive. In this 1903 untitled piece, Helen G. Tierney uses witty prose to describe family dynamics along with her earliest sensory experiences. In the voice of the social scientist, she begins with facts: “The subject of this sketch is the youngest child in a family of eleven, one of whom died in infancy, the other ten living to maturity” (1). Yet she ends her essay with detailed personal commentary about an imaginary being who has guarded her throughout her life: “This being is a tall, powerfully built woman, dark haired and majestic. To her strange spirit, whom I will never comprehend, I owe all the successes and most of the pleasure of my life. In every trial of my school life when it seemed that I could not win and had reached the verge of despair, this woman with her wonderful physique has stood beside me urging me on to greater efforts” (38–39). This is one of the few moments in the Westfield archive where a student comments on her early life at school. But Monroe required all of his students to investigate their pasts, suggesting that this was a more common practice. In his course description, Monroe writes that his aims were “to bring the prospective teacher en rapport with young and growing minds,” and “to ascertain what conclusions students of child psychology have reached that are of immediate use to those who have charge of the care and training of children” (Catalogue, 1899 and 1900, 20). In the writing students created in response, there emerge images of teacher experts as not already-made, omnipotent authorities, but as learners using inquiry and observation for growth. The work students did in Monroe’s class also reflects a spirit of collaboration. In 1903 students produced reviews of “masterpieces” of child study (Genetic

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Psychology: Reminiscent Child Study). These reviews include fairly detailed descriptions of content, and students also evaluate the texts for their usefulness to them as scholars and teachers. No two students do the same text, and all the reviews are bound together in a volume. While it is impossible to know whether students read each other’s essays, Monroe notes the use of discussion in his courses, suggesting that they could have shared their evaluations with each other. Such collaboration is similarly evident in the volume of history teaching outlines Knight’s students produced, which contains individual lessons, but which together forms a larger unit on colonial history (Colonial). Since she expected that each lesson would begin with review, students needed to write their lessons in a way that built on a prior lesson done by a peer; and the 1903 Laboratory Study of Authors that the students do for her literature class suggests that they decide together what works each student will focus on, as well as whether they will write biography, explication, or “critical estimates” (xxviii). In this way they sought to create a more complete picture of the author in question (xxviii). I would add that two students, Harriette E. Rice and Adeline J. Warner, worked together on an essay on child labor in the sociology collection, suggesting that other opportunities to collaborate on writing projects might have been available (Essays 231). One final example of writing that stresses community and collaboration is found in the 1897 student journal The Normal Exponent, a poem submitted by 1887 alumna Catherine A. Tierney. Tierney’s poem offers a critique of the rugged individualism that has often characterized teacher-identity discourse, as well as many other U.S. discourses, but she also defines the landscape of teaching using gendered terms (Waller; see also Britzman). Her poem tells the story of a sister and brother, “Jack and I,” who in their early years “stood together” at their mother’s knee listening to her stories of “realms in fairy, bright worlds,” where if they “list aright” they would hear the angels (13). Ultimately they seek these realms in dramatically different places: Jack answers the call of the “distant west” and in his search for gold is ultimately brought down by “life’s hard race” (13). In contrast, the narrator finds her own “freedom,” the “right to follow where I know,” to the “low, rude halls of the village school”—in “public schools” (13). It is in those schools where “freedom” and the “grandest work of a lifetime lies, / The noblest thought-waves come and go.” She urges children to “guard your public schools,” a “home of thought where learning rules, / Where all brothers equal stand” (13). Knowledge is achieved not by becoming a solitary actor like Jack or other men of her day on a competitive westward quest, but rather through membership in the community of the school, a school she defined as a place where she and other teachers help their pupils to gain access to “the land where manhood tramps on

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gold, where love is life, and life is love” (13). Although the narrator has benefited through membership in this community, in emphasizing brotherhood she defines the primary audience of the school as a male one. Perhaps less explicitly, she represents the teaching profession as one that welcomes and relies on the talents of women, an image that her largely female audience would likely have embraced. Teachers, furthermore, are cast not in the role of isolated and autonomous experts, but as members of a community pursuing knowledge together.

Identity Exploration and Our Teaching Selves In her recent article, “Inspecting Shadows of Past Classroom Practices: A Search for Student Voices,” Patricia Sullivan powerfully notes the ways our histories have excluded student voices of the past. She also reminds historians that “recovering their words does not guarantee that we have reenergized their in situ forces, as there will always be gaps. But at least their voices are heard” (382). Student writings available in the Westfield archive provide fragmentary glimpses of how students may have constructed their own “expert teaching selves.” Much of the time I see them as un-self-critically white and middle class, assuming the identities of authorities, holders of the truth, and guardians of correctness; however, sometimes they are social critics, and at other times they are learners— teachers who engage in thoughtful inquiry and seek to grow through interaction with students and colleagues. I would add that their writing reflects Knight’s catalogue description of composition as the “living product of an active mind” (Catalogue, 1903 and 1904, 31); it is a resource for their own identity explorations—for their own becoming. While this chapter focuses primarily on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, students express a similar faith in the importance of writing to their development throughout the rest of the Progressive Era. Rather than include a single class prophecy written by one or two editors, the 1921 yearbook, The Normalite, publishes vignettes and poems written, it appears, by every graduating senior in the class, each of whom wittily “tells” what she has “done” (Prophecy 39). Throughout the era students also adapt and perform plays, write in preparation for public debates, prepare assembly talks, and create presentations for literary society meetings. In 1933, forty-two women join the new journalism club and begin producing the college’s first newspaper, the News Bulletin (1.2), complete with a section for editorials where Westfield students may “orate, declare, suggest, or do otherwise” (1.3). Around that same time students begin publishing The Tekoa, a new magazine. In it they feature plays written for their future pupils, poems, and expository pieces on pedagogical issues, as well as compositions

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gathered from pupils of the college training school, suggesting their desire to showcase the power of writing not just in their own lives. Sadly, they abandoned the magazine around the same time that their advisor and literature professor, Grace Fickett, died in a fire, but they continued to write for school newspapers and yearbooks at various times over the next decade. Ultimately the student writings collected in the Westfield archive lead to better understandings of the institutional biographies that help to shape who my colleagues and I are as teachers and teacher educators. While I find myself critiquing many of the images of teachers embedded in the fabric of this biography, the voices of Westfield State Normal School students also convince me that as we seek out ways to foster our students’ own identity explorations, we should continue to investigate the powerful roles that writing may play in that process.

Notes 1. The school was founded in 1839 and became a teachers college in 1932, a comprehensive institution in the 1960s, and a university in 2010. I am indebted to the work of Westfield’s college historian, Dr. Robert Brown, who played a crucial role in establishing the college archive and whose research served as groundwork for so much of my own research. Thanks are also due to librarians Karen Canary and Judith Carlson for all of their assistance. 2. The training school, opened in 1892, was originally housed on the first floor of the normal school building. It acquired its own building in 1899 (Brown 90). 3. Will S. Monroe was a well-known scholar in the area of child study and the history of education. He taught at Westfield from 1896 to 1908. He is known for also using students as subjects of experiments he carried out on sensory perception and dreams. In Septa Lynn’s 1909 “Class History,” she suggests that not all students “appreciated” his methods (21).

Works Cited Allyn, L. B. “Memory Test.” The Normal Exponent, 1:1. 4. Print. Alsup, Janet. Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006. Print. Annual Report. Massachusetts Board of Education. Boston: Wright and Potter, 1896– 1905. Print. Balcom, A. Caro (Amy). “Child Labor in America.” Essays 29–94. Print. Bartlett, Ruth Ann. “The Negro Problem.” Essays 452–91. Print.

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Barton, Rose. “The Purpose of Our Model School.” The Normal Exponent, 1.1: 7. Print. Bingham, Mary H. “Kindergarten: Froebel’s ‘Mother Plays.’” The Normal Exponent, 1.2: 20–21. Print. Britzman, Deborah. “Cultural Myths in the Making of a Teacher: Biography and Social Structure in Teacher Education.” Harvard Educational Review 56.4 (1986): 442–56. Print. Britzman, Deborah. “Is There a Problem with Knowing Thyself? Towards a Poststructuralist View of Teacher Identity.” Teachers Thinking, Teachers Knowing: Reflections on Literacy and Language Education. Ed. Timothy Shanahan. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1994. 53–75. Print. Brown, Robert T. The Rise and Fall of the People’s Colleges: The Westfield Normal School, 1839–1914. Westfield, MA: Institute for Massachusetts Studies, 1988. Print. Catalogue of the State Normal School at Westfield Massachusetts. 1890–1920. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Chapman, Anna C. “Social Parasites.” Essays 4–28. Print. The Colonial Period of the History of the United States in Thirty-Five Lessons, State Normal School, Westfield, Mass. Circa 1903. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Craig, Ruth E. “Phases of the Race Question in America.” Essays, 294–330. Print. Danielewicz, Jane. Teaching Selves: Identity, Pedagogy, and Teacher Education. Albany: State U of New York P, 2001. Print. Donahue, Patricia, and Gretchen Flesher Moon, eds. Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2007. Print. Essays in Sociology. State Normal School, Westfield, Mass. Volume II. 1910–1911. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Fitzgerald, Kathryn. “The Platteville Papers Revisited: Gender and Genre in a Normal School Writing Assignment.” Donahue and Moon, 115–33. Print. Genetic Psychology: Individual Child Study. State Normal School, Westfield, MA. C. 1903. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Genetic Psychology: Reminiscent Child Study. State Normal School, Westfield, MA. C. 1903. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Gibbs, Laura. “The Connecticut Valley.” Geology and Physiology. State Normal School, Westfield, MA. C. 1907. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Gray, Patrice K. “Life in the Margins: Student Writing and Curricular Change at

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Fitchburg Normal, 1895–1910.” Donahue and Moon, 159–80. Print. Herbst, Jurgen. And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989. Print. Knight, Adeline. Outline of the One-Term Course in American History for the State Normal School. State Normal School, Westfield, MA. Boston: Wright and Potter, 1903. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Knight, Adeline. “Spots of Weakness in Training.” Education 10 (Sept. 1889): 11–21. Print. Laboratory Study of Authors. State Normal School, Westfield, MA. Circa 1903. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Lynn, Septa. Class History. The Westfield Normal. Class of 1909 Yearbook. 16–23. Westfield Normal School. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. News Bulletin 1:2–3. (Nov. 1934). Westfield State Teachers College Newspaper. Print. The Normal Exponent 1:1–2. (Mar.−Apr. 1897). Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. Ogren, Christine A. The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good.” New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005. Print. Perillo, Jonna. “Writing for the Public: Teacher Editorializing as a Pathway to Professional Development.” English Education (Oct. 2010): 10–32. Print. Prophecy. The Normalite. Class of 1921 Yearbook. 39–64. Westfield Normal School. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print. “Report of the Committee on Normal Schools.” National Education Association. Chicago: U of Chicago P. 1899. Print. Ripley, Lena B. “The Wage Earning Woman.” Essays 96–120. Print. Rothermel, Beth Ann. “‘Our Life’s Work:’ Rhetorical Preparation and Teacher Training at a Massachusetts State Normal School, 1877–1929.” Donahue and Moon 134–58. Print. Streeter, Cora. Child Study Outline. Genetic Psychology: Individual. Print. Sullivan, Patricia. “Inspecting Shadows of Past Classroom Practices: A Search for Students’ Voices.” College Composition and Communication 63 (Feb. 2012): 365–86. Print. The Tekoa. The Magazine of the State Teachers College at Westfield. Vols. I–II. May 1932–1933. Print. Thomas, Miriam G. Child Study Outline. Genetic Psychology: Individual. Print. Tierney, Catherine A. “The Public School.” The Normal Exponent, 1.2: 13. Print. Tierney, Helen G. “Reminiscent Child Study.” Genetic Psychology: Reminiscent. Print.

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Treanor, J. A. “The Human Soul.” The Normal Exponent, 1.2: 2. Print. Waller, Willard. The Sociology of Teaching. New York: Wiley, 1932. Print. “Westfield State Normal School: Suggested Themes for Graduating Theses.” C. 1900. Westfield Normal School. Raymond G. Patterson Alumni Archive. Westfield State College Library. Print.

chapter 8 “Be Patient, But Don’t Wait!” The Activist Ethos of Student Journalism at the Colored State Normal School, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, 1892–1937

Elaine Hays

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hristine A. Ogren writes in The American State Normal School that North   Carolina was among the first states to support public black education   by instituting segregated normal schools in Fayetteville, Winston-Salem, and Elizabeth City after the Civil War. By 1905, the State Board of Education had finalized the consolidation of the three normal schools, and according to newspaper editor Palemon John, crowned Elizabeth City as “the center of education of the Colored Race for the large territory east of Raleigh” (qtd. in Evelyn Johnson Papers 14). Coming out of the devastation of the Civil War and continued degradation of human rights during Reconstruction, segregated African American normal schools would lag some fifty years behind public normal schools in New England and the Midwest. Even with Kathryn Fitzgerald’s acknowledgment of the alternative tradition of normal schools in “A Rediscovered Tradition,” the social and pedagogical history of the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School claims a separate and separatist category with segregationists in control of the antidemocratic social, economic, and political opportunities reported by white normal schools of the same time period. If we are to include normal schools as research sites for composition history, as composition historian John Brereton suggests (xvi), then we must not ignore the teaching and learning of composition at African American normal schools under segregated conditions.

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David Gold observes in Rhetoric at the Margins that “we cannot make broad claims about the development of rhetorical education without examining the diverse range of student bodies and institutions that participated in such education” (7), thus authorizing this “microhistory” of the rhetorical practices of cocurricular student writing at the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School. Yet the “margin” metaphor often applied to alternative histories suggests a placement where histories of class and race become diminished unless viewed through a particular lens. In their 1999 essay, “History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives of Composition Studies,” Jacqueline Jones Royster and Jean C. Williams argue that the metaphors we use to “talk about or not talk about members of historically suppressed groups” create “symbolic systems of reality by which we draw the lines of the discipline and authenticate what is ‘real’ and not, significant enough to notice and not, or valuable and not” (580– 81). Brereton has authorized normal school and African American pedagogical histories as have Gold, Fitzgerald, and Lucille M. Schultz, just as Royster and Williams have authorized histories of underrepresented groups. To that end, this study works to broaden the previously established view of normal schools to include the self-published student writing at one segregated African American normal school. Not only were the students at Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School present, but they were arguing and persuading their peers to prepare for the future.

Reading the Archive While the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School archive begs a comparative interpretation of previously published histories of the public normal institutions of Massachusetts, Illinois, and Wisconsin, social and political contexts make such a comparison difficult. The pedagogical conversations appearing in archive records at Elizabeth City State University reveal an educational context of subordination and deference to the white Board of Managers and Superintendent of Public Instruction as the founding principal, Peter W. Moore, struggled to keep the school open. Although there is mention in the 1892 Catalogue and Curricula that students were required to write essays at the end of the term (7), the only surviving student writing in the Elizabeth City archive comes from a digitized collection of the student newspaper. Here, a researcher can take delight in the natural voices and activist ethos of the student writers, but can also be stymied at the erasure of evidence in the teaching of writing. Furthermore, reading the archive of this alternative educational site, while silent in some areas, provides opportunities for historians of African American rhetoric and education to gain

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insight into the exigencies, rhetors, audiences, and constraints (Grant-Davie) of these students. Even under the oppressive conditions of segregation, the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School students demonstrate remarkable resilience and optimism as they confront a social caste system that locked them out of the “expanded economic opportunities” (Fitzgerald 229) afforded to normalites at other rural, public institutions. Education historian James D. Anderson writes in The Education of Blacks in the South that Southern, black normal education did not serve the same democratic ambitions as the white Midwestern normal schools reported on by Fitzgerald. Rather, normal school education at Elizabeth City, as revealed in Principal Moore’s year-end reports to the Board of Managers, confirmed that teaching was an appropriate occupation in the social caste system of the South. Sadly, and in contrast to the missions of many other normal schools across the country, the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School did not exist to provide economic advancement for the race, but rather to restrict access to specific lines of employment—teaching being “proper” employment for African Americans in the New South caste system (Anderson 27–28).

Teaching and Learning at the Colored State Normal School As with any college generation, the students at Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School inherit their ethos of advancement from the generations who came before, especially those black citizens who voiced, even demanded, that there be public education for their community. Free literate African Americans had lived and worked along the banks of the Pasquotank and Little Rivers since colonial times, earning their livings as farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, domestic servants, and teachers (Evelyn Johnson Papers 1). Anderson writes that African Americans rose from slavery with an indefatigable self-determination for literacy with many communities establishing their own educational collectives and associations, as was the case in Elizabeth City (Anderson 5–6; Ballou 34–35). These determined African Americans, bearers of the cry for patience while striving for rhetorical competence, both oral and written, are also responsible for the collective and associative ethos of mutuality (Anderson 5) apparent in the rhetorical calls by the student writers encouraging their peers to study hard and be prepared for the future. Therefore, the seemingly paradoxical statement, “Be Patient, But Don’t Wait,” was rooted in the self-determination and intellectual and moral uplift of the early days of Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School. Peter W. Moore, Elizabeth City‘s principal for over thirty years, assures the Board of Managers in the 1899 Trustees Report that not only does he teach Christian principles

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and an ethos of moral uplift, but that he also closely monitors the young men and women under his care to assure that they are living up to the school’s mission to aid in “refining, purifying, and elevating our people in the entire community” (17). In deference to his audience, Principal Moore also notes that “[m]anifestations of this improvement may be observed in public, in the churches, and in the homes” (17). While not founded by a denominational organization, the institutional histories, official documents, and school catalogues of the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School report that Christian teaching and moral, racial uplift lie at the center of the normal school. Students began every morning with required attendance to Opening Exercises in the chapel consisting of singing, Scripture reading, prayer, and short talks by either Moore or a member of the faculty. On Wednesdays, students and faculty attended prayer meetings “to keep the spiritual and religious life of the school vigorous and healthy” (11), and students were required to attend Sunday School on Sunday mornings and YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) or YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) meetings on Sunday afternoons. Teaching students their civic duties and citizenship carried over to the extracurriculum, giving students opportunities to practice parliamentary procedures and oral rhetoric in regular Lyceum meetings. Along with these efforts toward moral and racial uplift, Moore’s “Regulations,” printed in the 1926–27 Annual Catalogue, include proclamations that students be “decent, respectful, orderly, and well behaved at all times” and that “in order to promote Christian character as well as good scholarship, students must conform to habits of truthfulness and honesty of purpose, action, and work” (11). Last, students were advised to “own a Bible, which should be read daily and prayerfully” (11–12). While such authoritarian rule may seem excessive for a working-class normal school, Moore and his students were resisting common white assumptions that descendents of slavery were undisciplined and incapable of intellectual rigor. Writing instruction in the normal curriculum at Elizabeth City, not unlike other normal schools, followed a two-year curriculum for Primary and Grammar Grade Teacher Certificates. In 1927–28, when the student journalists wrote for the newspapers, Elizabeth City also had an accredited high school department. During the first year of the normal school level, students took a three-quarter sequence: English 111, “Grammar, Spelling, and Composition” in the fall quarter, and “Grammar and Composition” in the winter and spring quarters (Annual Catalogue, 1927-1928 16). The second year of normal work focused on pedagogy for public school subjects and practice school teaching. Students who enrolled in the high school took three years of English where they received instruction in

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oral and written composition, with “emphasis on Argumentative themes” in the fourth year (Annual Catalogue 17). The fourth-year course description also states that “[t]he work in Composition is supplemented by a study of the history of English literature and by an appreciative study of typical examples of the various literary types. Composition based on the literature read, and practice in debate are features of this course” (Annual Catalogue 23). The high school curriculum was set up in three years, beginning with “Second Year” and continuing to “Fourth Year.” High school students also received instruction in French and Latin, as David Gold found at Wiley College. While the normal department at Elizabeth City remains focused on educating teachers for the primary and grammar grades, the high school department offered a progressive liberal-arts curriculum. The students writing in the campus newspaper, while studying to become teachers, are patient, but they do not wait. Rather, they use rhetoric as a meaningmaking tool and their roles as writers to develop an ethos that redefines what it means to be a “normalite.” The teenagers attending the high school and normal school at Elizabeth City and writing in The Normal Magnet and The Normal State Banner remain focused on training to be teachers, living according to Christian principles, and calling on their peers to be leaders in the community. They wrote from multiple rhetorical traditions: black religious rhetoric, moral and racial uplift, and civic responsibility. With all three of these traditions, the students worked to compose an activist ethos in their roles as teachers in the communities and leaders on campus. And here lies the rhetorical situation that these student rhetors found themselves facing: every opportunity for gaining rhetorical competence, both oral and written, granted them an opportunity to compete in a future that they were sure would come.

