Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/07/22/letters_to_the_editor.php

Letters to the Editor

Friday, July 22, 2005

Defending the Writing Program

Sir –

Michael Ellis's article, "English Department: Then and Now" in the June 2 issue of The Dartmouth Review, questions the wisdom of shifting the responsibility for teaching expository writing away from the English Department. Mr. Ellis characterizes the way that we now teach writing as "the balkanization of writing instruction at the College." He adds, "Rather than learning how to write coherent and well-reasoned arguments through literary analysis, students are taught the basics of mechanics and composition, if that."

I disagree. There are many effective ways to teach writing, and not all of them require instructors who are tenure-track English professors, nor do they all require students to read and write about literature.

With the Writing Program having been in place for one year, we are renaming English 5 to Writing 5 as of Fall 2005. (Note that we are simply renaming English 5, rather than "replacing" it, as Mr. Ellis asserts.) The goal of Writing is to teach students to produce arguments of just the sort that Mr. Ellis mentions: coherent and well reasoned. Some of these arguments will be about literary analysis, but some will not. The mix of topics will vary according to the instructor and the course section. Continuing our practice started last fall, we will publish section descriptions, including themes and sample readings, and students will specify their section preferences. In this way, students are more likely to write about material that engages them than in our previous system of random section assignment. Don't students produce better pieces when they write about material that engages them? By offering students a spectrum of literary and non-literary sources in Writing 5, we expect to improve the teaching of writing and argument.

It is true that most sections of Writing 5 will be taught by non-tenure-track faculty. Teaching writing is what these instructors do. It is not incidental to their intellectual pursuits; it is their focus. Moreover, professional developments for instructors is an important component of the Writing Program. So here we have a corps of dedicated, professional writing instructors. We are moving away from, not toward, balkanization of writing instruction.

On the other hand, teaching writing in the disciplines is a longer-term goal of the Writing Program, and in this regard a little balkanization might not be a bad idea. For example, let's consider writing mathematics. How many faculty members outside the Mathematics Department would be capable of teaching mathematical writing? Not many. Perhaps writing in the disciplines is best taught by the individual departments.

I want to close by responding to a couple of jabs that Mr. Ellis took at Shelby Grantham and myself. Although Professor Grantham is a favorite target of the Review, I know her as a highly principled person and as a devoted, conscientious teacher of writing. It is possible to disagree with her political points of view and still learn a great deal about writing from her. As for Mr. Ellis's assertion that I am "hardly an obvious choice for the position" of Director of the Writing Program, I am coauthor of Introduction to Algorithms, which has been the leading textbook in its field for the past 15 years and, according to the CiteSeer database, is the second-most cited source in all of computer science. In Fall 2003, I developed and taught a computer science course on writing and presenting technical papers, and I will be teaching this course again in Fall 2005. Unless you believe that scientists don't have to write in order to have successful careers, there should be nothing surprising about a scientist directing a program in expository writing.

Yours truly,
Thomas H. Cormen
Professor of Computer Science
Director of the Writing Program

The Editors respond:

While we would certainly agree that writing should be taught in all academic clases, whether they deal with litearature or not, English remains the only department with the experience and resources sufficient to instruct the vast majority of the freshman class. We would also like to note that we were not surprised to see that Prof. Cormen would be heading the writing program, merely that he might not have been the obvious choice for the position. As a general rule, very few of the administration's decisions surprise us.

Mandatory Cultural Literacy

Sir –

I would suggest Dartmouth build a mandatory course around Cultural Literacy by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. This book is mostly a list of nouns and phrases every educated person should know. In the course of teaching this list, when a student reveals some incredible lack of knowledge, the instructor should follow up into that special eddy. Thus, when someone doesn't recognize a bust of Benjamin Franklin, and remarks, "who is that guy?" he should be required to read Franklin's autobiography. In fact, it might be a good idea for everyone to read Franklin's autobiography, regardless what they already know about Franklin. Likewise Washington Irving's Life of George Washington. Since middle-aged folks generally suffer from gross cultural illiteracy as much as students do, it will be necessary to choose teachers for this course from very senior staff, only.

