[Milton-L] Off topic of Milton but relevant to the larger discipline of English

[Margaret Thickstun]

Robert--I think the answer depends on what you mean by reading and 
writing skills and who is taking the course?  About fifteen years ago I 
reintroduced a "comp" class at my institution because I was frustrated 
by kids in baseball caps glaring at me from the back of the room as we 
tried to talk about Jane Eyre and other kids tying themselves in knots 
trying to write about poems they did not understand fully and didn't 
care about.  I called my course "Written Argument" and aimed it a 
pre-meds (med schools expect two semesters of "English"), international 
students anxious about their ability to write college-level English, and 
students just generally interested in learning to write.  We read 
arguments (really good ones--old and new), analyze their structure, and 
then make arguments about them.

The course has been a huge success, and we now offer 3-4 sections a 
year.  It is, however, elective, which seems to me a critical factor in 
whether a writing course will improve someone's writing: you have to 
want to get better.  Students remanded to composition tend to accept the 
sentence ("It's true; my writing is hopeless") or rage against the 
injustice ("I've been wronged; my high school teachers loved my writing"). 

If you are serving the general population, rather than just English 
majors, I think this system will work just as well as the other.  It 
actually gives you more range in choosing material that will interest 
non-literary types.  I use arguments about writing--Strunk and White, 
Richard Lanham's Revising Prose, Keith Hjortshoj's The Transition to 
College Writing--famous essays, such as Douglass's "Letter to His Old 
Master," and King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," contemporary popular 
science essayists, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Jared Diamond.  There 
are frequently timely and well-written pieces in the New Yorker.

Stay away from "readers": you want to communicate that this is adult and 
serious, not remedial and more high school.  I've had great fun doing 
the Gospel of Matthew with Plato's Apology: two pieces that are 
arguments by disciples about why you should follow this man's teaching, 
and two men whose own argument infuriated their peers so much that they 
decided to kill them.  They lead nicely into King's letter.

In other words, a "comp" course can also be a serious course, rather 
than some hurdle students have to leap in order to get to the real 
thing.  Also, because "writing" is the content, you won't feel that 
tension between communicating information--what is a sonnet? how is 
Romanticism different from NeoClassicism?--and helping the students 
become better stylists and more precise thinkers.--Margie

Margaret Thickstun
Elizabeth J. McCormack Professor of English
Hamilton College
Clinton, NY 13323