On to Normal! In his essay “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents,” Keith GrantDavie describes a useful framework for reading the student writing at Elizabeth City that addresses exigency, rhetors, audience, and constraints. Grant-Davie’s definition of the rhetorical situation as a “set of related factors whose interaction creates and controls a discourse” (256) lays the groundwork for studying the exigencies, the student rhetors responsible for the discourses, the negotiation by the student writers of real and imagined audiences, and the constraints and realities of segregated education. Analyzing the rhetorically “interacting influences” (264) of these politically savvy student rhetors allows composition historians to bear witness to this activist group of African American students at Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School, as they call for their peers, their institution, and their

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African American community to rise up for the social and political changes that they are certain are coming. Not by accident, the student writers introduced here contribute to a body of literate acts published in the school newspaper during the normal school days with the communicative intention of what Jacqueline Jones Royster describes in Traces of a Stream as “the deliberate desire to change thinking, perception, attitudes, or behavior” (48). For example, students assumed activist roles when writing about the importance of normal school training and the role of the teacher in the community, and by reinforcing the idea of racial uplift through education. Behind the veil of the dominant white discourse lies racial pride and confidence in the students’ abilities to alter public attitudes and behaviors concerning not only normal school training, but advancement of the race as well. As a close reading of the student writing will attest, these student journalists and essayists have an internalized knowledge of themselves as rhetors, the white institutional structures and campus community as their audience(s), and the rhetoric of “separate but equal” as the immediate and most confining constraint to their goals for teacher education. Reading the student publications from the digitized archive claims a space especially intriguing when placing the writing and rhetoric training within the context of the normal school and segregation. The internalized religious teachings of Principal Moore, the training students received at the school, and their desire to have a voice in their communities combine to create exigencies for young rhetors to call out to their audiences, more real than imagined, as they push back on the constraints of segregation. The exigency of the student writing in The Normal Magnet, or, as Grant-Davie states, the matter and motivation of the discourse, is best understood through the lens of the school’s mission—to educate and train teachers for the public common schools in Pasquotank County. From this earliest digitized issue of the Elizabeth City student newspaper in May 1927, the rhetorical exigency of teacher education and racial uplift drives the rhetorical choices of the newspaper editors and staff. The rhetorical situation for this particular issue reveals itself through the common thread of the articles and essays penned by these normal school students: the professionalization of normal training. M. Luther Wilson, Miriam Gore, and Sarah Commander, the student writers for the Normal Department newspaper, are all beneficiaries of high school and normal school writing and rhetoric instruction and have embraced the Elizabeth City normalite identity of religious practice and civic responsibility. The impact of their discourse comes, however, not from their individual voices, determined and forceful as they are, but from the rhetorical call for patience and preparation to their peers and reassurance to their

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white audience of their racial advancement through the placement of professional teachers in the community. Wilson, editor of The Normal Magnet, a graduate of the 1926 high school department and in his junior year in the normal school in 1927, sets up in his “Editor’s Greetings” the “interacting influences” of exigency, rhetors, audiences, and constraints (Grant-Davie 264) for this inaugural edition of The Normal Magnet, and Gore and Commander argue extensively and skillfully that normal school training lies at “the heart” of teacher education. And from Wilson’s “Editor’s Greetings” we learn that: The Normal Magnet is the first attempt on the part of the normal department of this institution to give to the reading public a brief but comprehensive account of the activities of this department combined with those of most importance of the High School as well as many interesting news items of the city and state, especially those that account for the state’s contribution to Negro education and the advancement of the teaching profession. . . . It is our hope that from this issue you will, at least, realize the importance of a thorough normal school training for those who anticipate entrance into the pedagogical field. (1)

These student rhetors, those responsible for the discourse (Grant-Davie), join voices in this first issue of the normal school publication to create the rhetorical situation of “Negro education and the advancement of the teaching profession” (1). While this call for authenticating normal school work was often found in the publications of normal school students in other parts of the country (Ogren 149), for Wilson and his peers the professionalization of teacher education motivates the writing appearing in four articles from this first archived issue. Wilson takes on the editorial responsibility of stating the exigency of this issue with the intention of negotiating with his multiple audiences to “realize the importance of a thorough normal school training” through a “brief but comprehensive account” of the activities of the normal department and high school (1). With remarkable grace and intention, Wilson acknowledges the local white audience and the skeptical attitudes toward publicly supported black education, which includes the white Superintendent of Public Instruction and Board of Managers, even without textual evidence of the students’ awareness of such far-reaching consequences. Evidenced by his distinct rhetorical and language choices in this opening column, Wilson’s political awareness plays an active role in his composing process. With this same rhetorical and political perceptiveness, Gore advances her argument throughout her essay “Normal Course of Course.” Gore, a 1925 graduate from the high school department who was known affectionately as “Peaches” by

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her peers, argues with exquisite detail on the subject of normal school training with the clear intention of persuading her audience to accept the credibility of a rural teacher education by normal principles. By 1927, the school had been in existence for over thirty years, but if Gore’s argument is any indication, the students still felt an obligation to respond directly to the argument that the colleges and universities were better suited for the training of teachers (Du Bois 74). Grant-Davie suggests that applying a sequence of questions provided by stasis theory, as defined by Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor (qtd. in Grant-Davie 266), allows for a deeper understanding of the exigency of discourse. Assuming a peripheral position when answering the question of Gore’s discourse, “why is it needed?” does not satisfy the need for a more comprehensive analysis of the relationship between normal school training and racial uplift. Also at stake for historians of African American rhetoric is a more complete understanding of student writing behind the color line. The sequence of questions provided by stasis theory, then, can assist with revealing the rhetorical choices made by Gore in her discourse. In her article, Gore sets up an extended example of a teacher who acquired an education in her subject area without normal training and therefore was not successful as a rural classroom teacher of children. Both the length of Gore’s essay, three full-length columns covering two pages, as well as her arrangement, style, and diction, suggests a level of seriousness in the rhetorical exigency of the professionalization of teacher education not realized in other writings of the newspaper. Sentences like “[a] teacher’s mistakes are always made at the expense of some child’s growth and development” and “[t]here can be no making up for the past, the present is too full of it’s [sic] own demands” (2) seem to suggest a larger rhetorical exigency of credibility among normal school graduates at Elizabeth City, which, of course, would explain the rhetorical exigency of professionalization. Gore begins her essay by defining the differences between normal school training and the teacher preparation found in the colleges and universities of the South, ending her first paragraph with the bold statement that she presents as fact: “The professors are noted scholars but many of them are not teachers,” establishing for her audience (real or imagined) that the subject of normal school training is worth debating and worth juxtaposing with scholastic teacher education (Grant-Davie 266; The Normal Magnet 2). Gore quickly supports her next claim with an extended example that also defines and characterizes her subject: “Teachers cannot do their best work unless they are professionally trained” (2). The extended example following Gore’s fact and definition also points to a

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situation of cause and effect when the universities prepare teachers instead of normal schools. While Gore begins in a rhythmic storybook fashion she swiftly makes a rhetorical turn to her stated exigency—“Normal Course of Course”: There was once a rural teacher who held a degree from a well known college. She began when Normal training was not considered essential; she did not know children, nor how to teach them. She seemed to assume the idea that children learn just as she herself learned. . . . She failed, and it is to be feared that she will always fail. (1) Because she lacks knowledge of children; (2) She lacks the knowledge of school organization; (3) She lacks knowledge of methods. The chances are that if this well educated teacher had at the right time been given proper instruction in the practical problems of the school room she would have developed into an excellent teacher. (The Normal Magnet 2)

Here, Gore writes with confidence and conviction as she examines the consequences of unprepared rural classroom teachers while simultaneously establishing a strong rhetorical positioning for the value of normal school training—success and excellence in teaching. Her reasoning and arrangement of points, resembling that of oral debate, add value, quality, and credibility to her argument. To not consider Gore’s essay as a complete discourse, however, would be to ignore some of her more astute rhetorical moves. Her awareness of multiple audiences, both “addressed and invoked” (Ede and Lunsford), assists her next point. “For teaching is an art” (2), Gore summons her immediate “addressed” audience by acknowledging the shared “attitudes, beliefs, and expectations” (Ede and Lunsford 156) of normal school training. She then reaches out to what could be considered her “invoked” or “constructed” (160) audience when composing her next extended comparison—that learning to teach is like learning the art of carpentry—even a talented carpenter needs training with the proper tools (2). Brilliantly, Gore finds where her comparison breaks down, mahogany or rosewood can be replaced, but a child’s educational experience cannot, when she strengthens her argument for normal school training: “A mistake made in the education of a child can never be wholly compensated. Life is too short, even at its best, and time to [sic] precious to be lost through poor methods or lack of skill on the part of the teacher” (2). Gore’s reasoning then catapults her to her next point of reasoning: “observation work” of the Practice School—an important element of normal school training—and, of course, for Gore’s discourse, an essential step in the success of a teacher. On the facing page of  the Normal Magnet, Commander’s essay, “The Teacher and The Community,” approaches a slightly different topic: the rural teacher as a

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centralized agent of change in the community. Like Gore, Commander fulfills her rhetorical exigency through fact and definition as well as cause and effect, but a close examination of value and change in policy and procedure in Commander’s discourse reveals her more distinctive rhetorical turn. For Commander, “The real success of a teacher’s work is measured by the ability of the child to make his full contribution to the society in which he lives” and that before the school year begins a “wise teacher will acquire the widest knowledge of  his teaching problem . . . gleaned from community history, city library, school reports and from mingling among the people” (3). Commander has no hesitation claiming value and agency for the teacher in the community by challenging teachers to know their students and the communities in which they live, countering the argument that teachers remain “aloof ” (3). On the contrary, she argues, teachers who participate in community service and successful leadership assist in building healthier communities by teaching children and families personal hygiene and influencing town and school officials for better sanitation in the schools. Wise teachers, or normal school teachers, bring teachers and parents together through the organization of parent−teacher meetings and seem to have as much influence on civic betterment as town officials (3). Commander’s next rhetorical move is to extend her statements of value by listing what she sees as a problem (the isolated schoolhouse) and critiques teachers who return home after school on weeknights and weekends, leaving the school empty and cold. In her discussion, Commander lobbies her peers to be part of the community on weeknights and weekends by sponsoring after-school activities for the children and evening activities that include the parents. With this desire for “civic betterment,” Commander argues, “the individual classroom teacher will find many opportunities which will grant her a share in cementing the relationship between home and school” (3). She closes her argument with a list of advancements achieved as a result of this partnership: circulating libraries, lunchrooms, milk programs, musical instruments, and sanitary drinking fountains (3). Assuredly, the extension of a teacher’s work to be an agent for community change secures the professionalization of normal work.

Why Have a School Paper: Inventing and Situating Rhetorical Response By the fall of 1928, The Normal Magnet had become The Normal State Banner with students Ruth Vaughn, John Jones, and Raymond Morris serving as writers and editors. In this collection of student writing, the student rhetors apply the strategies of questioning and persuasion to challenge their peers to resist passive behavior and wake up to the opportunities before them. By responding to

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their rhetorical situations of promoting normal school training and identity, the writers in the 1928 inaugural edition of The Normal State Banner experiment with developing forms of ethos, both invented and situated. In their articles “Why Have a School Paper?”; “Wake up, Editors”; and “Why Debate?” the calls for individual action—whether for supporting the school newspaper, carrying out the responsibilities that come with being an editor for the paper, or participating in the rhetorical acts that prepare students for reasoning and public debate— combine to form a potent meaning-making communicative tool for literacy and advancement (Royster 46). Vaughn, editor and junior-class president of the Normal School, opens the November 1928 issue with the editorial “Why Have a School Paper?” Here we see a developing “situated” ethos as she struggles to locate her rhetorical appeals within the power structures of the larger sociopolitical constraints of segregated education and the local power structures of the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School. While this argument can also be made for the writing of Jones and Morris, their editorials more accurately represent an “invented” ethos with a “wide array of persuasive strategies” (Royster 66) determined by the rhetorical space the writers choose to inhabit. As a close reading of rhetorical strategies in response to normal school situations will highlight, all three developing rhetors demonstrate an attempt to move and influence their audiences. In her opening editorial, Vaughn writes with the communicative intention of connecting to her audience, when she declares that her first reason for having a newspaper is “to give the public and especially the members of the race an idea of the program that is being put over in Eastern North Carolina” (2). With a sense of urgency and defiance, Vaughn lays out her intentions to convince her multiple audiences—her peers, alumni, and taxpaying citizens of Pasquotank County— that normal school training is necessary for the advancement of the race and the community. As if exhorting from the pulpit, Vaughn argues that “for instructors we have some of the best trained . . . the race affords” and that the editors and writers hope to “attract the attention . . . of the boys and girls who have not yet decided . . . which road to take in life” (3). Seizing this opportunity to engage in literacy practices for social change, even if fueled by teenage angst, Vaughn puts her readers on notice that now is the time to prepare for the future. The newspaper acts as her organ of propaganda (Logan 96) for claiming a State Normal identity and teacher ethos while connecting and challenging her audience of young teachers and rhetors of the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School to accomplish their social and political goals. In the pages of the newspaper, these teenage student writers practice the same literacy acts that Royster claims

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for the women rhetors during the antebellum era: “They see language/literacy/ rhetoric as action, as a means of engaging actively with problems, as a strategy for presenting solutions persuasively to their audiences—who can in their own turn act accordingly” (50). As editor, Vaughn fills a need for student leadership with the school newspaper—the normal school has yet to prove itself as worthy of existence as secondary teacher training, and for Vaughn, the only people who can amend that attitude are the students themselves. Publishing in The State Normal Banner in February 1929, Jones, a high school member of the editorial board, extends Vaughn’s focus on individual action when he writes an editorial responding to “some rightful criticism” concerning The State Normal Banner. Here, Jones reminds his fellow editors that they (not we?) are responsible for publishing a well-edited paper. Even the title of his editorial, “Wake-up Editors,” assumes a rhetorical stance of someone who is not a member of the editorial board. He continues with his critique: “It [criticism] is deserved for little work on the part of the editors has been done in the past issues. It seems as though they disregard the fact that they are responsible for the material published” (3). Here we see Jones avoiding his complicity in the criticism by assuming a reprimanding position of power with his references to “the editors” and “they.” Within the same paragraph, however, Jones clearly lays the blame specifically: “The responsibility is chiefly upon the editor and the associate editor whose actual duty is to create more unity and a better working spirit on the staff. No one wants a dead leader” (3, 6). With a quick investigation of the staff listing in the previous column, however, we learn that Jones’s position on the editorial board is that of sports editor, not editor or associate editor. What, then, could his rhetorical agenda be? Is his reference to a “dead leader” a no-confidence call to the editor and associate editor? Then, as quickly as Jones places blame, he backs off. In the following two paragraphs, Jones revises his position from a noncomplicit “they” to an all-inclusive “we,” appropriating a renewed rhetorical position that claims ownership of the critique: “Let’s forget all that criticism and put out a paper second to none in the state. . . . This is our paper—a student organ . . .” (6). With these few short paragraphs, Jones complicates his rhetorical agenda by first removing himself from political and social responsibility, but he then quickly recovers himself in order to connect and confirm for his immediate audience (his fellow editors?), and then provokes to action his larger audience (students and faculty advisors). Jones concludes with a rhetorical move more representative of the collective normal school ethos: “We have pledged to put it over and we are going to do it. Let us create a new spirit here and now, broaden our initiative powers and make our future issues of The State Normal Banner a readable paper, for

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the students and by the students” (6). In Jones’s efforts, we see not only the newspaper as a developing site of rhetorical education, but also Jones as a developing rhetor who conflates rhetorical positions of situated and invented ethos—situated ethos in Jones’s power play of distancing himself from his fellow editors in order to enhance his communicative force and invented ethos in his rhetorical action of reuniting with his peer editors and therefore granting himself the power of simultaneous rhetorical positioning. Like the white women participating in public debates at Westfield Normal School, as discussed by Beth Ann Rothermel, the Elizabeth City student writers report on the argumentative prowess of the students debating for the campus and wider Elizabeth City community (The State Normal Banner). On the same page of the February 1929 issue of The State Normal Banner, Raymond Morris, the associate editor, urges other high school students to participate in the debate club where they will learn that “[t]here is a knowledge which comes through searching for material to prove your point that cannot be secured any other way” (3). With rhetorical ease, Morris creates a situated ethos that connects with his peers when he writes with empathy of the rigors of public speaking: “You say they are geniuses, but they are not . . . they learned how to reason, arrange their thoughts, and express themselves while debating . . .” (3). Creating an empathic appeal that acknowledges the students’ fears concerning public debate, Morris offers long-term rewards to assuage their immediate fears of inadequacies. Morris’s negotiation and relationship building reach beyond textual meaning-making to a complete realization of what is necessary to prepare for full citizenship in a future society. Discerning that there is much at stake, Vaughn, Jones, and Morris confront the “challenge of how to build bridges, fuse horizons, and accomplish the goals of the task” (Royster 50). A study of the segregated normal school identity necessarily includes an understanding of the student rhetors who make their claims for the future through their written appeals for justice, much like the African American residents of Elizabeth City during the 1800s who were also commandeering political and social conditions as sites of rhetorical education and manipulation.

Only a Mouthpiece Shirley Wilson Logan argues in Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America that black newspaper editors like Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells did not allow inexperience as journalists to deter them from using the newspapers as “organs of propaganda” for the betterment and uplifting of the race. Rather, Logan claims that their inexperience fuels their intent

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to develop themselves as rhetors and journalists. In her study, Logan recounts a historical exchange between Wells and Douglass to make her point. While waiting for a meeting to begin, Douglass asked Wells if she felt as nervous as he before speaking to an audience. Wells replied “no” and added: “That is because you are an orator, Mr. Douglass, and naturally you are concerned as to the presentation of your address. With me it is different. I am only a mouthpiece of which to tell the story of lynching and I have told it so often that I know it by heart. I do not have to embellish; it makes its own way” (qtd. in Logan 104). In these early issues of the Elizabeth City student publication, M. Luther Wilson, Miriam Gore, and Sarah Commander visualize their roles as young rhetors as an opportunity both to urge their normal school peers to take their education and training seriously and to demonstrate their skills to a wider white audience. Like Douglass, these students are concerned about their presentation to audiences both invoked and addressed who may read their newspaper as they deliberately argue their cases, drawing from their argumentative themes and debate learned in their high school composition classes and extracurricular programs. The students producing The Normal Magnet, also like Douglass, are acquiring their journalistic skills as they write and publish (Logan 100) while determined not to allow this moment in time to escape without showcasing their critical understandings of how language works to argue and persuade. The students writing in The Normal State Banner, however, reveal a communicative intent that departs from the rhetorical responses of the year before. The Normal Magnet had disbanded and reorganized as a newspaper for both the high school and the normal school. In her opening editorial “Why Have a School Paper?” Ruth Vaughn addresses her audience with the communicative intent, more like that of Wells, as a “mouthpiece” for the school and her peers. As her language suggests, she appears to be more concerned with “rallying the masses” toward normal training and understands that her position as editor is her most reliable platform. This rhetorical positioning continues throughout the next year as Vaughn remains the editor when John Jones and Raymond Morris are writing to their newspaper peers and student body. This study of budding student journalists, then, has revealed the paradoxical injunction, “Be Patient, But Don’t Wait.” With social justice kept close to mind and heart, students at Elizabeth City never lose sight of what they believe to be their walking papers to freedom—equal access to education for themselves and for their race.

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Works Cited Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988. Print. Brereton, John C., ed. The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 18751925: A Documentary History. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. Print. Commander, Sarah. “The Teacher and the Community.” The Normal Magnet May 1927: 3. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. West Valley, UT: Waking Lion, 2006. Print. Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy.” College Composition and Communication 35.2 (1984): 155–71. Print. Elizabeth City State University. Catalogue and Circular of the First Annual Session of the State Colored Normal School for the Year 1892. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Elizabeth City State University. Thirty-Seventh Annual Catalogue of the North Carolina State Colored Normal School. Scholastic Year, 1927-28. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive. G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Elizabeth City State University. Thirty-Sixth Annual Catalogue of the North Carolina State Colored Normal School. Scholastic Year 1926-27. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive. G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Evelyn Johnson Papers. “Text of History of Elizabeth City State University: A Story of Survival.” Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library Web. 24 June 2011. Fitzgerald, Kathryn. “A Rediscovered Tradition: European Pedagogy and Composition in Nineteenth-Century Midwestern Normal Schools.” College Composition and Communication 53.2 (Dec. 2001): 224–50. Print. Gold, David. Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873–1947. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Gore, Miriam. “Normal Course of Course.” The Normal Magnet May 1927: 2–3. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Grant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.” Rhetoric Review 15.2 (1997): 264–79. Print. Jones, John. “Wake up Editors.” The State Normal Banner Feb. 1929: 3+. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Leonard R. Ballou Collection. “Pasquotank Pedagogues and Politicians: Early

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Education Struggles of Elizabeth City State Colored Normal School.” Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Logan, Shirley Wilson. Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in NineteenthCentury Black America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print. Moore, Peter W. Trustees Minutes. 22 June 1899. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Morris, Raymond. “Why Debate?” The State Normal Banner. Feb. 1929: 3. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Ogren, Christine A. The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good.” New York: Palgrave, 2005. Print. Ramsey, Alexis E., Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa Mastrangelo, eds. Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2010. Print. Rothermel, Beth Ann. “‘Our Life’s Work’: Rhetorical Preparation and Teacher Training at a Massachusetts State Normal School, 1839–1929.” Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition. Eds. Patricia Donahue and Gretchen Flesher Moon. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2007. Print. Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh P, 2000. Print. Royster, Jacqueline Jones, and Jean C. Williams. “History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives of Composition Studies. College Composition and Communication 50.4 (1994): 563–84. Print. Vaughn, Ruth. “Why Have a School Paper?” The State Normal Banner Nov. 1928: 2+. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G. R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011. Wilson, M. Luther. “Editor’s Greetings.” The Normal Magnet May 1927: 1. Elizabeth City [NC] State University Archive, G.R. Little Library. Web. 24 June 2011.