L. B. Hughes
Calhoun County, Mich.

Dartmouth Football Corrections

Sir –

As a longtime read and contributor to the Review, first let me say well done and keep up the good work.

In an otherwise excellent article about the sad plight of Dartmouth football Kale Bongers makes several errors in the caption of the photograph on page 12. The photo identifies the game as the 1968 game between Princeton and Dartmouth and identifies Sam Hawken '68 as the player "climbing the steps" to black a field goal.

There are several problems with this description. First of all as a '68 grad, Sam Hawken would not have been playing football in the fall of 1968.

Secondly, the 1968 game was played at Memorial Stadium (I was there) meaning that unlike the photo Princeton wore white and Dartmouth wore green (I think the Germans wore grey but I had a lot to drink). Sadly, Princeton in the last year it used the single wing offense crushed Dartmouth by a score of 34-7 (best recollection) with Dartmouth's only score coming on a kickoff return for a touchdown by "Tiger" Tom Quinn '70.

Rick Senftleben '71

The Editors respond: Our apologies, the famous "climbing the steps" played occurred in the 1965 Dartmouth-Princeton game, not the 1968 game. Sam Hawken is indeed a member of the class of 1968.

Suggestions for Education Reform

Sir –

I read with interest your recent questionnaire on Western Civilization. Next time you do this, please separate the questions from the answers. My best guess is that I missed five questions. These concerned art history (2), the classics (1), and English literature (2). The four humanities courses I took at Dartmouth were two required English courses, French literature, and Music 1. Had I taken a few English Lit classes, Art History, and a Classics course with Professor Nemiah, I would have aced the test. The learning sources for my correct answers were high school (10), Dartmouth classes (3), Dartmouth bull sessions (5), following news carefully (3), and miscellaneous reading since Dartmouth (2). By the way, your quiz just about ignores science.

So, it appears that the reason that so many Dartmouth students did so poorly is because of an irrelevant high school education. Columnist and commentator George F. Will said several years ago that the modern day 3 R's were race, reproduction, and recycling. I was an elected member of a school board in suburban Philadelphia from 1989 – 1997. Our district spent the most per student of any district in the Commonwealth and was certainly within the top three in academic performance. My main objective as a school director was to keep taxes at a reasonable level, but I do remember giving a copy of the test from the Review that appeared in the early 1990's to the superintendent and asked him to give it to all students in Radnor High School. Needless to say, that was not done.

It seems clear to me that you cannot fix this problem at Dartmouth alone. It will be very difficult to rein in the power of the teachers' union and to change the "education" curricula that are the basis for the curriculum chosen by Curriculum Directors in public schools. While public schools don't do very well teaching Western Civilization, they sure spend a lot of time trying to teach self-esteem. One of the problems is that high schools offer too many courses. Radnor certainly offered 60-100 in the college prep area. When I attended high school, the entire college prep curriculum contained no more than 25 courses for a four-year program. Maybe this incipient political correctness has not corrupted the curriculum at Andover and Exeter, but I wouldn't bet much money on that either.

Clearly, the problem at Dartmouth is the unreasonable power exercised by the faculty. From what I could read, President David McLaughlin was doing a very good job, but the faculty refused to work for a man who was not one of them. James Freedman was a disaster and while he is no Freedman, James Wright is too infected by political correctness to make the tough decisions necessary to make Dartmouth's curriculum relevant again. So, all you have to do to correct the problem is to get rid of tenure in education at all levels, remove the power of public school teachers' unions and the AAUP, and get rid of undergraduate and graduate "education" curricula. Winning that war will be a lot more difficult than was Ronald Reagan's spending the Soviet Union into the ground.

Jerry Scott '59

A Deadly Serious Letter

Sir –

I was wondering if you could please shoot Daniel Balserak '05 through his head with a high caliber gun? It would mean a lot to me.

If you cannot honor this request, which i [sic] am sure you cannot, could you please just let him know that there is someone out there who thinks that the world would be better off if he were dead? His self-righteous bulls*** is more than this earth can handle, his undeserved and poorly argued opinion is throwing the eco-system out of balance.

Thanks for your time and patience.
Andrew S. Gordon

The Editors respond: We appreciate your concern, and would like to note that having read this letter, Mr. Balserak could be shot in the head and die a contented man.