PART III Building Secondary-Postsecondary Connections

chapter 9 Adapting Male Education for a Nation of Females Sara Lockwood’s 1888 Lessons in English

Nancy Myers

D

uring the nineteenth century, women spoke out about the abolition of  slavery, women’s ability to speak in church, women’s suffrage, women’s  right to education, and women’s roles both in the domestic sphere and in business and civic spheres. Even with this advocacy, educational institutions were slow to include women in great numbers. By the 1880s, both men and women were being educated in the same secondary schools, yet the early high school curriculum was focused on preparing men for college and for the civic and business worlds. As young women entered high school in larger and larger numbers, they adapted to this male curriculum rather than the curriculum adapting to them and expanding these young women’s options for action (Carr 69). It is this predicament that Sara Elizabeth Husted Lockwood attends to in Lessons in English, Adapted to the Study of American Classics: A Textbook for High Schools and Academies. With this textbook Lockwood created a curriculum that joined composition, rhetoric, and literature, that addressed both male and female students, and that considered students’ education for both entrance to college and entrance to the work world and home. While teaching at New Haven High School and with only a high school education herself, Lockwood wrote and published Lessons in English in 1888. This was an unusual occurrence because, as William J. Reese in The Origins of the American High School points out, usually it was male college professors,

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state superintendents, and high school principals who wrote and published textbooks for the high school and academy classrooms, since obviously these male authors had the college education, knowledge expertise, and institutional authority to write them (105–6). Jean Ferguson Carr notes that only at the end of the nineteenth century did women educators begin to regularly compose and publish elementary language arts textbooks, but Carr is referring to texts for the elementary grades, not high school (68). Not only is Lockwood’s authorship unique, but also Lessons in English was quite successful upon its publication in 1888. Albert E. Egge explains in the introduction of his 1895 review that Lockwood’s Lessons in English was acclaimed within seven years after its publication and noted by college and university catalogues as one of the books to be studied for institutional entrance (143). While his critique of this high school and academy textbook focuses on the first chapter about the history of the English language, about the rest of the 403 pages Egge notes that “the greater part of it,—the introduction, containing suggestions on how to teach literature, and the chapters on rhetoric, composition, and biographical sketches—is on the whole good” (143). Due to the success of Lessons in English, an 1893 review of Lockwood’s second book, a revision of W. D. Whitney’s The Essentials of English Grammar retitled An English Grammar for Higher Grades in Grammar Schools, declares that she is “well fitted to add those practical features so necessary to a successful text-book in America” (Emerson 53).1 Between 1888 and 1900, Lessons in English went through twelve printings, and Lockwood’s coauthored, reformulated, and expanded second edition, Composition and Rhetoric for Higher Schools, went through at least four more by 1912. An article about secondary school education in a 1900 issue of The School Review lists this textbook as a teacher resource for teaching composition (Sewell 84). While being so much a product of the educational culture of the times—and maybe because of it—this textbook was adopted often enough by high schools to warrant these reviews and its multiple printings in only twenty-four years. Reese explains that in the educational marketplace textbooks were numerous and sales competitive, so the longevity of Lessons in English and its successor Composition and Rhetoric are noteworthy: “Competing volumes in all subjects struggled for survival and preferment. . . . Despite this growth and proliferation, a handful of textbooks in every subject dominated the national market” (104). As a textual artifact of the educational culture of the late nineteenth century, Lessons in English reinforces the training that young men needed as preparation to enter Harvard or Yale in two ways. It reflects the characteristics of currenttraditional rhetoric taught at Harvard as a means to more effectively communicate with the diverse citizens of the country and conjoins that with the advocacy of

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reading literature for cultural and literary intellectual enhancement as promoted at Yale. What makes Lockwood’s textbook distinct is that she brings together these already circulating yet competing ideologies into one curriculum in association with her systematic acknowledging of women as high school students. While Lockwood did not create a new progressive curriculum for women’s literacy and education, she did adapt current-traditional rhetoric and join it with a cultural and literary imperative for women. By doing so, her textbook Lessons in English does shift, even if only slightly, the status quo agenda of a high school curriculum that provided college preparation for mostly young men. Her textbook offers young women, first, rhetorical and cultural training, and, second, support for social agency not only at college but also at home and in the workplace. By appropriating and adapting these competing college agendas and curricula for a different purpose and audience, she subtly extends the educational and rhetorical frontier of women through her high school curriculum. With its combined approach to reading American literature and to writing clearly, correctly, and eloquently, Lessons in English is emblematic of the shifts in national thinking about literacy, curriculum, and student population across the nineteenth century. In the first section of this chapter, I set Lockwood’s 1888 textbook in chronological relief to a pivotal moment in current-traditional rhetoric’s history, the 1893 report by the Conference on English of the Committee of Ten, to reveal the ways in which her textbook adapts and supports leading college ideologies and to demonstrate how Lockwood’s curriculum joins Harvard’s ideology with Yale’s competing one to promote a high school literacy curriculum for men and women. In the following section, I highlight the first subtle break with the male college-preparation tradition by examining how Lockwood’s combined curriculum promotes an educational agenda of national literacy for elementary and secondary schools that included women. My final section addresses the second divergence from male college preparation by outlining the ways that Lockwood systematically includes women’s reading and writing development as a means to move beyond the home as a type of social agency.

Adapting and Joining Competing College Ideologies for High School Students Neither Lockwood’s educational training and teaching nor her textbook was prescient. Both quite consistently reflected the current educational climate. Born in 1854, at the age of nineteen Lockwood graduated from the coeducational New Haven High School in New Haven, Connecticut. Coeducation began with the common school movement of the 1830s and 1840s with the purpose of educating

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all children, male and female, in the same space as a means to teaching a “common political and social ideology” (Spring 71). From 1874 to 1890, Lockwood taught at that same high school. This was not unusual since at that time high schools and normal schools, designed to train female teachers, were often similar institutions, if not the same (Carr 72).2 As Joel Spring explains, one of the reasons women had so many teaching positions even at the high school and academy levels at this time was because they were willing to accept a lower salary (113). During these teaching years, Lockwood developed and revised her curriculum and pedagogical approach, which eventually became the basis for Lessons for English. She explains in the preface and introduction that the textbook took time to write and rewrite, the curriculum was tested in her classroom and by her fellow teachers, and the text includes her students’ work generated from the assignments and exercises. In the introduction, she acknowledges all the texts, teachers, and advisors who have influenced her work; thus her textbook was not original but was instead a synthesis of many textual sources that promoted college preparation, much advice from female colleagues and male superiors, and the current national education agendas and practices in her own teacher training. Another text written five years later reflects this national educational status quo for high schools and academies, the 1893 Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies. As Jurgen Herbst explains about the Committee of Ten report, “[t]he committee’s report set a benchmark for an era that had passed,” because high schools and academies needed an alternative curriculum to prepare students for more than college (108). In 1892, the National Education Association appointed the Committee of Ten, which included Harvard’s president, Charles W. Eliot, and charged it with examining high school curricula. This report laid out the entire curriculum for high schools in nine subject areas. One of the outcomes was that the report prescribed a focal point of three subject areas that all high school students should learn: English, mathematics, and history (Herbst 113).3 Two groups were opposed to this myopic focus on the high schools’ goal of preparing males for college, even though these three subject areas reflected a nation-building agenda tied to language, culture, and self-reliance. There were those critics who believed that the classical languages should be the focal point of high school language studies, a return to the linguistic and cultural studies of the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century United States college curriculum, and those who were opposed to “the exclusion of practical or vocational studies,” a focus on fiscal self-reliance and national productivity tied to manual skills (Sizer 181). The historical context of the Report of the Committee of Ten illustrates the

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ideological curricular tensions of male college preparation versus preparing vocationally trained and fiscally responsible male and female citizens. In addition, it reflects the then-current college preparation curriculum in the evolution of the coeducational high school, for the committee report on English instruction for high school students mirrors Lockwood’s textbook. On that English committee was George Lyman Kittredge, professor of English at Harvard. Thus, it is not surprising that the committee’s report outlines the curriculum of English for high schools as the study of the “English Language, English Grammar, Composition, Rhetoric and English Literature,” and it supports current-traditional rhetoric in the tradition and current practices at Harvard (National 86). The report describes the curriculum for college preparation that was well established in the high schools and academies in the New England area. Five years before, however, Lockwood’s Lessons in English had already documented that agenda by joining the writing of proper English as a means to communicate across America with the valuing of American literature’s uniqueness as a cultural stronghold. Each agenda prepares a male student for college at Harvard or Yale, yet combined they expand the educational horizon for women going on to college, the home, the workplace, and society. These competing college ideologies that Lockwood brings together are explained in Glenn E. Palmer’s later 1912 “Culture and Efficiency Through Composition.” He argues that America must value both ideologies together, not separately or consecutively. The cultural model (Yale) must work with the efficiency model (Harvard) in order for both to produce productive citizens of the United States: “[I]f the efficiency method is to be efficient, it must take time to cultivate, and if the cultural method is to furnish real culture, it must resuscitate itself and, like Rip Van Winkle, come down from its mountain to join its life with the life of the time” (492). These supposedly competing ideologies of valuing reading or valuing writing were already in place by the time Lessons in English appeared. Palmer captures the well-known and long-established rivalry for entering undergraduate students of Yale and Harvard.4 Yale’s agenda focuses on “the inspiration of literature, recognizing that there can be no literary production without culture” (488). Student writing, either interpretive or creative, is used in the service of literature—to analyze, theorize, evaluate, or imitate. This approach fosters “the systematic treatment of enriching thoughts and broadening experiences” (488). For Harvard, it “is to cultivate in him [the student] good writing habits” in order to prepare students “for the everyday needs of democracy” (488). Student writing centers on the details of clear communication through correct word choice, syntax, and organization of longer rhetorical elements. As Richard E. Young describes in the

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1978 “Paradigms and Problems: Needed Research in Rhetorical Invention,” the identifying markers of current-traditional rhetoric include: “the emphasis on the composed product rather than the composing process; the analysis of discourse into words, sentences, and paragraphs; the classification of discourse into description, narration, exposition, and argument; the strong concern with usage (syntax, spelling, punctuation) and with style (economy, clarity, emphasis); the preoccupation with the informal essay and the research paper; and so on” (31). Palmer makes the distinction of Yale as promoting a cultural ideology, one of cultural progress through the study of literature, and Harvard as supporting an efficiency ideology, one of furthering democracy through proper “language habits” and communicative “expressiveness” (488). While both are practiced in the undergraduate student writing courses at their respective institutions, these ideologies also privilege a distinct literacy skill and distinct student audiences: the Yale model concentrates on reading and interpreting literature for the few, while the Harvard model highlights appropriate language use for the many.5 Lessons in English balances both approaches. The textbook very systematically promotes the Harvard approach to writing of current-traditional rhetoric. Of the text’s eleven chapters, five focus on words, figures of speech, and usage, and two companion chapters deal with sentences and their appropriate punctuation and capitalization. Lockwood organizes the textbook from language parts starting with words and diction that focus on “Purity, Propriety, and Precision” to longer syntactic and discourse structures: first sentences, then letter writing, then compositions of personal narrative, description, and the two modes combined. Since the textbook is intended for the first two years of high school, not the last two, she concentrates on narration and description, leaving exposition and argument for the higher grades. Finally, while Lockwood acknowledges that content and student knowledge are important, she emphasizes the exactness of what she calls “expression,” which means practice in composing perfect products because, as she writes, “we shall find it easier to put into other words the bright and good and beautiful thoughts of other people, than to create such thoughts for ourselves” (283). With her emphasis on the parts of discourse and expression, the Harvard agenda for writing instruction is firmly in place. While the textbook is obviously current-traditional in its content and organization, the competing paradigms of Harvard and Yale that are woven throughout the text begin in the preface. Juxtaposed to and preceding the first page of the preface is an excerpt from Horace E. Scudder’s 1887 “American Classics in the School” that advocates for the moral value of reading the best of American literature.6 It begins: “Think for a moment of that great, silent, resistless power

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for good which might at this moment be lifting the youth of the country, were the hours for reading in school expended upon the undying, life-giving books! Think of the substantial growth of a generous Americanism, were the boys and girls to be fed from the fresh springs of American literature!” (iv). These first two sentences implicate Yale’s agenda of the truth and beauty of studying literature for its own sake and for its cultural value—the appropriate values, of course. While Scudder was not a graduate of Yale, he did graduate from Williams College in 1858, and both schools during that time used Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in their undergraduate curriculum. As Warren Guthrie notes, by the early nineteenth century, Blair’s Lectures was in use at Williams and Yale and continued to be required into the 1860s (62). While the topic is rhetoric, Blair’s lectures focus on taste and employ numerous literary examples. This privileging of taste and literature was inculcated continually into undergraduate students of Yale, Williams, and other Eastern colleges for over half the nineteenth century. In contrast to Scudder’s claim, the second paragraph of Lockwood’s preface speaks of combining “precept and example,” a Harvard approach: Lockwood observes that “[i]t is almost universally conceded that the best teaching of English is that in which precept and example are most happily combined” (v). On the same page, Lockwood cites the books she used as resources in designing her curriculum, which include textbooks by Harvard’s Adams Sherman Hill as well as the current-traditional rhetorics of James De Mille, John Hart, David J. Hill, and William Swinton.7 In the last paragraph, she thanks Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury of Yale University for his assistance in revising the text. In three pages, Lockwood invokes both Yale and Harvard ideologies and faculty and employs them to build an ethical appeal tied to the expectations of a male-dominated college preparation. These competing agendas begin to merge in the introduction. Addressing teachers, the introduction outlines Lockwood’s plan for the one and one-half to two-year high school curriculum, and she suggests that English-language study and rhetoric and composition are separate from the study of American literature, but should be taught alongside each other, such as pairing Washington Irving’s life and literature with the study of Saxon words (xv). This approach allows the teacher to design her instruction to “fit all the parts of the work into one harmonious whole” (xiii). The literature assignments are yet another fascinating joining of these competing agendas. On the one hand, she supports the Harvard philological approach by addressing the literature from historical and rhetorical perspectives. Two of her sections in the composition chapter focus on writing biographical sketches of authors and paraphrasing literature to learn style and

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vocabulary. Yet on the other hand, Lockwood has a section on amplification of literature in which students analyze the content of the literature to understand its message (its moral value) and to extend it through creative writing. The chapter ends with a section on topics for essays coming from reading and interpreting literature (for its own sake) as in Yale’s cultural model. The introduction furthers this grouping of composition and language principles with literature: “As the work progresses, each new principle learned should be applied to the work in literature. A knowledge of the common rhetorical figures is indispensible to an intelligent appreciation of what is read” (xvii). Across these examples, current-traditional rhetoric and its supporting pedagogy is the dominant approach, but within that, particularly in the study of American literature, the Yale agenda of the sublimity of good literature and its ability to instruct and offer truths is incorporated.

Promoting National Education Agendas Using Combined College Ideologies In Lessons in English, the college agendas of Harvard and Yale combine with the common school agendas of literacy and nationalism to create a high school textbook of unique understanding, one that values the thoughtful use of the American English language, its history, and the appreciation for American literature as a sign of its culture and national heritage. This drive to promote the nation as a cohesive whole was supported through the educational agenda of literacy for men and women. Educational reform and change is often made in service of a nation’s growth and development, and so it was in nineteenth-century America. The common school movement of the 1830s and 1840s was the advent of state systems of schooling, and its aims—to educate all children in a common space and to provide a curriculum of American culture and character—was intended to assimilate the immigrants and to lessen the political, social, and cultural factions in society (Spring 70–72). Assimilation to one language standard, one culture, one history, and one economic vision was the educational means to promote national unity. In their socioeconomic analysis of literacy in the United States to 1870, Lee Soltow and Edward Stevens demonstrate that by the 1850s the forces of morality, nationalism, and capitalism “had made [English] literacy a highpriority social cause” (193). This objective resulted in the schools shifting from the earlier religious model of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to a civic model for literacy and, simultaneously, becoming more inclusive, for “literacy and schooling [were] functionally linked” and were necessary for “upward economic

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mobility” individually and collectively (194). In developing national civic growth and prosperity across the ever-expanding country, the attitudinal and intellectual move toward universal literacy shifted the responsibility for educating citizens and immigrants, including girls, onto the schools (Carr 75; Soltow and Stevens 199). To promote this doctrine toward a unified and literate nation, both curricula and pedagogy needed to be consistent and supportive of this adaption to and adoption of an American life and ideals. The rising demand for high schools throughout the century and across the growing nation is what Herbst refers to as the “democratic imperative” (65). The precursor to the American high school, the people’s college, originally carried the mission of providing the general population with the types of knowledge that would prepare them for life and work. In other words, the goal was to “finish” students (finishing school) for their productive social and work lives. As Illinois Superintendent Newton Bateman wrote in the 1870s, public high schools allowed “for the whole body of youth to know something of the beginnings of higher knowledge; . . . they help to break down the barriers that have too long kept the youth of the country schools at a disadvantage” (qtd. in Herbst 72). This democratic, single-focused, high school imperative became a dualistic one with competing objectives by the end of the century. As Herbst explains, the high school “added college preparation to the finishing for business, housework, teaching, or employment” (51). So while some male and female students attended high schools and academies during the 1880s in order to prepare for college, some were preparing for the practicalities of life and work, and thus were completing their formal education. During the nineteenth century, women found the profession of teaching in grammar and secondary schools a means to fulfill this national agenda of literacy combined with fiscal self-reliance. Cheap labor of the best character was a vital component of this national agenda, and women, rather than men, were encouraged and able to fulfill both the economic and the moral criteria. As Spring states, “A maternal and moral model of instruction complemented the goals of common school reformers and the growing role of women in education” (126). One of the means for promoting the acceptance of women as the appropriate teacher for children was the social concept of republican motherhood that slowly grew after the Revolutionary War. Women were the best educators of children in the home because they had the moral fortitude and the “unique civic duties” of children’s education (Robbins 27). The common-school reformers drew on this concept to argue for women as teachers, particularly in the elementary schools, because they

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were not only more morally upright than men but also more nurturing. Thus, as women moved into the workplace during the nineteenth century, their domestic role as moral model and nurturer was relocated to these social and public spaces. There were many more influences on the United States in the nineteenth century to support a nationalistic fervor for education; one more is relevant to this argument—the development of a national literature. In the last half of the century, the curriculum radically changed in the colleges and universities, and English became integral to and gained status as the core curriculum. Many postsecondary institutions valorized British literature and its Anglo-Saxon heritage as the most valued language and literature. Even when college professors advocated for American literature, they argued for its worth based on how well it reflected the Anglo-Saxon language, as the origin of English values. While postsecondary institutions focused on British literatures, secondary schools and society focused on the existing and current American literature. Even though dualistic, the high schools’ mission represented the nineteenth century’s “preoccupation with learning and literacy and the sense that fiction had an instructional mission” (Carr 55). The valuing of American literature, of course, was sexist, classist, and racist, but in the service of creating a homogenous American society. Lessons in English illustrates every level of these transitions and changes: the focus on coeducation and mass literacy, the concept of nation as defined by a common language and literary culture, the expanding high school mission, and the teacher as moral model. Through the textbook’s discernment and preparation of students in a variety of social, civic, and business roles after high school, it represents the nationalistic and ultimately dualistic agenda within the evolution of American high schools. It promotes the curriculum for preparation to colleges and universities while simultaneously promoting the ideals of a nation progressing through its people’s literacy and literature. Lockwood exemplifies this focus not only on a common language but also on a common literary heritage when she states in her preface that the question is no longer what “works of the best English and American authors” to teach but how to “use them to the best advantage” (v). Combining Yale’s agenda of literature for its truth and beauty with Harvard’s goal of cultivating good language skills was essential for the high school English curriculum, a curriculum for all students—male and female—and all outcomes—entrance to college, to the workplace, and to society. Moreover, Lockwood’s choice of using mostly American literature, as opposed to classical literature in translation or British literature, throughout her two-year course of study supports the value of the literary tradition and cultural heritage of a still

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young and growing United States, a means to instilling national pride and solidarity in high school students.

Supporting Women’s Literacy, Education, and Social Agency Lockwood’s nationalistic approach is also inclusive as she was both a product of and an educator within a coeducational high school. In Managing Literacy, Mothering America, Sarah Robbins argues that when middle-class mothers taught American literature and language to their children at home, this practice allowed both mothers and daughters to see themselves as part of a shared educational community and as influential in national social issues and agendas. Lessons in English shifts that shared female community from the home into the classroom. With the national and economic push for literacy, girls found themselves extending their primary education into the high schools and, to a lesser degree, colleges. As Carr explains, “Girls attended public schools and the private academies in growing numbers, so that by the end of the century girls outnumbered men two to one in public schools” (69). Lockwood recognized that she was teaching young women as well as young men, and her curriculum includes that understanding in her direct address and instruction to female teachers operating in an educational workplace, in her balance of female and male references in her examples and exercises, and in her expansion of writing assignments to include topics and situations that extend beyond the home. These rhetorical and curricular choices offer female high school students models for understanding a type of feminine social agency through teaching, writing, and reading by way of a shared educational community, not at home but at school. Throughout the textbook, Lockwood addresses teachers directly and uses feminine pronouns, acknowledging women as teachers. With both of these rhetorical choices, she models for female students the tone, authority, and rank of the master teacher instructing other teachers. Because there were no differences between the student and teacher editions of Lockwood’s text, her inclusion of references to female teachers in the teacher guidelines could be read by the students. Young women students using Lessons in English could see that women teachers were a part of the educational workplace, even if they had no real-life models to turn to in their own high schools. In addition, Lockwood’s authorship showed students that women, as teachers, were able to write and publish textbooks. Although female high school teachers were becoming more and more common and provided models of women in the teaching profession for their students, the master teacher was often the male school principal. Lockwood’s rhetorical choices place her authority as equal to the school’s primary authority, demonstrating that

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women could teach other teachers as well as students. For example, Lockwood often addresses and writes of teachers in the plural, in the implied second person “you” through the imperative/command form, or through passive voice; however, when she does use “teacher” in the singular and needs a pronoun later in that sentence, it is consistently in the third person feminine singular: “[t]he careful teacher will plan her work for at least several days in advance” (xiv). Much later in the textbook, Lockwood writes, “She should be able not merely to tell them how to write, but to show them how” (280). In the preface she thanks a Miss Sheridan for her helpful suggestions. While Sheridan is not clearly referred to as a fellow teacher, it can be assumed this is the case since her name appears in the same paragraph where Lockwood thanks all the English teachers at Hillhouse/New Haven High School. Moreover, the dedication page is to a Mr. and Mrs. T. W. T. Curtis. Lockwood clearly saw the teacher audience of her textbook as including women. Female students reading these sections encountered female models using their profession of teaching to further a shared educational community of women supporting each other through developing their curricula and their pedagogies. As a second inclusionary technique, Lockwood balances male and genderneutral references with female ones in her examples and exercises. Often her literature excerpts, no more than a few lines of text, are not only by American male writers, but also include the work of British, European, Biblical, and female authors. In this way, she offers women literary writers as another means to a profession, another means for social agency through the writing of great literature. For instance, she includes poetry excerpts from Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Jean Ingelow, Irene E. Jerome, and Lucy Larcom. While modeling female writing with these examples and excerpts of what a woman writer can become, Lockwood provides student examples from girls and boys to show what good writing is for someone younger. The autobiography example of two-and-one-half pages is written by a young woman who recounts learning “to make patchwork and pin cushions” and attending her first party (297–99). Also, in Lockwood’s examples and exercises, she regularly includes specific female references. For example in her discussion of the possessive form, in the “Common Errors in the Use of English” chapter, she includes as an example: “She refused to listen to her parents or her teacher’s advice.” This sentence could easily have been framed with the third person singular pronoun “he.” Again, in the exercises section of the “Punctuation and Capitals” chapter, “Miss Margaret had deep calm honest blue eyes and wavy light brown hair.” Why not a boy’s name? This balancing of masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral

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references allow women students to see themselves within a larger educational community, one focused on writing—its genres, its syntax, its language. Lockwood demonstrates that writing affords a type of social agency, allowing female writers to express their views and find an audience through literature or poetry. A third way in which Lockwood includes women in the textbook is through her acknowledgment of them in possible writing topics lists and writing situations. For instance, in her topics for personal narrative essays, she lists many topics that could be a male or female experience, such as “an eventful day,” “a journey,” “a visit to the country,” “our family cat,” as well as ones that are obviously meant for girls or boys, such as “my experience in housekeeping” and “my first gunning expedition” (322). Lockwood values women’s experiences and uses them as a means to help women develop their narrative and descriptive writing skills. In an exercise on describing a literary character, she offers eleven names, six male characters and five female. She provides a list of literary prose and poetry titles and asks the students to write essays about those titles, which include women’s names, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Priscilla’s Wedding” and “Lady Wentworth,” and John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Kathleen” and “The Witch’s Daughter” (294). As readers, young women may have identified with female characters and associated those fictional experiences to their lived ones. This allowed women students to find an educational community through text, thus finding a social agency of action and decision making through both positive and negative models in their reading. Lockwood’s textbook offers female students choices for picking topics that spoke to them, and they were asked to write compositions in both personal and literary genres. This was a shift from the first half of the nineteenth century, since women’s training as writers included primarily letter writing and diaries or commonplace books because the college preparation of essay writing was not usually relevant to their future lives (Carr 69). As a literacy strategy, these options and models provided young women with an understanding that their current educational community, the classroom, as well as their own development could be furthered through reading and writing in a variety of genres. Lockwood’s modification of situational writing to make it more inclusive is evident in the letter-writing chapter. While the earlier women’s writing tradition is included, this chapter is not just about social written communication; it includes business communication. The letter-writing assignments and prompts include writing letters to renew subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, and organizations; to order posters, flower seeds, and books; and to request autographs, job interviews, and donations for organizations. Besides providing prompts for

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writing to family members, friends, and companies, Lockwood proposes writing to strangers, such as noted authors, statesmen, business “men,” and so on (275– 77). As in other chapters, Lockwood’s directions and precepts are gender-neutral and appropriate for female or male writers, and she covers titles, salutations, and signatures for both genders in her treatment of formal and informal communication. Most importantly, the chapter begins with Lockwood’s recommendation for an excellent letter-writing model, a female one: “By all means, let them read some of the famous ‘William Henry Letters,’ by Mrs. Diaz” (257). This refers to the fictional letters of a young boy to his family written by activist Abby Morton Diaz and is amazingly rich in its layers of supporting young girls’ ways of seeing themselves in American society. Diaz was a woman writer using a male persona; she wrote American fiction in epistolary form and worked as an activist promoting women’s education and advocating for women’s rights and protection in the workplace. While obviously Lockwood designed the letter-writing chapter for both young women and young men, her reference to Diaz and her use of situations outside the home suggest a shift in the letter-writing instruction for women from the first half of the century. Lockwood’s multiple references to women in the textbook present models of women teaching, writing, and reading, and she supplies the advice, strategies, and practice to develop and expand those skills. Throughout its instruction and exercises, Lessons in English allows for a type of social agency through its promotion of an American literacy that includes women, a means to engage with others inside and outside the home as well as a means to expand and further the educational community. By combining Harvard and Yale ideologies with an understanding that her male and female students would finish high school not only to go on to college, but also to enter the workforce and into the home, just as she herself had done, Lockwood provides high school students with an English curriculum that is comprehensive, inclusive, and, admittedly, nationalistic. I find a threefold value in examining Lockwood’s 1888 Lessons in English, a textbook that offers women rhetorical and cultural training as well as models for social agency through teaching, writing, and reading. First, Lockwood combined Harvard’s current-traditional composition strategies with Yale’s literature-based reading curriculum into a textbook for high school students, only some of whom would attend college, allowing all students “to know something of the beginnings of higher knowledge” (Herbst 72). Second, Lessons in English illustrates the convergence of the national concept of republican motherhood, the initiatives of the 1830s and 1840s common schools, and the social, cultural, and educational goals of developing

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a national literature. Third, as a woman who operated in the traditional roles of wife and schoolteacher, Lockwood made decisions in her curriculum, instruction, assignments, and rhetoric that included women both as potential college students and as participants in domestic, workplace, and possibly civic activities. As Carr contends about girls’ literacy across the nineteenth century, “Heightened literacy also allowed girls to make and maintain wider contacts and to engage more fully with the outside world and with each other” (75). Yes, Lockwood’s textbook reinscribes the status quo, but she does it a bit differently in that Lessons in English promoted a type of rhetorical education that enabled social agency, one that suggested ways that women could continue to develop their literacy in the home as well as outside it. Lockwood’s teaching, writing, and textbook certainly exemplified this. As wife as well as teacher, author, and editor, she actually lived and wrote what she believed.

Notes 1. In addition to Lessons in English and the rewrite of Whitney’s grammar, Lockwood worked on a 1901 revised version of her first book that became Composition and Rhetoric for Higher Schools with Mary Alice Emerson. Her revised grammar of Whitney went through eight printings between 1892 and 1902. She also edited a collection of poetry and an edition of Pinocchio. 2. What is unusual about the years of Lockwood’s teaching is that she married in 1887 and continued to teach for three more years, a rare occurrence since until the 1940s middle-class women were often forced to give up their teaching positions once they married (Donawerth 222). 3. Additionally, the report made claims about what should be taught in grammar schools in order to prepare students for the high school curriculum. The opposition to the report focused both on the high school curriculum and the Committee’s curricular proposals for the grade schools, stating that they were inappropriate. For discussions of the effects of the Committee of Ten on the high school curriculum, see Herbst; Sizer. For discussions on the influence of the report on college rhetoric and composition and Harvard’s role in that, see Hobbs and Berlin; Kitzhaber. 4. Hobbs and Berlin describe these two models, making connections between Yale’s agenda and the Arnoldian concept that the best literature represented and supported the best culture, and between Harvard’s agenda and faculty psychology with clear language equated to clear thinking (253–55). Berlin furthers and

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consolidates his analysis of competing college literacy paradigms by outlining three: Harvard’s “scientific meritocracy,” Yale’s “liberal culture,” and Michigan’s “democratic literacy” (26–35). In addition, Graff deals with Yale and Harvard, grouping both English faculties of the late nineteenth century in his “generalist” camp as opposed to the Johns Hopkins approach, based on the German model of specialization, but Graff is referring to the teaching of literature to upper undergraduate students and graduate students (81–97). 5. These distinct institutional agendas and their respective curricula were focused on the lower-division college writing courses. Individual English professors at Harvard and Yale might operate differently. For instance, Barrett Wendell at Harvard used a current-traditional approach in teaching writing, but employed a cultural approach when teaching upper-division literature courses (see Berlin; Graff). 6. This article appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a critical literary and cultural magazine founded in 1857 with James Russell Lowell, a Harvard graduate, as its first editor, supporting Graff’s coupling of Harvard and Yale ideologies toward the teaching and study of literature as generalist (see note 4). From 1890 to 1898 Scudder served as the magazine’s fifth editor. 7. At that time, A. S. Hill was at Harvard. While all these authors promoted a current-traditional approach in their textbooks, De Mille was faculty at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Hart was at Princeton, D. J. Hill was president at the University of Rochester, and Swinton was at the University of California at Berkeley until 1874, when he moved to New York and wrote successful textbooks.

Works Cited Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. Urbana: NCTE, 1996. Print. Carr, Jean Ferguson. “Nineteenth-Century Girls and Literacy.” Girls and Literacy in America: Historical Perspectives to the Present. Ed. Jane Greer. Santa Barbara: ABCCLIO, 2003. 51–77. Print. Donawerth, Jane. “Sara Lockwood.” Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900, An Anthology. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 222–40. Print. Egge, Albert E. “On the History of the English Language: Illustrations of How It Is Taught in a Much Advertised Book, with a Few Critical Remarks.” Modern Language Notes 10.5 (1895): 143–46. Print. Emerson, Oliver Farrar. Rev. of An English Grammar for Higher Grades in Grammar Schools, by Mrs. Sara E. H. Lockwood. The School Review 1.1 (1893): 53–54. Print.

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Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Twentieth Anniversary Ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007. Print. Guthrie, Warren. “The Development of Rhetorical Theory in America, 1635–1850, III.” Speech Monographs 15 (1948): 61–71. Print. Herbst, Jurgen. The Once and Future School: Three Hundred and Fifty Years of American Secondary Education. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print. Hobbs, Catherine L., and James A. Berlin. “A Century of Writing Instruction in School and College English.” A Short History of Writing Instruction from Ancient Greece to Modern America. 2nd ed. Ed. James J. Murphy. Mahwah, NJ: LEA/ Hermagoras, 2001. 247–89. Print. Kitzhaber, Albert R. Rhetoric in American Colleges, 1850–1900. PhD Diss. University of Washington, 1953. Print. Lockwood, Sara E. Husted. Lessons in English, Adapted to the Study of American Classics: A Text-Book for High Schools and Academies. Boston: Ginn, 1888. Print. Lockwood, Sara E., and Mary Alice Emerson. Composition and Rhetoric for Higher Schools. Boston: Ginn, 1901. Print. Palmer, Glenn E. “Culture and Efficiency Through Composition.” English Journal 1 (1912): 488–92. Print. Reese, William J. The Origins of the American High School. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995. Print. Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies with the Reports of the Conferences Arranged by the Committee. National Educational Association. New York: American, 1894. Print. Robbins, Sarah. Managing Literacy, Mothering America: Women’s Narratives on Reading and Writing in the Nineteenth Century. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2004. Print. Scudder, Horace E. “American Classics in the School.” The Atlantic Monthly 60 (1887): 85–91. Print. Sewell, Jas. W. “Proceedings of the Southern Association: English.” The School Review 8.2 (1900): 80–86. Print. Sizer, Theodore R. Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century. New Haven: Yale UP, 1964. Print. Soltow, Lee, and Edward Stevens. The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States: A Socioeconomic Analysis to 1870. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. Print. Spring, Joel. The American School 1642–1985: Varieties of Historical Interpretation of the Foundations and Development of American Education. New York: Longman, 1986. Print.

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Whitney, William Dwight, and Sara E. Husted Lockwood. An English Grammar for Higher Grades in Grammar Schools: Adapted from Essentials of English Grammar. Boston: Ginn, 1892. Print. Young, Richard E. “Paradigms and Problems: Needed Research in Rhetorical Invention.” Research on Composing: Points of Departure. Eds. Charles Cooper and Lee Odell. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1978. 29–47. Print.

chapter 10 Toward a Genealogy of Composition Student Discipline and Development at Harvard in the Late Nineteenth Century

Edward J. Comstock

I

t became fashionable in the 1980s and early 1990s to debate the historiog raphy of the late-nineteenth-century emergence of freshman composition  courses as a barometer of contemporary composition practices and, especially, as a historically lamentable departure from the teaching of a more intellectually substantial rhetoric. Alternately, scholars have argued that the emergence of freshman composition reflected disciplinary advance (Parker; Hill); an attempt to demarcate social class through correct usage (Crowley; Douglas); a practical response to shifting demographics and the influx of students to the university following the Civil War (Halloran; Crowley); the “culmination” of the belletristic tradition in “rule-bound” pedagogy (“The Bedford Bibliography”); “the way the new university was formed” (Brereton 5); and most frequently, combinations of these arguments. But when the dust settled, most seemed to agree with some version of the argument made by prominent scholars such as James A. Berlin that “The major cause of the changes was the shift from entrepreneurial to corporate capitalism” (Rhetorics 19). When the still-aristocratic society of early capitalism—where the goal of rhetoric was to teach future leaders the power of persuasion—was replaced by industrial meritocratic capitalism, Berlin argues, rhetoric was replaced by a more practical training in the mechanical writing skills required to practice the

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empirical sciences and to conduct business. Berlin finds the emergence of modern composition in the overall turn to bourgeois ideology, and especially the “scientific values of precision, clarity, and conciseness” (qtd. in Halloran 188). In this process, Berlin argues, the tastes of the powerful were objectified in the “poetic” of professionalized literary study, while rhetoric was relegated to the yeoman’s work of freshman composition courses. In Berlin’s seminal Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges, he saw in the recommendations of the Harvard Committee that established the first freshman writing courses at Harvard “the first and most important step toward shaping the teaching of writing at high schools and colleges for years to come” (61). In their recommendations he finds the beginning of an “assembly line education” in writing (62). But in focusing on the Committee’s grounding in “the faculty psychology of the eighteenth-century” (62)—and the influence of Scottish rhetoricians George Campbell and Hugh Blair, whose rhetoric Harvard “modified” in creating the freshman composition classes (9)—despite his interest in the relation between rhetorics and the production of behaviors, Berlin mostly ignores what was happening in actual classrooms. Challenging Berlin’s perspective and the received view in the history of composition, I argue here that the shift to writing instruction—as is evident in (and not unique to) Harvard’s remedial freshman English courses—cannot be explained reductively with reference to the economic base or ideological superstructure, nor through ongoing contests, adaptations, or progressions in the “noetic field” (that is, the particular “notion of reality, interlocutor, audience, and language” that underlay each rhetoric and that give rise to classroom behaviors) (Writing Instruction 4). By focusing on the shift from the classical pedagogy of “mental discipline” to the pedagogy of body discipline, we can see an entirely new intelligibility of the educated student-subject and a new relation of knowledge to the body. These new formations were established upon novel techniques of disciplinary control and care in the writing classroom that both precede and are irreducible to economic or ideological formations. In order to capture a sense of the student experience of writing pedagogy in the late nineteenth century, I analyzed an archive of Harvard student self-reports on their training in writing and composition in preparatory schools—over 150 in total, preserved and published by the Harvard English Faculty Committee of Composition and Rhetoric1 in 1896 as a sample of the 1,170 they collected— alongside major and minor works of nineteenth-century educational theorists and psychologists and the more current scholarship on nineteenth-century rhetoric, writing textbooks, and pedagogy. This archive has never—or at least not

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since the initial report—been the subject of systematic critical analysis. The self-reports were written in response to a question asked of all students taking English courses (including the Lawrence Scientific School and Radcliffe College) by the Committee in November 1896; the report included the responses unedited for the purpose of comparison and analysis in the future. Students responded to the following query: “Describe the training you received, or the experience you may have had, in writing English before entering College, giving the names of the schools in which, or the instructors from whom, you received it; and then, speaking in the light of your subsequent work and experience in College, point out wherein your preparatory training now seems to you to have been good and sufficient, and wherein it seems to have been defective and to admit of improvement” (“Harvard University Report” 402). Taken together and reflective of the experience of writing students from schools across the country, this colorful archive of student self-reports of writing training in the late nineteenth century provides a unique glimpse into the classroom experience and the idiosyncrasies of writing instruction during this time.

Foucault and Subjectification: The Genealogical Method My analysis will also build on Michel Foucault’s genealogical work on the relation of disciplinary technologies to practices of subjectification in order to understand how students both internalized and resisted the disciplinary regime that emerged in the classroom during this period around the practice of writing. As this work will demonstrate, the emergence of the student as a subject of knowledge is an example par excellence of Foucault’s “transcendental-empirical doublet”: “a knowledge of nature upon the original experience of which the body provides an outline . . .” (The Order of Things 319). In other words, the modern disciplinary body is tautologically, for Foucault, both the empirical source and the transcendental condition of knowledge. Although the study of classical rhetoric was notoriously complex, to the extent that rhetoric itself was the subject—as opposed to the performance, behavior, and development of the student-subject—writing could never itself be made intelligible as an isolated object of study outside of the abstract and taxonomic study of representation itself. Writing was simply unproblematic in relation to rhetoric (more on this below) as a representation of the idea and a simulacrum of speech. Or again, writing could be made an object of empirical study only at the point at which it could be broken down into a hierarchy of visible behaviors that coalesced around a transcendental student-body-subject that obeyed, in its finitude, universal principles and norms. And it is within this process of making writing a “behavior” that the disciplinary techniques find their

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point of application—that is, the point where the body of the student, its movements and powers, signifies “deeper” realities about its development. This developmental body became the transcendental substrate upon which an empirical knowledge of the student-subject could be formed. So for Foucault the knowledge that forms about the student (or institutional) subject first emerges in relation to local disciplinary techniques that make the student visible around developmental and other classroom norms—the genealogy is meant to be an uncovering of these techniques that have given us the historical student-subject that we now take for granted at the level of knowledge and discourse. These disciplinary techniques are prediscursive; they are practices that obey only (or mostly) the rules of disciplinary functionality. But around their application knowledge forms and power finds its language. In this relationship between disciplinary power and knowledge (which Foucault hyphenated in his concept “power-knowledge”), disciplinary power becomes a positive and productive power, the power to shape and manage lives (as opposed to the sovereign power of the king, which was the negative power to take lives), that is both taken up by individuals at the level of identity and, otherwise, resisted. After all, to not participate in this production of individuality that the disciplines enable would be to place the self outside of knowledge—and therefore outside of ethical practices of self-formation. One need only think of the various ways students identify with the results of, for example, a test or examination and the ways they resist such identification. Disciplinary power works through the application of disciplinary techniques aimed at the individualization of each body according to a schema of the parts and functions—“Individualization appears as the ultimate aim of a precisely adapted code” (Foucault, Discipline and Punish 149). In a process that references individual behaviors and functions to aggregated physiological and psychological norms of development, each student appears as if in accordance with an inner truth of their nature-identity and is given a specific place within the disciplinary grid under the banner of knowledge. In this way, “Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise” (170), so that—contra Berlin’s formulation—power works from the “bottom-up” through classroom practice.

An Overview of the Modern-Developmental Composition Pedagogy: “Discipline and Drudgery” While there was a great deal of variation in writing instruction in the educational institutions of the late nineteenth century, an overview of the Harvard

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archive reveals that the typical “college prep” curriculum was characterized by the study of classics and translations in preparation for college entrance examinations in addition to “belletristic” studies of language. In short, most of the students surveyed were being prepared to take the Harvard entrance examination (or a similar examination)—which focused on knowledge of classical literature— a fact that the school itself (as well as the New York Times, which noted in reporting on the work of the Harvard Committee that students were “merely trained to pass a given examination”) was beginning to recognize (“Deficient in English”). Indeed, it was this program of study that was at the root of the problem for the Harvard Committee—the 1897 Harvard Report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric was written to challenge old pedagogies based on the committee’s assessment of the student self-reports of their training in writing. In assessing the student self-reports both as windows into the high school classroom and as writing samples, the authors reproach the preparatory schools for their focus on rhetoric and style, clarifying that the university alone should teach “style” and “individuality,” while the preparatory schools should focus on what we’ve come to call “basic” or “lower-order” skills. They stipulate, “The province of the preparatory schools is to train the scholar, boy or girl, and train him or her thoroughly, in what can only be described as the elements and rudiments of written expression . . .” (“Harvard University Report” 421). The new composition profession and pedagogy was conceived by the Committee overtly in terms of the new disciplinary techniques, and the authors divorce the practice of writing from the study of the classics and rhetoric through the Cartesian distinction between body and mind. In this distinction, training in writing becomes disciplinary and largely physical. The report goes on to define what they mean by rudiments: “They should teach facile, clear penmanship, correct spelling, simple grammatical construction, and neat, workmanlike, mechanical execution” (421). In short, they argue, the secondary schools should not concern themselves with the training of the mind (i.e., “mental discipline”) but only with the disciplining of the body and habits of focus and attention. Lest the preparatory schools miss the point, the authors clarify that the new writing pedagogy “involves steady, daily drill, and drudgery of a kind most wearisome” (421). And although it is conventionally understood that Jeremiah Day and James L. Kingsley from the competing Yale English department remained champions of the classical pedagogy, even they argued for an instruction that was foremost “best calculated to the art of fixing the attention, directing the train of thought . . . ” (qtd. in Crowley 278) and recommended “frequent exercise” (Crowley 49).

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But the recommendation of a program of “severe, constant, daily discipline and practice” (“Harvard University Report” 413) was not, as the received wisdom has it, a questioning of the significance of writing or rhetoric—either to promote its study as composition or to degrade its value as mere mechanics. The goal was not to plead the case for or against the value of writing against rhetoric, but to apply the new techniques of “discipline” and “drudgery” in order to shore up the “slip-shod and slovenly” classical pedagogy and to resist the degeneration of language into the “mongrel dialect” that seeped into the university through the “translation English” that Harvard professors found in their close evaluation of student essays (415). Their fight was with the earlier pedagogy of “mental discipline” that instructed students in writing through translation of the classics, neglecting the quality of the English used to do so. Rather than question instruction in rhetoric, they asserted a developmental scheme that associated writing with bodily mechanics and attention and rhetoric with the higher-order and abstract thinking skills appropriate to university study. In the classical pedagogy of “mental discipline,” learning occurred mostly through lectures, the study of books on abstract grammar and rhetoric, reading and translating classic texts in Greek and Latin, and, finally, imitation of the style of great rhetoricians. Indeed, imitation (through reading, direct transcription, and writing themes inspired by classic texts), memorization, and recitation were the (interconnected) pedagogical technologies at the center of the classroom: “because style is learned through imitation, the good writer is a good reader” (Berlin, Rhetorics 526). Learning in this regard proceeded through a kind of accumulation of facts, rhetorical devices, and known truths, measured simply by how much one had studied or memorized. Learning in this pedagogy of imitation had nothing to do with a concept of development. The new disciplinary techniques would relate at every point to development. So while it is evident enough how “clear penmanship” and “neat, workmanlike, mechanical execution” relate to the disciplining of the body, we must also understand their characteristically developmentalist conceptualization of spelling and “simple grammar” in these terms. That is to say, these dimensions of writing and composition now belong to the youth’s “age of discipline”; writing “rudiments” are understood within a new pedagogy that extends the idea of the developmental subject, rather than, as in classical pedagogy, realizing their place from within a general taxonomy of learning derived from their significance to rhetoric. Although grammar systems are inherently abstract, the new pedagogues valorized grammatical correctness over and against the old system of teaching abstract rules; that is, in the new pedagogy, even grammar instruction is purely

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disciplinary. As Fred Newton Scott argued, “There must be frequent repetition. Abstract ideas easily evaporate unless they are made part of the very stuff of the mind . . .” (148). Grammar instruction was similarly differentiated at every point from the “parrot-like” classical pedagogy of imitation to the extent that the abstractions of grammar “must be made concrete” through examples of grammatical principles “in use”; reversing the conventional wisdom, Scott goes so far as to argue that, “Indeed, a facility in rule and definition should be a warning to the teacher to test the reality of the pupil’s knowledge” (148, emphasis original). The same goes for spelling, which must be learned through “drill” (153). Indeed, having broken away from the old traditions, the first great “discovery” of the new educationist discourse on writing was that writing instruction must proceed from a kind of physical hard-wiring through sheer repetition. The job of the teacher was to inculcate “a clear picture of the word as it looks on the page, and a readiness in transcribing this visual image with the pen,” with the visual and auditory memories activated by drill supplemented by “the motor memories whereby the hand automatically writes the word that is in the mind” (154). The study of writing at this developmental stage is distinct from thinking; writing merely transcribes mental representations—or rather, the “visual image” of words as they represent thought. The new writing pedagogy would, ideally at least, work through exercising a disciplinary command of the body until execution became automatic. As G. Stanley Hall, the pioneering child psychologist, clarifies: Just as about the only duty of young children is implicit obedience, so the chief mental training from about eight to twelve is arbitrary memorization, drill, habituation, with only limited appeal to the understanding. After the critical transition age of six or seven, when the brain has achieved its adult size and weight, and teething has reduced the chewing surface to its least extent, begins a unique stage of life marked by reduced growth and increased activity and power to resist both disease and fatigue, which suggests what was, in some just post-simian age of our race, its period of maturity. Here belong the discipline in writing, reading, spelling, verbal memory, manual training, practice of instrumental technic, proper names, drawing, drill in arithmetic, foreign languages by oral methods, the correct pronunciation of which is far harder if acquired later, etc. (234)

In Hall’s idealized pedagogy, furthermore, the student is best trained at this point through mechanical repetition because “the hand is never so near the brain” (234). Penmanship was given a pedagogical significance, in this regard, that differs

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from grammar only in degree. In other words, teaching at the early stages of a student’s development, it was argued, needed to be directed at the body, when the body is prepared to receive large volumes of information, as the “eye- and eargates should be open at their widest” (234). Hall continues, “It is the age of little method and much matter. The good teacher is a pedotrieb, or boy-driver” (235). Although he was a major figure at Harvard and in the emerging fields of psychology and education, there is a clear danger in generalizing from Hall; there were, of course, other, often competing, pedagogies, and not all of them drew so liberally on Spenserian concepts. What these pedagogies have in common, however, is more significant to the classroom experience than what they do not. For example, we can see Hall’s same schematization—stated more gently—in the words of a less philosophical writing teacher, “We must first sustain readiness, then accuracy, then sustained effort” (Hollister 498). And in contesting the classical pedagogy, even James A. Berlin’s “alternative voice” Fred Newton Scott argued that writing instruction must begin with discipline: “The ill-regulated work of the primary school may breed habits of inattention and general intellectual flabbiness, to the frustration of the work in the higher grades. There must be discipline, from the beginning of school life; and the discipline in reading and writing is within a field of activity necessary for the child both in school and in after life. . . . This discipline must be adapted to the capacities of the child” (79–80). In short, when we bracket the differences we can see that, across the discourse, the pedagogy of writing was given a new hierarchal ordering relative to the student-subject; as a result, the study of the content of rhetoric, divorced from the “rudiments,” becomes viewed as developmentally inappropriate for the preparatory school student (or as remedial). Correctness in mechanics and grammar are given a “lower-order” status in the disciplined function of attention. To write correctly becomes foremost a matter of disciplining the attention to recognize and attend to the control of the body and its actions in response to the (usually classroom) environment—it becomes a behavior.2 The problem then for the colleges was what to do with students who had not learned disciplined behavior at the developmentally appropriate time, and, following from this, wrote poorly. At best, bad writing signified the failure of the schools to prepare the next generation of rulers and businessmen; at worst, a developmentally inappropriate education signified the degeneration of the species.

The Harvard Committee and Student Self-Reports For its part, the Harvard Committee on Composition and Rhetoric stayed clear of the devolution anxieties of the late nineteenth century in favor of their

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more immediate concern: how to deal with otherwise “developed” students who lacked this discipline without sacrificing the time needed for other studies. Recognizing that their new system would take up precious instruction time, they called for a reorganization of time-management in the classroom through a more regimented disciplinary approach to correct the “present slovenly, inexact oral method” (“Harvard University Report” 413). They recommend instead “daily written work,” which would allow for a more exact system of disciplinary surveillance than the old inefficient oral evaluations and “more practice, more daily drill, and more severe discipline are needed in the high schools” (412). The daily themes entailed a cycle of mechanical execution, feedback, and revision. Instead of writing about classical topics that reflected the student’s grasp of “Truth,” the daily themes demanded and reflected mechanical discipline through formal conformity to the mode of discourse, spelling, handwriting, and linguistic “purity.” They were disciplinary exercises that served both to control the body of the student in the classroom, by directing attention toward mechanical forms, and to make the student writer a transparent subject of knowledge. The production of these texts was formulaic; the knowledge that they produced came not from the student’s grasp of truth or the idea, but from the essential and scientific truth that their mechanical execution conveys about the student. And while it might be argued that the skills employed in writing the daily theme underlay the positivist’s ideology of truth as scientific—the mere reporting of empirical facts3—the reality of these exercises in the classroom—their daily drudgery—was far removed from any relation to the production of truth or even mere communication in the “real world.” After all, the daily theme is an artifact of the classroom with only an arbitrary relation to “outside” forms of communication. The system was legitimized in the institution to the extent that it made intelligible the development of the student him/herself, and vice versa. Such a system of daily written work, as opposed to the old system of teaching writing through infrequent themes (completed without revision) and the study of abstract grammatical rules, would multiply the grounds of evaluation. The teacher could now monitor both the student’s development at the level of the body—through posture, writing technique, and the like—as well as mechanical execution at the micro level (e.g., handwriting and spelling). But these techniques raised the question of how to handle the new business of evaluation in the face of the multiplication of texts—the teacher, after all, could only do so much grading. Their solution to this problem was to turn the classroom into a panopticon:

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Even though the gaze of the teacher could not consistently monitor each individual student’s work, it was because students could be made visible at any moment that they must operate as if they were constantly surveilled. In this way, students internalized the means of control; the new disciplinary classroom would function more efficiently precisely because students would internalize the disciplinary regimen by monitoring their movements. Knowing that at any moment they might become the direct subject of evaluation, the students disciplined themselves. Writing in this system replaces the old, inefficient system of themes and oral presentation, with its uneven and inconsistent policing through physical punishments (already, no doubt, on their way out). As a result, through these prediscursive techniques—these techniques that emerged simply out of the need to manage the classroom more efficiently—and the discourses that emerged out of them, students began to imagine themselves in a new way and in the knowledgeterms of the institution. Before, in the classical system that favored lecture, memorization, and recitation, the teacher was the source and physical embodiment of a sovereign Truth in the classroom. Now the student, and his or her development, becomes the location where knowledge is formed. By making the disciplined body the site of a disciplinary knowledge, the student becomes, in fact, the subject of writing— and for the first time, reversing the direction of knowledge, as we see with these reports, it suddenly made some sense to ask students about themselves. And as a result, as student identities begin to emerge from the disciplinary grid placed on the once anonymous cluster of classroom bodies, students begin to imagine themselves in a new way: that is, in the embodied terms of the institution.

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The participation of these students in their subjectification is reflected in self-reports that closely overlap with the dominant narrative of the Harvard Committee. Reading these reports, it is immediately clear that the anxieties of the Committee were borne out in (and originated in) the classroom experiences of these students. Harvard’s new requirements—and the pedagogical techniques employed in the classroom—were crafted in direct response to this situation; however, in turn, the students began to think of writing in terms of their success (or lack thereof) at Harvard. The effect was to give a teleological purpose to the Harvard program—the students interpreted their prior education almost singularly in terms of the extent to which it has prepared them for the Harvard curriculum, and very few questioned its wisdom (with some significant exceptions).4 This is the case to such an extent that the students viewed the Harvard education in writing, a step toward the more privileged subjects, as synonymous with education itself. Indeed, it is not just a matter of a practical institutional identification, but of adopting a subject position within a “true” discourse that establishes a system of identities around its norms. So on the one hand, the reports are interesting because they describe conventional practices of “teaching to the test” (specifically, the Harvard entrance exam) in the prep schools to an extent that, perhaps, exceeds even our contemporary school system. But more significantly, it is clear that these students internalized the disciplinary approach not only because they were caught up in its complex play of punishment and reward, but also because they viewed Harvard’s “incidental approach” to writing and the disciplinary regimen it implied as absolutely fundamental not only to their own successes and failures, but also to the status of the student identity they adopted and to the very purpose of education. Their concern was not so much with their writing skills, but with their grades and their ability to succeed at Harvard—to become educated qua “schooled.” Examined and surveilled, they appropriated the new terms and dispositions of a knowledge built upon them; completing the loop, the students imagined themselves though this disciplinary knowledge because to do otherwise would be to live outside of the truths it exposes. I believe that it is because they internalized this disciplinary education that they cheerfully provided the self-deprecating feedback the Harvard Committee sought, in many cases dismissing as inadequate not only their prior education but also their own writing abilities. They allowed themselves to become the subject of this new pedagogical knowledge (and more specifically of the Harvard Committee Report) to excuse their own difficulties in the Harvard curriculum by joining in the critique of their preparatory training—in this way, although they

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are understood to lack the necessary knowledge and skills, they positioned themselves on the side of knowledge. For example, student #63 laments his training in classical pedagogy by valorizing one tenet of the Harvard program: “Why could we not have had simple subjects, chosen mainly from our other subjects, or from daily life, definitely assigned to us at frequent and regular intervals, say once every week? This would have given us fluency of expression, without requiring spasmodic efforts of a superhuman kind. Why could not our English teachers have adhered to the simple principle that the scholar should be taught to express what he already knows well, in good English, rather than to be forced to express what he knows ill in bad English?” (“Harvard University Report” 459). Here we see clearly the dual themes of naturalization and critique; the student wants both to establish his willingness to participate in the educational program, and to explain the causes of his own deficiencies. As student #153 postulates, “That day is lost on which I write no daily theme” (514). And while grammar and correctness were important, more than anything, the students valued (and lamented their lack of training in) the disciplinary daily themes that were at the heart of the English A curriculum, as student #44 makes clear: “Daily themes are beautiful practice. I really can think of no method of teaching composition writing which is as efficacious as this. I can see myself, boiling with rage, as I would have been had daily themes been required, when I was in my preparatory school, but I wish they had been required” (445). This combination of resistance and “buying in” to the “dreadful bother” (432) of theme writing is typical of the responses as students became immersed in the self-referential logic of the disciplinary system: “You cannot expect . . . instruction to take root and bear fruit when there is not enough soil,” as student #25 notices (436). Pushing the matter further, student #148—in arguing that “I can imagine no better method, than that pursued in regard to our daily themes”—reflects the position that the student must internalize discipline through a self-direction that gives a developmental “purpose” to the drudgery of this pedagogy: The main fault I have to find however with my training in English, as with all my school work, was the want of apparent purpose throughout, so far as I personally was concerned. It seems to me a boy should be buttonholed somewhat in this fashion. Do you see that you are a member of a civilized community. Do you see, that it is to your interest, to learn to express yourself clearly, and accurately, in writing or speaking with your fellows? That it may be bread and butter to you, that it certainly is your only chance of a high standard of development? (508)

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Here the student argues that in order to reach the highest levels of development, he must find a reason to bear the disciplinary regime by legitimizing it within his personal goals, such that his personal and educational development become unified.5 Self-deprecation was in this sense a functional dimension of the disciplinary system—the student must submit to it, and dispense with other knowledge claims, in order to become educated. That is, the daily theme as a technique for teaching disciplined writing turned on the epistemological assumption that meaning is objectively available in reality, and that, in turn, those who have little experience with the world naturally have little to say about it. As student #36 questions: “How can a scholar sit down and in ten minutes write a story on a miser, or what does he know about the celebrations in an almshouse unless he has been there himself, which is not likely?” (442). The daily theme then was meant merely as a vessel to convey the limited experience of the student; this, as opposed to the imitative and expository writing on “Truth” —and especially rhetorical style—that characterize classical pedagogy. Indeed, many students took the opportunity to complain about the old rhetoric because they viewed the tasks precisely as developmentally inappropriate. Student #71 comes to this position in hindsight of the freshman composition course: “In the light of my study in College since, I think increased composition should have almost entirely supplanted the work in Rhetoric, for, having gone over that for the second time, in English A, I feel convinced that it is as useless to a person learning how to write as the study of logic is to a growing child, learning how to think” (466). And as student #135 argues about style specifically: “Let the written work give some room for individuality, for the man to express things which he himself has observed and felt. If he really has opinions of his own on any author’s style, ‘something that won’t stay unsaid,’ then let him write thereon; but such will seldom be the case” (498). Marking a break from the earlier rhetoric, style, for its part, is associated with “higher-order” rhetoric and for the most part separated from writing instruction. In classical pedagogy, language was transparently related to social class and the individual—“style is the man,” as it was said. For instance, student #68 characterizes his teachers as believing writing to be a gentlemanly enterprise, isomorphic with the station of the individual: “They thought good writing was entirely a question of the person who did it. They believed it required talent, the spark of genius or what not, to write well just as we believe it requires the spark of genius to write brilliantly or originally. That writing well is a question of training they did not understand. They would undoubtedly have admitted that training is a

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help but had somebody suggested that any intelligent person can write correctly and well if properly trained, they would have said, ‘Ah, my dear sir, it depends upon the man’” (462). As Foucault demonstrates, “For Classical thought, language begins not with expression, but with discourse” (The Order of Things 92). Language had a representational and doubling role—its purpose is to order mental content. The primary concern of the classical pedagogy then was (1) to bring students to the “Truth” through exercises of mental discipline such as imitation, in effect writing the “Truth” of the world onto the mind and (2) to teach students the different styles through which this content could be organized, adapted to different ends and purposes. In opposition to the classical pedagogy, which turned on the problem of representation, the new system of writing instruction derived its coherence from reference to the “deep” nature of the developmental student-subject through the (otherwise, perhaps, arbitrary) connections to individual behavior. As student #55 characterized the classical pedagogy, “The whole object of the work was to give us thoughts, and incidentally to show us how to express them” (“Harvard University Report” 453). Or as student #45 recalled: “In the entire course of six years, I do not recollect having written any composition longer than one page, with the single exception of my oration at commencement. . . . [Our instructor] frequently attempted to justify this disregard of written work in English, by asserting that the average boy had nothing of any importance to say, and that as soon as he did begin to develop ideas, the words and the form would come to him spontaneously” (445). In the new pedagogy of development—the increasing facility with language that now ends with personal style—learning is given its order relative to the nature of the body rather than through imitation of the discourses and the “beautiful language”; after all, the grammar school student is in a sense “incomplete,” and in a bad relation to truth not because of a lack of preparation, but because of a lack of internal development. Skills and drills are meant to help advance the student, met at the bodily level that defines their existence at this stage, to the next stage of development. Having themselves internalized this knowledge and system, the student self-reports are suffused with a concerned awareness for the developmental appropriateness of their training, and especially with the ways writing pedagogy addresses (and separates) training in purity of expression and personal style (where the latter constitutes the highest level of writing ability). Here student #139 colorfully criticizes the classical pedagogy that taught him style before his time: “Where is my imagination now? Where is my simple

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direct style? Gone! Now I write in a forced artificial style, trying to get color and imitate the style of Stevenson. . . . My work is neither one thing or the other and I lay it all to teachers who taught me to imitate” (500). As writing is no longer transparent to the idea, as it becomes evident that the sign has an arbitrary relation to the signified, purity and clarity of expression are crucial. The purpose of writing at this level—and the purpose of the daily theme—is to communicate the experience of the writer to the reader; to transfer the content of that experience, through words, onto the mind of the reader. And instruction that focuses on style and the content of writing, rather than on a purity of expression felicitous to experience, fails in this regard. But in turn, the expression of the inner self and of adopting discourse to the faculties of the audience—or what is meant at this point by style—becomes the most significant and substantial intellectual task of language instruction, and is now understood to take place at the higher levels. The teaching of style before college, and the pedagogy of imitation, is ineffective because it belies the truth of development: only fully formed individuals can form the abstract ideas necessary for individual style. Separated not only from mere mechanical writing instruction, but also from Blair’s belletristic pedagogy of imitation, this level of instruction becomes, increasingly, the domain of the new literary study and poetics—the study and celebration of the origins of ideas (originality) in the individualized capacity for genius. The idea of purity, over and against the old methods of imitation and translation, becomes increasingly important as a marker of internal development and cognitive organization. While purity at the upper levels pertained to selfexpression and style, at the lower levels, it is clear that the concept was held in high regard also as it pertained to “untainted” English. As student #77 states regarding translation from Greek and Latin, “It was not until 1895, that any effectual system of teaching English was introduced into the school. From this time on, all translations, both verbal and written, were required to be rendered into good, pure English” (“Harvard University Report” 469). As with student #83, the students clearly adopted the position that the “translation-English” resultant of the classical pedagogy tended to work against purity: “During this year our work in the classics must have helped us in some measure by adding to our stock of words but the tendency to use a stiff stereotype expression rather than hunt about for a free idiomatic phrase was very strong, and, though the standard of English was raised in translations the daily work in the class showed little sign of the change. The idea of striving alway’s [sic] in translation to find exactly the right word was not brought forward as it should have been” (474). As pedagogy

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shifted from teaching rhetorical style and discourse, new classroom techniques appeared—including sentence correcting drills6 and the constant cycle of feedback and revision—meant to direct the attention to the “right word” and the proper idiomatic expression. And it is clear that one of the effects of these techniques was to instill in students, through the play of reward and punishment, and through their sheer frequency, an intuitive belief in their role as student—a pure and transparent institutional identity. This takes James A. Berlin’s insight that “the behavior the student is told to undertake in composing leads to his embracing the tacit noetic field underlying it, whether or not the teacher and student are aware of the fact” (Writing Instruction 3) one step further. However, while it is true that the students repeat the logic of the Harvard program, it is also clear that the Committee learned some things from the students. As we have seen, at the center of the Committee Report is an anxiety over the ability of students to focus on content that is outside their grasp; indeed, many of the students in the report question the logic of the classical pedagogy as, essentially, developmentally inappropriate. Furthermore, they confirm the fears of the Committee that this pedagogy turns children away from education—that they begin to lose interest. In a typical passage, student #137 states, “In my second year in this school we took up such things as ‘The Vision of Sir Launfal’ and read them, but the instructor pulled the poem to pieces and discussed its philosophy with such vigor that I became disgusted. Then we were required to tell our views of the poem and talk philosophy. Imagine if you can a youth of fifteen or sixteen years doing such critical work as this” (“Harvard University Report” 499). The student’s “disgust” with this lesson stems from his (self-reported) inability to understand it. Similarly, student #42 dismisses “the utterly stupid and uninteresting lectures on Rhetoric” of the classical pedagogy as a “waste of time” (444). Reflecting on the practice in classical pedagogy toward teaching detached and abstracted grammar, student #7 comments, “As we thought we were getting no good from this work—I think now that it could have been nearly dispensed with, and advantageously—we took no interest in it, and often times the work was not truly and honestly done” (427−28). Such revelations confirmed the worst fears of the Harvard faculty—the classical pedagogy represented not only the disillusionment of students, but a wasted opportunity to command the student’s attention (an increasingly significant problem as school populations continued to multiply). Related to this issue were concerns about the simulation of attention (which runs parallel to the simulation of madness in the asylum), as in the case of student #136, who found his teacher’s “weak point” and faked interest in Milton—

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“In this way I not only got good marks in my examinations but also made him think I was quite a literary person” (499)—which the disciplinary methods, in part, resolved through the systematic and uniform visibility they created. It is further clear that many prep schools had begun to fall in line with the Harvard program and began to craft their curriculum around the Harvard entrance examination. From the responses that the Committee said satisfactorily reflected their own pedagogical ideal, and snippets of description of what happened in the English A course that appear where students juxtapose their preparatory and college experiences, we get a glimpse into what actually happened in these classrooms. Here is an example (student #109) from a school teaching Harvard’s pedagogy: “While at this school I read the books required for the examinations. I did a great deal of work in correcting specimens of bad English, in fact, I did much more of that style of work than any other. I also wrote themes on the various books or characters in the books which I had read for the examination” (“Harvard University Report” 487). Here we can see an example of what appears to have been a common practice of combining the English and composition requirements of the entrance exam. While Harvard’s English A separated these dimensions, it was common for prep schools—in the interests of having their students pass the entrance examination—to teach composition through daily themes and the works of literature required by the entrance exam by having students write about the works (usually through summary or character descriptions).

Conclusion In order to add to the growing discourse on classroom practice, I intend that this analysis of the Harvard documents supplement the research already done on fin de siècle rhetoric—and especially the rich analysis of classroom texts as a window into classroom practice. This essay means to build on these prior works (Carr, Carr, and Schultz; Connors; Kitzhaber) in order to continue the project of understanding how shifts in rhetorical theory and pedagogy both reflected and departed from the lived reality and to respond to the challenge of scholars such as Stephen M. North and Robin Varnum, who argue that “historians will have to look beyond textbooks, and even beyond the professional literature of the period, for new sources of information” (Varnum 50) to examine the lived experience of the classroom. Additionally, this work means to build on Thomas Miller’s insight, “Those of us who believe that the classroom can be an important site for the emergence of social and educational change need to write histories that take pedagogy seriously as a historical practice” (262). In this regard, pedagogy not

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only reflects shifts in broader historical formations, but is intricately involved in their production through the local play of power and knowledge. In analyzing the shift to this pedagogy, many people have argued that the introduction of the writing discipline indicates the decline of a more well-rounded writing instruction in rhetoric; in divorcing writing from rhetoric, it becomes a lesser subject, isolated from serious study in college. In classical pedagogy, as John C. Brereton argues, “Attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation were handled every day through work in Latin and Greek. In fact, the old college was much more language-based than the new university; classics masters taught grammar thoroughly and exactly, paying meticulous attention to detail through class exercises, recitations, and written compositions in Greek and Latin and in written translations into English” (4). And James A. Berlin, in arguing that writing instruction has “fallen from favor,” finds the reason in the shifting relation between rhetorics and social structures, which “directs the behavior of teacher and student in the classroom” (Writing Instruction 2). But in the first instance at least, the issue is not that the new university was paying less attention to language or making writing a parasitic subject; it is more accurate to say that the study of language was given a new order relative to the student-subject, and the study of these mechanical elements are not so much ignored by the university as they are viewed as developmentally inappropriate (or remedial). These processes precede Berlin’s “noetic fields” to the extent that the noetic field itself first emerges relative to classroom practices that gave shape to the developmental student-subject. The point was that now the study of composition, and more specifically correctness, belonged to that youthful age of development where the student must develop discipline. Simultaneously, as writing becomes a social behavior natural to the developing subject, a lack of developmentally appropriate discipline began to signify to many the devolution of the purity of language, the individual, and—increasingly for many—the species.

Notes 1. The Committee was formed in 1891 by the Harvard Board of Overseers to assess the new “English A” freshman composition course. It was composed of three individuals—Charles Francis Adams, E. L. Godkin, and Josiah Quincy— from outside Harvard who had “no training or experience in the teaching of writing” (Berlin, Writing Instruction, 61). The committee gathered its data from students across English courses in the university, asking them to respond to a

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question about their training in composition. The report analyzed closely in this paper was their third report, following an overview of the quality of freshman writing and a study of Greek and Latin translations. 2. That writing for the modernists becomes a behavior is clear enough from the title of Scott’s famous 1922 essay “English Composition as a Mode of Behavior.” 3. As student #51 clarifies, “There was, I believe[,] a proviso that we should write on no subject that had come to our notice more than twenty-four hours previously” (450). 4. For instance, while most students championed the new sequenced approach to teaching writing, a few lamented the lack of “individuality” involved in the mechanical lessons of English A. However, in context, many of these students seem to be attempting to parrot the ideas of the faculty, but misunderstand the idea. Student #8, for example, criticizes his prep school precisely for doing what Harvard has asked it to do, but, confused by the mixed or partial use of different pedagogies, seems to want to criticize them on the grounds that they are doing otherwise. 5. Of course, it is worth noting that not every student saw the value of the daily theme: “When I attempt to write on the life around me, I make an utter failure of it. Daily themes seem a bore . . .” (“Harvard University Report” 476). 6. As student #41 puts it, “We were drilled on [grammatical errors] until we could detect one at first glimpse” (443).

Works Cited “The Bedford Bibliography: History of Rhetoric and Composition.” Bedford/St. Martin’s. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. Berlin, James A. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1984. Print. Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996. Print. Brereton, John C., ed. The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875– 1925: A Documentary History. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 1995. Print. Carr, Jean Ferguson, Stephen L. Carr, and Lucille M. Schultz. Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print. Carpenter, George R., Franklin T. Baker, and Fred Newton Scott. “The Teaching of English in the Elementary and the Secondary Schools.” Google Books. 1903. Web. 18 Feb. 2012.

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Connors, Robert J. “Rhetoric in the Modern University: The Creation of an Underclass.” The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary. Eds. Richard Bullock and John Trimbur. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton, 1991. 55–84. Print. Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998. Print “Deficient in English.” New York Times 30 Oct. 1892. Web. Douglas, Wallace. “Rhetoric for the Meritocracy: The Creation of Composition at Harvard.” English in America: A Radical View of the Profession. Ed. Richard Ohmann. NY: Oxford UP, 1976. Print. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Random House, 1977. Print. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970. Print. Hacking, Ian. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999. Print. Hall, G. Stanley. Youth: Its Education, Regime, and Hygiene. 1920. Middlesex, MA: Echo Library, 2006. Print. Halloran, S. Michael. “From Rhetoric to Composition: The Teaching of Writing in America to 1900.” A Short History of Writing Instruction. Ed. James J. Murphy. Davis, CA: Hermagoras, 1990. 151–82. Print. “Harvard University Report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric to the Board of Overseers of Harvard College.” HathiTrust, 1897. JSTOR. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. Hill, Adams Sherman. “English in Our Colleges.” Scribner’s Magazine 1 (Jan.–June 1887): 507–12. Web. Hollister, Horace A. “Oral Composition in the Secondary School as a Basis for Effective Training in Written Composition.” English Journal 1.8 (Oct. 1912): 497–501. JSTOR. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. Kitzhaber, Albert R. Rhetoric in American Colleges, 1850–1900. PhD Diss. University of Washington, 1953. Print. Miller, Thomas. “The Formation of College English: A Survey of the Archives of Eighteenth-Century Rhetorical Theory and Practice.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 20.3 (1990): 261−86. JSTOR. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. North, Stephen M. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1987. Print. Ohmann, Richard. English in America: A Radical View of the Profession, with a New Introduction. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1996. Print.

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Parker, William Riley. “Where Do English Departments Come From?” College English 28 (1967): 339–51. JSTOR. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. Scott, Fred Newton. “English Composition as a Mode of Behavior.” English Journal 11 (1922): 463–73. JSTOR. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. Varnum, Robin. “The History of Composition: Reclaiming Our Lost Generations.” Journal of Advanced Composition 12.1 (Winter 1992): 39–56. JSTOR. Web. 18 Feb. 2012.

chapter 11 Project English Cold War Paradigms and the Teaching of Composition

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crambling in reaction to the Russian launch of Sputnik in 1957, the U.S.  Congress quickly passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA)  in 1958. This act, which triggered an unprecedented amount of federal funding for public schools, explicitly linked the school subjects of mathematics, science, and foreign language to the foremost issues of national security. When it was passed, The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) expressed concern that the subject of English was left out of consideration for federal funding and mobilized to shift public and congressional perception (Kitzhaber, The Government and English Teaching 135). NCTE, along with the Modern Language Association (MLA), produced “The Basic Issues in the Teaching of English” in 1958. This report recommended drastic changes in the teaching of English, including a stricter definition of what constitutes an adequate English curriculum. Following this report, NCTE compiled and published The National Interest and the Teaching of English: A Report of the Profession in 1961. This document, aimed directly at congressional members, was successful at helping to acquire federal funds. In 1961, money was authorized for Project English, a program that funded nationwide conferences and study centers to research English curricula with the ultimate goal of constructing curriculum guides that could be used in public school classrooms. In this chapter, I examine the archives of the Project English study center 206

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at the University of Nebraska. This collection provides a useful example of the historical implications of this period in educational history. Here, a complete English curriculum was created that spanned first grade through high school. This curriculum relied on modern research, postwar curriculum reform models, and teacher input, to construct a composition program that was taught for decades in Nebraska schools.

Researching National and Local Archives I came across this movement in the teaching of English while researching a project for a course that focused on curriculum history. In my research, I discovered a concentration of works published in the early 1960s almost exclusively by NCTE. It was not surprising to me that there would be a significant amount of educational research from this time period—this was the time of the “new math” curriculum reforms in response to the Cold War and shifting research practices in education. What surprised me was the way that the leadership within NCTE sharply advocated for their discipline in books and in the English Journal. In response to the curricular reforms taking place in math and science, NCTE’s leadership argued for congressional support by suggesting that previous methods of the teaching of English lacked rigor, and a shift to more academic methods was needed. Until this point, my research focused primarily on widely published reports and some secondary sources related to a push for fieldwide reforms in English during this time, but I knew that investigating national and local archives could provide further clarification on the motivations, consequences, and actions of those involved. I found a great deal of information at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, where the NCTE archives are stored. There, I found official reports from NCTE including executive memos, presidential correspondence, and member reports. These helped shape my understanding of the Project English movement. I continued my search at NCTE headquarters, which was only a few miles away. I found transcribed interviews from former presidents that helped give personal perspectives on the organization’s push for reform, which resulted in the establishment of Project English curriculum centers around the country. To place these national issues into a local context, I traveled to the University of Nebraska to find an example of how a Project English curriculum center shaped composition practices in the state. As I explain later in this chapter, this national movement triggered a sustained program in composition instruction in the state of Nebraska. Here, the historical details came to life. Searching through these archives I found specific examples of how this one university program,

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which was established through NCTE maneuvering of federal funds, developed a composition program that reflected newly researched ideas about how students learn to write. This explicit connection between the composition program in Nebraska and the larger national movement was solidified during phone interviews with Paul Olson, emeritus professor of English for the University of Nebraska. His career at the University of Nebraska started when these broader national reforms were occurring and his work was instrumental in establishing the Project English curriculum center at Nebraska. At the same time, he was involved with NCTE and worked with national leaders of the teaching of English. The phone interviews provided me with a human element to this historical period. Olson remembered this shift in the teaching of English and was willing to provide anecdotes about what he witnessed and experienced during this time. Because of his leadership in establishing the curriculum center and his career spanning over forty years at the University of Nebraska, he commented from an authoritative perspective on the development, progression, and effects of the composition program.

Acquiring Federal Funds for English Following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, politicians moved into action with recommendations about educational reforms. A little over three months after the launch, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his State of the Union speech, called for increased spending for science education, including doubling the funds of the National Science Foundation (“The President Reports” 41). Following Eisenhower’s recommendation, Congress passed The National Defense Education Act (NDEA). This 1958 act allocated federal funds for many initiatives, including student loans; state educational research and testing; investigation of audiovisual techniques, such as radio and television, in education; and state grants for strengthening programs of math, science, and foreign language (“Final Action” 291). This last item has become the most recognizable and noted element of the act and essentially what the NDEA is credited with producing. English was not initially part of the NDEA and this angered many English educators who believed Congress was implicitly fostering a perception that English was not as important as math, science, or foreign language, but instead it was relegated to a minor role among the secondary disciplines (Christenbury 63–64). Looking back, Albert R. Kitzhaber, NCTE president in 1963, stated in the lead story of an 1965 issue of College English that “we in English protested vigorously. . . . The subject to which we had given our lives, the subject that underlies instruction in all other subjects, had in effect been labeled a frill

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by Congress, something of no importance to national wellbeing” (“Reform in English” 338). Over the next few years, NCTE would lead a charge to establish a place for the teaching of English in federally funded projects. They would do so by demonstrating the problematic state of English teaching and convincing Congress that literacy instruction was vital to national interests. Even though some of the problems they identified and the changes they recommended were not revolutionary to English reformers, the public interest in educational reform following the launch of Sputnik allowed these ideas to be considered. In 1958, MLA, NCTE, the College English Association (CEA), and the American Studies Association (ASA) met and developed thirty-five questions aimed at establishing “basic issues” in English pedagogy. Their discussion covered aspects ranging from a general working definition of English to proper teacher certification. The resulting publication was “The Basic Issues in the Teaching of English,” and its topics covered multiple issues in the teaching of English, ranging from what should be taught in schools to how teachers should be trained. Explicitly developed in the preface of this work were three reasons for the importance of studying English. The first was for practicality; verbal skills are important in society. The second was that English has a “civilizing value” that allows for one to become more “human” through literature. The third reason established the intrinsic pleasure one can receive from reading (Members 1–4). The authors divided these “basic issues” into two categories: goals, content, and teaching problems; and preparation and certification of teachers. These issues were not posed with solutions, but only emphasized the need for research in the field. During the 1960 NCTE conference, the Executive Committee passed a resolution outlining its plan to appeal for more research and money for the teaching of English. This resolution fostered feverish lobbying efforts. Initially, NCTE continued its examinations of the status of English by compiling research and publishing The National Interest and the Teaching of English: A Report on the Status of the Profession in 1961. This document was meant to arouse public support and for political purposes, and it was published in time for every congressman to receive a copy before NDEA reauthorization hearings were held in 1961 (Hook 195). During the 1961 NDEA reauthorization hearings, many members of NCTE addressed congressional committees in support of the inclusion of English. In the May 1961 hearings on expansion and extension of the NDEA before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, NCTE President Harold Allen, along with liaison officer Silvy Kraus and president of the Oregon Chapter Gordon W. Clarke all spoke in favor of English within the NDEA. In spite of this testimony,

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the inclusion of English was not authorized. The Senate supported the authorization of English in Title VI of the NDEA, but the House did not approve it. Commissioner of Education Sterling McMurrin, however, authorized federal money for education through a reworking of Public Law 531 that allowed the commissioner to enter into agreements with colleges and universities for the purpose of conducting federally funded research. The program that emerged from these efforts was called Project English; it was initially modestly funded with grants totaling $600,000 in 1962, increasing to $2,000,000 in 1964 (Donlan 6).

Project English Beginning in 1961, Project English established conferences and study centers at colleges and universities to evaluate experimental curriculum research using the tripod curriculum of English as language, literature, and composition (Donlan; Shugrue 18–21). Shortly after the money was allocated, program directors met at the Carnegie Institute of Technology to discuss the overall program goals and to recommend a direction. This was 1962 and memories of the National Defense Education Act reauthorization hearings were fresh, so there was a spirit of reforming English on par with math and science. Specifically, the three objectives determined for the meeting were: (1) isolate the most pressing research problems in the teaching of English at all levels, (2) assign priorities to them, and (3) describe both applicable research procedures and necessary criteria (US Department 1). J. N. Hook supported this agenda with his introductory paper to the conference. He acted as coordinator of Project English and outlined the importance of funding by claiming that money was needed for the teaching of English just as it was for the strengthening of math, science, and foreign language with the passage of the NDEA. In arguing for increased funding, Hook dismissed previous attempts at English research that was “for the most part, shoestring research, inadequately supported financially and carried on either by inexperienced degree candidates or by teachers already heavily burdened by other duties” (7). Project English was meant to be a bridge between researchers and practitioners. In an address at the Conference of Chairmen of English Departments in 1962, Ralph C. M. Flynt, associate commissioner for Educational Research and Development for the U.S. Office of Education, placed Project English within a historical pattern of increasing federal involvement in educational issues—particularly educational research. Flynt claimed recent federal leadership in education research had been unable to fully bridge gaps between researchers and practitioners. In spite of

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research efforts, little had changed in the classroom, which was “as much the result of the ineptness and lack of vision of the researcher as it [was] the product of the educator’s natural tendency to cling to the security of old and familiar practices” (Flynt 30). This process led to most education research being conducted by educational faculty, who, Flynt argued, “have labored valiantly but under great handicaps and, therefore, with distressingly small results” (30). Compounded with these efforts were criticisms from “the humanities and the natural social scientists” (30) who looked down on educational research as inadequate. Project English’s design was to have English scholars, mostly English professors and researchers, not teachers, develop curriculum and then test it in educational settings to ascertain its effectiveness. After a project was considered useful by the researchers, it could be distributed to teachers for use in their classrooms. Flynt claimed this last step was the missing piece in education research because it was at this point that the research “must be demonstrated and eventually disseminated to the practitioners before research can have any impact on practice” (31). In his analysis of four major curriculum centers—University of Nebraska, Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Oregon, and Hunter College—Dan Donlan explained that “universities, scholars, and researchers appeared to be the leaders in the Project English movement,” and that part of this leadership selection was determined by Public Law 531 that allowed funding only for projects administered by “a university, college or state department of education” (4–6). In many ways, Project English is symbolic of other Cold War reforms in education that approached students as if they were to become future professionals in their subject’s field. John Rudolph contends that curriculum reforms in the 1950s and 1960s were patterned after scientific research models popularized during World War II. These models were extremely effective during warfare and elevated the status of scientists, allowing them to gain the federal government’s cooperation in creating and funding the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950. The goal of these programs was to train students to think as practitioners in their subjects; physics students, for example, should not just learn about physics, they should learn to think like physicists. Rudolph positions these reforms beyond science classrooms; similar methods of reform spread to other subjects and were mapped onto curricular theory throughout the 1960s and 1970s (Scientists). Early 1960s NCTE positions established during the Basic Issues Conference and evidenced in The National Interest and the Teaching of English and NCTE member statements submitted before Congress predicated arguments for additional funding on the poor state of the teaching of English. Some NCTE members saw

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Project English as a helpful step to correct an inarticulate curriculum and inadequate teacher education. Joseph Mersand, 1959 NCTE president, wrote in 1964 that Project English made substantial changes in the teaching of English because in order for English to improve and make teachers better, a number of objectives were needed including improving the “woefully inadequate” preservice education for English teachers and providing more technology in the classroom. Project English was designed to meet some of those objectives (Mersand 53). Flynt envisioned Project English as developing “a new, articulated curriculum for English,” to be designed “by English scholars and educators . . . devoted substantially to language, composition, and literature” (32). Flynt claimed that this new approach to the English curriculum could work better than “the cluttered sequence of courses which today is sometimes called ‘English’”(32). Project English produced a great deal of research, but there is debate as to how much of that research impacted classroom methods. Kitzhaber, who was also the director of the Project English−sponsored University of Oregon curriculum study center, conceded that even if their research did not accomplish everything they wanted, it still made a substantial, relatively inexpensive contribution to the English curriculum. In his article “The Government and English Teaching: A Retrospective View,” he observed that “the government made a good bargain. For less than two million dollars—which would be perhaps a twenty per cent down payment on a single warplane—the seven Centers have all made important contributions to a better English curriculum” (139).

The Local Context: A Curriculum Study Center in English In the early 1960s in Nebraska, reformers in the teaching of English knew they had a problem. According to the results of a statewide survey of schools, there were “rather obvious deficiencies” in English curricula: the curriculum was not coherent, there were too many irrelevant lessons, current research in linguistics and rhetoric was ignored, and there was no coordination of topics or materials from year to year. The proposed solution was to establish a statewide, sequential program in composition that set subject boundaries on the definitions of English and incorporated modern research (Olson, “A Curriculum Study” 1–2). This curriculum was initially funded by the Woods Charitable Fund, and shortly after funded by Project English. Though the latter’s funding lasted only until the mid-1960s, the success of the curriculum, including its adoption throughout Nebraska and other states, led to its continued use until the 1980s. In essence, this local process mimicked broader, national movements in the teaching of English.

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Just as reformers from NCTE and elsewhere felt that current research trends were not properly utilized in the classroom, Nebraska reformers felt that developments in linguistics and rhetoric were being ignored in favor of outdated teaching models. Prior to establishing the Project English curriculum, life-adjustment education shaped the teaching of English in the Nebraska schools. This curriculum was developed to help students gain functional skills. Though it had many supporters, it was also attacked for being too focused on nonacademic social skills (Kliebard, 240–70). Dudley Bailey, former English department chair at the University of Nebraska, described Nebraskan English education under a lifeadjustment curriculum as “so fouled up that no one could teach it,” adding “we had no concept of our subject matter, and the multiplicity of curriculums and pedagogical methods in English classes at all levels was astonishing to put it mildly” (“Our Common Task” 11). Paul Olson, professor of English and author of the final report on the Nebraska curriculum study produced by the University of Nebraska, recounted a story of visiting a classroom in the late 1950s and witnessing students writing letters. Olson noted that “[t]he emphasis was not on the writing of the letters even, it was on the folding of the letter and .. . . the teacher had a ruler and . . . measured each folding. The students stuffed the letters in the envelope, and I’m not sure if they mailed them or not. The teacher at the end of the class asked me if she’d done it right. This was part of an accreditation exercise. And those in fact were exercises that were prescribed in the state department of education curriculum” (Telephone Interview). Further, “In this letter-writing process, there was no emphasis on the content of the letter or who the audience of the letter would be. It was write something and then learn to fold it right and put it in an envelope” (Olson, Telephone Interview, emphasis added). In the March 1965 edition of the Nebraska English Counselor, a newsletter produced by the Nebraska Teachers of English, Ruth Anderson, an English teacher at Norfolk Senior High School, equated the Nebraska English life-adjustment curriculum in terms of broader teachings, claiming that teachers viewed “English as a receptacle for such content as: job application techniques, telephone conversing, memorization of the Dewey Decimal System, and ‘life adjustment’” (3). Researchers were concerned with this curriculum, noting that teachers had little knowledge of English research. Bailey claimed that for most teachers, “knowledge of the subject is rather appalling” (“Our Common Task” 22) and few had an adequate knowledge of current trends in English: “For example, the most widely taught subject in our schools is English grammar. . . . Most are quite unaware that their textbook

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is probably a warmed over version of the grammar of Bishop Robert Lowth (c. 1762), which reflects views no respectable linguist in the past century has entertained” (22). The wider science movement also affected the shift away from life-adjustment education in Nebraska. In 2012, Olson recalled, “The general movement that had occurred in science after the Woods Hole Conference and in foreign languages with the National Defense Education Act extending into the foreign language in the late 50s made a difference because it changed the climate of opinion” (Telephone Interview). Additionally, Ted Sorensen, aide to President John F. Kennedy, came to Nebraska and gave a speech indicting the state’s education system “for being anti-intellectual and incompetent” (Olson, Telephone Interview). Olson added that “some of the folks from whom I raised money had [Sorensen’s] speech very much on their minds as they gave me grants” (Telephone Interview). The story of the Nebraska Curriculum Center started before the center received funding from the federal government in the form of Project English. In his 1964 article for the National Elementary Principal, Bailey recounted handing out a survey to his Freshman English classes at the University of Nebraska and realizing “to our amazement, that our students had not studied any common thing before coming to college” (“Our Common Task” 25). The argument for a common curriculum resurfaced in 1960 at the Nebraska Council of Teachers of English annual planning committee where Bailey and other teachers met and found “the more we talked, the more we discovered that we really didn’t know what we were doing at any level, and we certainly didn’t have the foggiest notion what other teachers were up to” (“Our Common Task” 25). They consequently decided to develop a Nebraska English curriculum. Paul Olson helped secure $10,000 from the Woods Charitable Fund to set up a workshop. In August 1961, the group met and wrote the proposal for a new curriculum, which led to the formation of the Nebraska Curriculum Development Center (Olson, “A Curriculum Study” 1). According to the president of the Nebraska Council of Teachers of English as recounted in “The President’s Message” in a 1963 edition of The Nebraska English Counselor, the “forty-four high school, junior high, and elementary teachers worked out detailed units and plans to facilitate teaching the articulated curriculum in classrooms” (2). During this process they received input from English experts as “they were advised on problems in presenting, and selecting materials by some of the finest authorities in the nation” (2). As an enticement, the teachers received graduate credit for the classes they attended: “In addition, the teachers attended three regular classes comprising literature, history of the language, and secondary education (or elementary education)

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methods and curriculum study, and earned nine hours of graduate credit” (2). The Woods Fund gave additional money to help cover the cost of seminars for three additional summers, and Project English gave them money to continue the program (“The President’s Message” 1). Reflecting on this process, participants praised the collegiality of teachers. Sister Mary Adolorata, who helped work on the curriculum, spoke highly of the developments of the program in a 1964 address before the Nebraska Council of Teachers of English. She claimed that this curriculum was constructed with teachers working together to produce a complete curriculum across grade levels: “There is total integration, literature and composition working together throughout the entire curriculum, from elementary school through high school” (11). In her 1965 article examining “Composition Strategy and the New English,” Ruth Anderson, a teacher at Norfolk Senior High School, noted that the United States Office of Education stressed “that college, secondary, and elementary teachers need to work together on common goals, and they should be joining hands to develop and promote effective programs and techniques. New curricula are the products of the joint efforts of university scholars and public school teachers” (4). Olson also believed the collaborative nature of the work shaped the curriculum in positive ways, stating “we had a lot of very enthusiastic teachers and that made a lot of difference. The fact that they created the materials made a difference” (Telephone Interview). This group’s reformed curriculum reflected the Cold War education paradigm. Subject-specific experts were encouraging curricula based on modern education research. Gone were the days of teaching letter writing and proper telephone etiquette. According to Olson, this curriculum needed to be “intellectually defensible” (Telephone Interview). The key aspects of the new curriculum were that (1) the subjects spiraled from year to year within an articulated K-12 sequence of studies, (2) students learned composition through first analyzing published works and acting as professional writers, (3) through the help of Nebraska faculty, this curriculum was written, used, and encouraged by Nebraska teachers. The first two aspects reflect key concepts of Cold War education programs used in other math and science projects: both the spiraling, articulated concept reflected modern educational research and teaching students to act as professionals in their subject were techniques utilized in math and science curriculum projects. The third aspect was unique to this curriculum program. Instead of this curriculum being conceptualized and dictated by subject-specific experts who left little room for teacher input, here teachers had authority and ownership over the final product.

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Frank Rice, director of the Project English center at the University of Nebraska, observed in a 1969 report that prior to the developed curriculum, “very often the English curriculum of a school [had] little sequence and almost no spiraling. Sequence depend[ed] often on the series of anthologies which a school adopt[ed]” (“The Literature” 3). He argued this was detrimental because “most schools’ curricula have serious omissions and wasteful repetitions. The students of such schools often must, in some ingenious way, bridge the gaps which may exist” (3). Beyond preventing learning problems, articulating curricula also reflected Cold War educational theory. In the late 1950s, educational theorist Jerome S. Bruner advocated a spiral curriculum that proposed exposing students to similar topics throughout their education career, essentially building content that became more advanced as students developed and matured. Central to this idea was that students could learn any subject at any age if educators adapted the subject to student’s learning level (see Bruner). The Nebraska curriculum initially sought ways to find “fundamental structures” of English and teach them to students at every level (Olson, “A Curriculum Study” 12). On the elementary level in the Nebraska curriculum, students were presented with a variety of reading materials aimed to influence how they ultimately grasped conceptions of language. The underlying assumption was that children could tell stories and their stories emulated standard literary structures. Educational researchers believed that even during adult-led readings, children grasped language attributes such as uses of dialogue, punctuation, and rhetorical strategies because they used those strategies daily when speaking. As Olson explained in his final report on the Curriculum Study Center in English, “The Nebraska Curriculum Development Center staff may surprise few teachers in saying that students can tell stories, oral tales, cycles of tales; they can create their own literary culture, so to speak, and they perhaps can do this best at the prompting and inspiration of excellent literary works. Storytelling, modeled and unmodeled, is thus a foundation activity suggested in this curriculum. The child’s basically oral approach to literature will change as he masters reading skills, but he must know and feel that these reading skills are worth learning” (Olson, “A Curriculum Study” 39). When writing was assigned, the curriculum advocated positive reinforcements in assessing student work. Instead of marking errors, which might affect student morale and interest, teachers were encouraged to point out to students how proper grammar could help them present their ideas more clearly. Furthermore, teachers indicated positive aspects and recommended future clarification. As Olson explains, “If the red pencil is used at all, it is used to mark passages in student writing which are especially good” (“A Curriculum Study” 57).

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The composition program centered on students studying professional writing and then constructing their own pieces. This was a significant departure from traditional English instruction that emphasized grammar. Frank Rice’s file in the archives at the University of Nebraska contains the transcript for a speech he gave at an English conference in 1969, in which he complained that, “For a good many years language programs have been comprised primarily of the rote learning of eight parts of speech and three kinds of sentences” (“The Language” 1). Along with the prescribed grammar, Rice added, “workbooks have been used monotonously and valuelessly supposedly for the purpose of improving language usage” (1). He concluded, however, that “no one has ever been able to prove that the study of grammar and usage has ever had any effect on a student’s writing unless it was to make writing an even more tiresome experience than it normally is” (1). Two descriptions from The Nebraska English Counselor illustrate the recommended process of experiencing and analyzing literature as a prerequisite to constructing compositions. In her 1964 article “The High School Composition Program,” Mary Adolorata described the curriculum as moving away from teaching the specifics of grammar to examining the form and function of language. As an example, she discussed the curriculum unit on the Declaration of Independence, in which students studied the document itself and recognized its important aspects that functioned as good writing. Then the students were given a composition theme and asked to apply in their own writing the structure and elements they discovered in the Declaration. One high school teacher who used this method said, “In my opinion, this was a true learning experience yielding a three-fold benefit, a three-fold reinforcement of knowledge: (1) a knowledge of the Declaration as a literary and historical masterpiece; (2) a knowledge of what makes it great, i.e., perfect rhetorical organization; (3) a knowledge activated through composition work” (qtd. in Adolorata 13). In this article, Adolorata also quoted Olson, who claimed, “neither length of composition nor frequency has anything to do with what students learn of composition” (14). What mattered was that students “write compositions that count, that is, compositions that are significant to the student-writer in the same way that composition is significant to the professional writer” (14). In a 1965 article examining the use of structural linguistics to teach writing and literary study, Tom Fairclough, consultant for Project English, described this process of imitating literature and then composing as especially applicable for younger students: “Children may be asked, in the first grade, to compose phrases, sentences, or short anecdotes emphasizing sound repetition after the fashion of Kipling—an exercise in the exploitation of English phonology. . . . In short, they are asked to follow the same routine

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of imitation and pattern practice in composition that they have already used, in pre-school years, for the learning of their native language. And in so doing they learn by imitation the patterns of various literary types and achieve fluency in composition” (5–6). Throughout the curriculum, student activities mimicked the process of professional writers. For example, in discussing the importance of producing multiple drafts, the publication acknowledged that “professional writers write draft after draft before they submit their essays for publication” (Olson, “A Curriculum Study” 81). Furthermore, students were encouraged to keep a “messy note-book” that they would use to jot down ideas about their readings. As these notes built up, they could become the basis of compositions. The goal was to produce original student content. The students, not secondary sources, created observations, thoughts, and solutions to hypotheses (79). The secondary curriculum proceeded in a similar way in that experiencing, studying, and reading literature led to composition. In junior high, the curriculum prescribed explicit examinations of literary techniques and opportunities for students to emulate these feelings through their own compositions (Olson, “A Curriculum Study” 76). The curriculum further advocated peer models and input from classmates to emphasize the importance of writing to an audience (80–81). The junior high also incorporated recent linguistic research in advocating sequences studying the syntax, phonology, and word meanings (87–90). On the high school level, the curriculum detailed a continued approach of using literature to influence and aid in student writing. The literature units were designed around themed units continued from junior high. These units structured lessons to present differing cultural interpretations and differing composition structures of similar subjects. As in previous grades, these works were used as examples for student compositions (95–104). One such eleventh-grade unit followed a thematic literature study of Emerson and Thoreau and contained the following prompt: “Let us suppose now that you have been assigned the following task. You are to write an essay on Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance,’ and you choose to explore Emerson’s comments on travel. As you do, you find yourself writing down your own thoughts about Emerson’s ideas. When you receive your paper back from your teacher, there is a comment in the margin: ‘Who is interested in your opinions?’ or ‘How can you presume to have any worthy ideas on the subject?’ Suppose you wish to defend yourself, and you turn to Emerson” (Olson, “A Curriculum Study” 98). What separated the Nebraska program from other Cold War−era projects was the emphasis on and autonomy granted to the practicing teacher. As noted

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previously, in education programs in other subjects such as science and the NSF, the study centers established during this era were often led by researchers in specific fields of study instead of faculty from respective schools of education. And while it was true that Paul Olson and others at Nebraska who were instrumental in creating this Project English program were English faculty and not from the University of Nebraska College of Education, they believed that teacher input was valuable for the validity of the research and important for the sustainability of the curriculum programs. As Olson argued in the final report, “The teacher must always be in part the creator of the curriculum. Teachers created it in the first place, and the search for structure and coherence in the curriculum must create rather than destroy the individuality and life of the individual’s experience with the words he reads” (“A Curriculum Study” 75). The curriculum that emerged from Project English funding was widely taught in Nebraska. As Olson later recounted during my interview with him, “Most of the school districts in the state of Nebraska were essentially teaching what we were encouraging. And they were doing it their own way and maybe with books that were different from the books that we made central in our planning” (Telephone Interview). The central idea of the curriculum was that students would be exposed to high-quality literature, analyze it, and then compose their own works in similar ways. The specific works did not matter as much as selecting literature that appealed to the students. The point of the curriculum was not to “teach students the hard art of reading ‘classical works’”; rather, it was to teach them “how form communicates in a work written in the idioms of this tradition” (“A Curriculum Study” 75). While initially successful, some criticism of Project English study centers nationwide claimed the research did not contribute much to the teaching of English. After perspectives on the teaching of English shifted in the mid-1960s, many of these Cold War−era reforms were abandoned in favor of more student-centered curricular models. Nevertheless, the Project English curriculum was used in Nebraska schools until the mid-1980s (Olson, Telephone Interview). Though the literary works shifted, the theory that an integrated English curriculum could be structured across grade levels remained.

Conclusion The teaching of English during the 1960s transformed into a more rigorous and defined subject. With the general national mood in favor of sweeping reforms to education, the University of Nebraska established a curriculum center

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seeking to influence area schools into adopting a curriculum based on modern research. The program was successful and achieved federal funding through Project English. The center reflected other national trends in education: it was built upon modern research in linguistics and composition, it positioned students as professionals through learning activities akin to professional writing, and it was conceived by English researchers, not education faculty. The exception of the Nebraska program was its use of teacher input. Instead of a program envisioned by researchers and then carried out by teachers, here, teachers were the ones working side by side with the experts to construct the curriculum. This was a major shift and, as Ruth Anderson recalled, represented a move toward developing a more academic curriculum. Anderson noted that “English is becoming an educational area with greater intellectual activity; an educational area with greater emphasis on the academic subject itself as an organized body of knowledge; an educational area with its own claims to interest and importance; and an educational area that teaches young people to find or invent ways to solve unknown problems” (3). Olson added within a description of the report’s results that “our best result was the creation or discovery of a cadre of a community of intellectually responsible scholars ready to lead the school community in Nebraska and in the nation in the creation of a vital and scholarly curricula” (“A Curriculum Study” 35). This “greater intellectual activity” and “community of intellectually responsible scholars” helped sustain this research and this curriculum for years after this initial era of curriculum reform.

Works Cited Adolorata, Mary. “The High School Composition Program.” The Nebraska English Counselor 9.2 (1964): 10–15. Print. Anderson, Ruth. “Composition Strategy and the New English.” The Nebraska English Counselor 10.3 (1965): 3–8. Print. Bailey, Dudley. “Our Common Task.” The National Elementary Principal 44 (1964): 22–26. Print. Bailey, Dudley. “A Professor Looks at the English Commission’s Report.” The College Board Review 59 (1966): 11–14. Print. Bruner, Jerome S. The Process of Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U P, 1962. Print. Christenbury, Leila M. The Origin, Development, and Decline of the Secondary English Elective Curriculum. PhD Diss. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State U, 1980. Print.

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Donlan, Dan. “Project English (1961–1968): Conception-Birth-Life-Death-and Who Cared?” Education Resources Information Center, 1978. Identifier Number ED 175016. Print. Fairclough, Tom. “The Application of Structural Linguistics to the Teaching of Composition and Literature.” The Nebraska English Counselor 11.1 (1965): 3–7. Print. “Final Action by the 85th.” Congressional Digest 37.12 (1958): 289–94. Print. Flynt, Ralph C. M. “The US Office of Education Looks at Project English.” PMLA 78.4 (1963): 30–32. Print. Hook, J. N. A Long Way Together: A Personal View of the NCTE’s First Sixty-Seven Years. Urbana: IL: NCTE, 1979: 195. Print. Kitzhaber, Albert R. “The Government and English Teaching: A Retrospective View.” College Composition and Communication 18.3 (1967): 135–41. Print. Kitzhaber, Albert R. “Reform in English.” College English 26.5 (1965): 337–44. Print. Kliebard, Herbert. The Struggle for the American Curriculum 1893–1958. Boston: Routledge, 1986. Print. Members of the 1958 Conference. “The Basic Issues in the Teaching of English.” PMLA 74.4 (1959): 1–12. Print. Mersand, Joseph. “The Secondary School Principal, the English Program, and Project English.” National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin 48 (1964): 53–61. Print. Olson, Paul. “A Curriculum Study Center in English Final Report.” Education Resources Information Center, 1967. Identifier Number ED 013805. Print. Olson, Paul. Telephone Interview. 25 July 2012. “The President Reports to the Congress.” Congressional Digest 37.2 (1958): 37–42. Print. “The President’s Message.” The Nebraska English Counselor 8.1 (1963): 1–3. Print. Rice, Frank M. “The Language and Composition Components of the Nebraska Curriculum for English Grades 1 through 12.” Bio/Bib RG/52–01 Box 244. N.d. Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Print. Rice, Frank M. “The Literature Program of the Nebraska English Curriculum.” September 1969. Bio/Bib RG/52–01 Box 244. Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Print. Rudolph, John. Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Print. Rudolph, John. “From World War to Woods Hole: The Use of Wartime Research Models for Curriculum Reform.” Teachers College Record 104.2 (2002): 212–41. Print.

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Shugrue, Michael F. “Project English and Beyond.” Association of Departments of English Bulletin 80 (Spring 1985): 18–21. Print. Squire, James. “Memorandum to the Executive Committee.” 6 March 1961. Urbana: U of Illinois Archives. Record Series 15/70/005, Box 1. Print. US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. “Needed Research in the Teaching of English: Proceedings of a Project English Research Conference May 5–7 1962.” Washington, DC: Office of Education Research Monograph no. 11, n.d.: 1. Print.

afterword Jessica Enoch

How, then, do we evaluate postmodern/feminist histories? The answer . . . generated over the past two decades suggests that new histories will be evaluated by rhetorical criteria: Does this history instruct, delight, and move the reader? Is the historical data probable? Does it fit with other accounts or does it provide a convincing alternative? Is it taken up by the community and used? Or is it refuted, dismissed, and forgotten?

— Susan Jarratt, “Rhetoric and Feminism: Together Again” (2000)

F

ifteen years ago, Susan Jarratt wrote these words in response to Xin Lu  Gale’s essay “Historical Studies and Postmodernism,” in which Gale cri tiqued Jarratt’s (and Cheryl Glenn’s) historiographic recovery of ancient rhetorician Aspasia. In this now famous exchange, Jarratt posits the reasons for debates such as these: since postmodern understandings have released hold of an absolute accounting of historical “T”ruth and of recovering the past exactly as it was, scholars have to ask different questions when it comes to judging the value of a historiographic project. As the epigraph to this afterword makes clear, Jarratt argues that rather than assessing whether an account is “true,” we must evaluate historiographies on the rhetorical work they do. The questions Jarratt poses seem like perfect heuristics for me to consider the work accomplished in In the Archives of Composition, for Lori Ostergaard and Henrietta Rix Wood have indeed put together a collection that presents a postmodern and even feminist history. In its entirety, In the Archives of Composition is anchored in the project of revision and of reseeing the past in new ways. This collection challenges dominant, univocal narratives of rhetoric and composition instruction by looking outside the traditional, elite university to investigate the writing and teaching accomplished at heretofore largely ignored sites of the high school and the normal school. Thus, Jarratt’s questions become especially pertinent in

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thinking through this volume’s historiographic (and rhetorical) value. How do the individual chapters and the volume as a whole stand up to Jarratt’s criteria? Does In the Archives of Composition “instruct, delight, and move the reader”? Does it “fit with other accounts or does it provide a convincing alternative?” Is the “historical data probable” (391) or, as Jarratt posits at another point in her essay, what assessments can be made of the historian’s use of “evidence and method” (390)? Finally, and most importantly, will these histories be “taken up by the community and used? Or [will they] be refuted, dismissed, and forgotten?” (391). The question of delight is an easy one for me to consider, as In the Archives of Composition meets this criterion in spades. In her foreword, Kelly Ritter encourages the reader to “let yourself get lost . . . in other people’s stories of the teaching, learning, and administration of writing that may sound like nothing else you have ever heard” (14). Given the captivating investigations that make up this collection, it was a pleasure to follow Ritter’s suggestion and immerse myself in the stories of the Albuquerque Indian School, Central High School, Prince Edward County Free School, Lexington Academy, Westfield Normal School, Nebraska Curriculum Development Center, and Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School. I reveled in getting to know student writers and teachers such as June Rose Colby, Paul Olson, Cyrus Peirce, Mary Smith, Sara Lockwood, Student #71, and Pat Huyett. Of course, as I delighted in these stories of people and place, I also learned about the writing practices they each cultivated. Returning again to Jarratt’s criteria, In the Archives of Composition does indeed instruct, but I quickly realized that the instructive reward of the collection does not lie only in learning something I did not know before. The work of this collection is not just additive; it does not simply “fill a gap” in disciplinary knowledge or enable readers to learn more about the history of writing instruction. Rather, it also and importantly teaches readers to think differently about historiographic work, and it is in these different modes of thinking that this volume gains significance. The first way In the Archives of Composition instructs readers to think differently is through particular chapters’ engagements with familiar historical narratives and, borrowing from Jarratt, the “convincing alternatives” these chapters offer to the stories we have come to know. Not surprisingly, a number of the contributions in the collection engage with a now historiographic commonplace in our field: Harvard and the (re)consideration of its disciplinary significance. For example, in “Shall the Courses in Composition and Literature Be Divided? Yes,” Ostergaard seeks connections between Harvard’s Barrett Wendell and Illinois State Normal University’s June Rose Colby. In a surprising reversal of assumed historical logic,

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Ostergaard makes clear that while Wendell and Colby may have shared similar pedagogical values, it was Colby’s institutional location that enabled her to enact the change at her institution that Wendell could not achieve. As department chair at Illinois State Normal University, Colby had institutional power and thus could make real her vision for a robust vertical curriculum and for writing instruction across the disciplines. Nancy Myers continues this historiographic agon with the Harvard narrative through her recovery of Sara Lockwood’s high school textbook Lessons in English. While histories tell us that Harvard and Yale were opposed in their approach to the teaching of English, with the former focusing on correctness and appropriate language use and the latter attending to the interpretation of literature, Myers reveals that these two approaches were not as incongruous as they seemed. In Lessons in English, Lockwood brings the two models together, making it so high school teachers and students did not have to choose between being prepared for either Harvard’s or Yale’s modes of instruction but could be exposed to both within the pages of one succinct textbook. The attention In the Archives of Composition pays to dominant narratives of elite institutions is not in any way an obsession, however. The beauty of this volume is that besides offering “convincing alternatives” to narratives like Harvard’s, chapters also challenge and elaborate on narratives that have emerged in more recent revisionist histories. Whitney Myers, for instance, questions scholarship on writing instruction for Native American students that focus solely on “victimization,” as she identifies instead the “powerful [Native] voices” that were cultivated at the Albuquerque Indian School (56). Similarly, Melissa Ianetta takes on Robert J. Connors’s controversial historiographic argument regarding the causal relationship between women’s entrance into the university and the dismantling of robust rhetorical instruction. Reading the journals of normal school teacher Cyrus Peirce and teacher-in-training Mary Swift, Ianetta suggests that “any missing overt agonism among women rhetors of the nineteenth century might be attributed to a lack of training in argument and opportunity for practice, not a biologically-driven need for cooperative discussion” (110). In the Archives of Composition thus teaches readers not only to complicate dominant narratives like Harvard’s but also to rethink the ways more recent historiographies narrate our pedagogical past. Without question In the Archives of Composition instructs, but what does it offer the field in terms of method and evidence? Much. The chapters in this volume reveal how sophisticated the field has become in attempting to capture the experience of the writing classroom. In almost all the chapters, the authors identify the varied primary and archival materials they leveraged to compose

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their stories of instruction, and in doing so, the collection as a whole responds to Barbara L’Eplattenier’s call to “incorporate more explicit discussions of our primary research methods into our historical research” (68). Furthermore, individual authors’ discussions of historiographic evidence reveal that contained in this volume are archival and primary-source goldmines. Candace Epps-Robertson’s list of the resources stands as one poignant example. As she notes, to conduct her study of the Prince Edward County Free School, she examined “schoolwide and high school handbooks, curricular bulletins, and application for state accreditation . . . classroom evaluations composed by teachers . . . correspondence, minutes, teacher files, curricular agendas, testing scores, and financial records” (66). From diaries and self-reports to interviews and textbooks, the artifacts mined to support the arguments of each chapter prompts readers to think more capaciously about what counts as evidence and how scholars can and should discern significance from available (or not so available) materials. Whitney Myers’s experience with archival erasure is a case in point for the latter. In the rich discussion of method in In the Archives of Composition, two particular kinds of historiographic evidence stand out as unique and especially worthy of continued scholarly investment. The first is the focused attention a number of contributors pay to the student newspaper. Again and again throughout this volume, the student newspaper emerges as a mode of evidence that offers compelling insights about the student writer’s experience. In Wood’s chapter, for example, it is The Centralian that indicates students had concerns far beyond the “correctness campaign” of the current-traditional textbooks they studied in class (32). Instead, they used their newspaper to debate issues of the new school schedule (a day without lunch!), the New Woman, and school spirit. In Beth Rothermel’s chapter, the Normal Exponent reveals the way student teachers at Westfield State Normal School struggled to create a teacherly identity for themselves. Especially compelling in terms of this evidentiary genre is the part the student newspaper played at the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School. As Elaine Hays illustrates in “‘Be Patient, But Don’t Wait,’” student editors such as M. Luther Wilson and Sarah Commander saw their newspaper as holding a critical rhetorical function: the Normal Magnet was the school’s public voice that, in Wilson’s words, gave to the “reading public a brief but comprehensive account of the activities of this department combined with those of the most importance of the High School” (qtd. 155). Given the racial climate of the period and the interests of varied stakeholders regarding the work of the Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School, the potential power of this particular student newspaper is clear. Building from the work of Hays, Rothermel, and Wood, then, historians of rhetoric and

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composition might pay greater attention to student newspapers and the multiple (and possibly surprising) rhetorical purposes they held for students, schools, and their varied audiences. The second form of historiographic evidence that emerges as significant throughout this volume is the individual voice of the student and teacher, and it is of particular importance for scholars to note the varied roles this pursuit of the personal plays throughout the chapters of In the Archives of Composition. In “Project English: Cold War Paradigms and the Teaching of Composition,” for example, Curtis Mason interviews Paul Olson, whose memories of his experiences with Project English make clear how more global pedagogical initiatives were translated to the local scene of the Nebraska Curriculum Research Center. Olson’s vantage point provides the specific example of how K-12 teachers in Nebraska collaborated to move writing instruction from the life-adjustment curriculum that included teaching students to fold letters in the correct format to a much more “intellectually defensible” writing pedagogy (215). While Mason’s interview with Olson offers textured information regarding the local scene, Edward Comstock’s and Jane Greer’s engagements with individual experience hold a different purpose: these chapters indicate how the investment in the personal may not clarify or add nuance to global claims, but may instead add messiness and complexity. The self-reports that Comstock examines in his chapter show that students’ responses to their high school experiences were in no way consistent. While one student deplores his course of study by writing, “Where is my imagination now? Where is my simple direct style? Gone!” (198), another writes, “Daily themes are beautiful practice. I really can think of no method of teaching composition writing which is as efficacious as this” (196). And Jane Greer’s exploration of Pat Huyett’s diary elaborates on the point that even when investigating a singular figure, general assessments about “a writing life” are difficult to make. As Greer so persuasively illustrates, while Huyett did grow quite frustrated with a writing teacher, exclaiming at one point that her “teacher is such a dope” (86), some writing projects held deep personal value for her. Through their search for and use of individual experience, then, Comstock and Greer implicitly suggest how difficult it is to make broad claims about the writing course or the student writer, for the evidence they use indicates the varied, changeable, and indeed contradictory responses students have articulated about their writing and instruction. How, then, does In the Archives of Composition hold up to Jarratt’s criteria? I hope this afterword makes clear that this collection does indeed delight, instruct, and move. It challenges other historiographic narratives and offers “convincing

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alternatives.” It provides valuable examples of historiographic method, and it prompts further explorations of particular kinds of evidence. Most importantly, In the Archives of Composition achieves its intended rhetorical effect by illustrating the value of looking beyond the university course to writing experiences at the high school and normal school. I have no doubt this collection will be “taken up by the community and used,” and I look forward to seeing how In the Archives of Composition propels our field forward.

Works Cited Jarratt, Susan. “Rhetoric and Feminism: Together Again.” College English 62.3 (2000): 390–93. Print. L’Eplattenier, Barbara. “Opinion: An Argument for Archival Research Methods: Thinking Beyond Methodology.” College English 72.1 (2009): 67–79. Print.

contributors

Edward J. Comstock is a senior professorial lecturer in the College Writing Program in the Department of Literature at American University, Washington, DC. He has published works in multidisciplinary international journals such as Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences and Educational Philosophy and Theory. At the intersection of literary theory, history, and composition studies, his work explores the relations between knowledge, rhetoric, and the techniques and technologies of power, normalization, and subjectification within educational institutions. He holds a PhD from American University’s School of Education, Teaching, and Health, as well as an MA in Literature. Jessica Enoch  is an associate professor of English at the University of Maryland, where she directs the Academic Writing Program and teaches courses in first-year writing, feminist rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and composition pedagogy. Her book, Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicana/o Students, 1865–1911, was published in 2008. Her coedited collection with Dana Anderson, Burke in the Archives: Using the Past to Transform the Future of Burkean Studies, was published in 2012. She is working on an edited anthology of Latina rhetors with Cristina Ramírez, and her single-authored book project explores historical connections between rhetorical constructions of domestic space and women’s professionalization outside the home.

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Candace Epps-Robertson is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in composition history and theory and cultural rhetoric. Her research examines the rhetorical practices and strategies of marginalized and oppressed groups. Currently, she is working on a book-length project, “We’re Still Here!”: The Prince Edward County Free School Association, 1963– 1964. Her work has appeared in Literacy in Composition Studies and Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning. She also is a research scholar at the Robert Russa Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia, which preserves and interprets the history of civil rights in education. Jane Greer is an associate professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she teaches courses on the literacy practices and rhetorical performances of girls and women. She is the editor of Girls and Literacy in America: Historical Perspectives to the Present (ABC-Clio, 2003); coeditor, with Laurie Grobman, of Pedagogies of Public Memory: Teaching Writing and Rhetoric at Museums, Archives, and Memorials (Routledge, 2015); and has published her research on the history of women’s and girls’ opportunities for literacy education in College English, College Composition and Communication, and numerous edited collections. She has served as director of the Greater Kansas City Writing Project, engaging with K-12 teachers in all disciplines around issues of literacy instruction, and she frequently partners with secondary schools in the Kansas City area to improve students’ college readiness, particularly those students who will be the first members of their families to attend college. Elaine Hays is the director of the Writing Lab at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, where she works with high school students on the writing for their courses and beyond. She is also working with the faculty and administration to start a new Writing and Media Lab at the high school. Melissa Ianetta is an associate professor of English at the University of Delaware. Her work on the history of rhetoric has appeared in various edited collections as well as College English, College Composition and Communication, PMLA, Rhetoric Review, and The Writing Center Journal. Most recently, with Lauren Fitzgerald of Yeshiva University, she coauthored The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research.

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Curtis Mason is an assistant professor of Education at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri. He teaches courses in secondary methods, social foundations, and assessment. His research interests are in the history of the teaching of English, educational policy studies, and students with emotional and behavior disorders. He taught English on the secondary level for eight years at public schools in the Kansas City, Missouri, area. Nancy Myers, an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, specializes in the history of rhetoric and composition pedagogy and served as 2010–2012 president of the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. At UNCG, she has served as director of graduate studies in English, director of English education, and currently is director of college writing. Her publications include essays in Political Women: Language and Leadership (Lexington, 2013); Rhetoric, History, and Women’s Oratorical Education (Routledge, 2013); Rhetoric: Concord and Controversy (Waveland, 2012); Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts (SIUP, 2011); and Stories of Mentoring: Theory and Praxis (Parlor, 2008). She is coediting a collection on theories of women’s ethos. Whitney Myers is an associate professor of English at Texas Wesleyan University, where she teaches classes in composition theory, research methods, adolescent literature, and first-year writing. Her teaching and research focuses on feminist and indigenous rhetorics and pedagogies, rhetorical education, and histories of rhetoric and composition. Her current project addresses embodied writing and mindfulness practices in the classroom. Lori Ostergaard is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where she teaches classes in composition studies, teaching writing, peer tutoring in composition, digital storytelling, and digital culture. She conducts both current writing program research and archival research examining the history of compositionrhetoric at Midwestern normal schools and high schools. Her articles have appeared in Rhetoric Review, Composition Forum, Issues in Writing, and Peitho. Her collection Transforming English Studies: New Voices in an Emerging Genre (Parlor, 2009), coedited with Jeff Ludwig and Jim Nugent, examines new curricular models for English studies.

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Contributors

Kelly Ritter is a professor of English and director of undergraduate rhetoric at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she is also core faculty in the Center for Writing Studies. Her books are Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920–1960 (SIUP, 2009); Who Owns School? Students, Authority, and Online Discourse (Hampton Press, 2010); To Know Her Own History: Writing at the Woman’s College, 1943–1963 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); and (with Paul Kei Matsuda) Exploring Composition Studies: Sites, Issues, Perspectives (Utah State UP, 2012). She is the current editor of College English. Beth Ann Rothermel is a professor of English at Westfield State University, where she teaches courses in women’s rhetorical achievements, teaching writing in the secondary and middle school, ethnography, and first-year writing. Her research on the history of American women’s rhetorical education, especially at normal schools, has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Advances in the History of Rhetoric, and Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition (edited by Patricia Donahue and Gretchen Flesher Moon). She is also an active member of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. Henrietta Rix Wood is an assistant teaching professor in the Honors College of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and teaches courses in composition and rhetoric, literature, and women’s and gender studies. Her work has appeared in Rhetoric Review, American Periodicals, and Feminist Challenges or Feminist Rhetorics? Locations, Scholarship, Discourse (Cambridge Scholars, 2014). Her book Praising Girls: The Rhetoric of Young Women, 1895–1930 is forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press. She won the 2012 Rhetoric Society of America Dissertation Award. In her previous career, she was a journalist for two city newspapers and a city magazine.

index

Adams, Katherine H., 1, 7, 123

Carr, Jean Ferguson, 168, 177, 181

Alsup, Janet, 132, 134–36

Committee of Ten, xiv, 169–70, 181n3

Anderson, James D., 7, 151

Committee on Normal Schools, 133, 137 common schools, 5, 10, 99, 133, 154, 180

Banks, William, 3, 91n1 Berlin, James A., xii; Rhetoric and Reality,

Connors, Robert J., xii; CompositionRhetoric, 1, 14, 29–30, 36–37, 39, 109;

121; Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures,

“Dreams and Play,” 1, 127; “Over-

181n4, 185–86, 190; Writing Instruction,

work/Underpay,” 120; “Rhetoric in the

186, 188, 192, 200, 202, 202n1

Modern University,” 201; “Women’s

Blair, Hugh, 173, 186, 199 Bordelon, Suzanne, 1 Brereton, John C., 33, 149–50, 185, 202 Britzman, Deborah, 134, 136

Reclamation of Rhetoric,” 98, 110, 225 Crowley, Sharon, xii; Composition in the University, 1, 117, 121–22, current-traditional rhetoric, 14, 17, 20, 37,

Brown v. Board of Education, 15, 61, 74n2

49, 70, 121, 169, 171–74, 226; and

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 42,

teaching approaches, xiv, 8–9, 70, 72,

44–45, 49, 53, 57n3, 58n7,

121–22, 124, 126, 180, 182n5, 182n7

58n10 Buck, Gertrude, 20, 118, 128

Dartmouth Conference, 79–80, 88, 91n3



233

Index

234 De Mille, James 173, 182n7

Hoffman, Nancy, 101–2, 103

Denney, Joseph Villiers 29–30, 32,

Hunter, Jane H., 5, 36

36–38, 123 Dixon, John 79–80, 81, 90

Indian Self-Determination and Education

Donahue, Patricia, 2

Assistance Act (Public Law 93–638),

Du Bois, W. E. B., 7, 63, 67

46, 57n4

Dunn, Patricia 13, 124–25 Jarratt, Susan, 223–24, 227 Enoch, Jessica, 2, 20, 43, 98, 115

Johnson O’Malley (JOM) policy, 45, 46, 56n2, 57n4

Fitzgerald, Kathryn: “The Platteville Papers,” 135; “A Rediscovered

Kates, Susan, 74n3

Tradition,” 12, 13, 149, 150, 151

Kitzhaber, Albert R., xii; The Government

Foucault, Michel, 187–88, 198

and English Teaching, 212; “Reform in English,” 208–9; Rheto-

Genung, John Franklin, 27, 32, 33–36,

ric in American Colleges, 29, 33, 36

38, 123 Glenn, Cheryl, 98, 110, 223

L’Eplattenier, Barbara, 58n11, 226

Gold, David, xii; Rhetoric at the

Lindblom, Kenneth, 13, 91n1, 124, 125

Margins, 2, 13, 14, 69–70, 117,

Lindemann, Erika, 116

150, 153; “Remapping Revision-

Logan, Shirley Wilson, 161–62

ist Historiography,” 19 Graff, Gerald, 182n4

Mann, Horace, 103, 133

Grant-Davie, Keith, 153, 154, 156

Mastrangelo, Lisa: “Lone Wolf,” 19, 115–16

Gray, Patrice K., 13, 135

Miller, Susan, 28 Modern Language Association (MLA), 78,

Hansot, Elizabeth, 6 Harris, Joseph, 79

91n2, 206, 209 Moon, Gretchen Flesher, 2

Hart, John, 173, 182n7 Harvard’s English A, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202n1, 203n4 Herbst, Jurgen: common schools, 170, 175; normal schools, 10, 11 Hill, Adams Sherman (A. S.), 20, 33, 121, 173, 182n7 Hill, David J., 173, 182n7 Hobbs, Catherine L., 181nn3–4

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), xiv, 19, 78, 91n2, 119, 206; Project English, 206–9, 211–13 National Defense Education Act (NDEA), 206, 208–10, 214 National Education Association, 118, 170 New Woman, 34–35, 226

Index

Ogren, Christine A., xii; segregated

235

mentary English Composition, 123;

normal schools, 149; teacher ed-

“English Composition as a Mode

ucation, 10, 11, 12, 131–33, 137

of Behavior,” 191, 192, 203n2 Sharer, Wendy B., 58n11

Quackenbos, G. P., 27, 29, 32

Simmons, Sue Carter, 122

Quay, Risë, 91n1

Soltow, Lee, 174 Spring, Joel, 170, 175

Ramsey, Alexis E., 58n11

Stevens, Edward, 174

Reese, William J., 5–6, 167–68

Stull, Bradford, 63, 73

Ritter, Kelly, 224; To Know Her Own

Sullivan, Patricia, 91n1, 144

History, 2, 18; “‘What Would

Sullivan, Patrick, xii

Happen,’” 116–17, 128

Swinton, William, 173, 182n7

Robbins, Sarah, 177 Rothermel, Beth Ann, 16, 18, 226;

Tanner, William M., 27, 32, 37–39

“‘Our Life’s Work,’” 13–14, 161;

Tinberg, Howard, xii

“A Sphere of Noble Action,” 98

Tyack, David, 6

Royster, Jacqueline Jones, 16, 28, 150, 154, 159 Schultz, Lucille M., 2, 4, 28, 32, 39,

Ueda, Reed, 36 Varnum, Robin, 28, 201

135, 150 Scott, Fred Newton, 20, 27, 30, 115, 116, 128, 128n3; CompositionRhetoric, 29, 32, 33, 36–38; Ele-

Washington, Booker T., 7, 67 Wendell, Barrett, 33, 122, 123, 182n5, 224–25