It is time for English departments to rethink or revise the English Composition (freshman comp, English 101) requirement that is in place in many colleges and universities.  This is especially true of the community colleges, but it's also worthy of consideration in the four-year institutions.  That's my considered opinion after more than twenty years of teaching the course at a community college.

English Comp focuses primarily on teaching students how to write analytical essays.  The subject matter, often based on readings, tends to be highly academic – analysis of literary works, of other writings on largely academic issues (psychology, sociology, contemporary controversy), and the like.  While these endeavors are all worthwhile, they are poorly suited for today's typical college freshmen.

Let's look at who these people are.  Large numbers of them now are going to college because they understand that their chances of making a good living diminish considerably if they do not have a college degree.  Some are pursuing what we might call "academic" studies, but the proportion of these students is nowhere near where it was, say, fifty years ago, when a majority of college students were headed in this direction, and most were expected to spend the better part of the first two years taking core liberal arts courses.  Many more are in career-oriented programs – business, education, and an array of specialized fields from nursing to law enforcement, computer technology to fine arts.  Today's freshman class comprises people who, a few decades ago, would have attended vocational or specialized institutions, and these options have all but vanished nowadays.

We can debate whether this is a good trend (should everyone go to college?), but that is beside the point.  The reality is that we urge almost all young people, regardless of aptitude or interest, to attend college.  It is also a reality that English departments, staffed almost exclusively by professors who were educated in the fading liberal arts tradition, have largely ignored this shift in the college landscape.  After all, the English department is a part of the Liberal Arts division at most institutions, including the community colleges.  These departments tend to think and act as if all college students have liberal arts mentalities, aptitudes, and interests.  A significant number of today's college students, most likely a large majority, do not.

Once again, let's not debate what should be but rather confront and accept what is.  Just as we may question whether these people should be in college in the first place, we may question whether the demise of a core liberal arts curriculum is in the best interests of higher education and our society as a whole.  My personal view (I am, after all, the product of a liberal arts education) is that many of them are wasting their time in college and that the absence of a core liberal arts curriculum has lessened the significance of a college degree.  Nonetheless, what I consider ideal, in terms of what a degree should represent, is a far cry from reality.  Regretable as this may be, the concept of college or university as a gathering of young scholars devoted to learning for its own sake is an anachronism when the primary goal of most students is to prepare for a well-paying job.

Putting all these considerations aside, let's look at what these first-year students typically bring to the English Composition class.  An increasingly large majority need remedial work in reading and writing because a significant number enter college unprepared.  Reports of the size of this cohort vary, but typically about 60% of community college freshmen and one-fourth of freshmen at four-year institutions require at least one remedial course (according to a report by the American Legislative Exchange Council), including math.  These data are for 1995; undoubtedly, the proportion has become much larger in the past decade.

We are thus accepting into colleges a very large proportion (in community colleges, a majority) of students who lack the essentials (reading, writing, math) at a level that equips them to do academic work.  They must take what amount to remedial courses, with content that is often at a level as low as 8th grade, to qualify for admission to the regular freshman course, including English 101.  (Many colleges try to hide this fact, or to soften the blow to students' fragile egos, by calling them "developmental" or "foundations" courses.)  Once they pass these courses (only a C, which usually represents minimal improvement, is required), they move on, in the case of those who required remedial reading or writing, to English Composition 101.

If language were music, what we are doing is comparable to taking students who enter without even knowing what the notes are, giving them a semester or two in which they learn (at the very most) how to compose a simple tune, and then putting them into a course where they are expected to write concertos.  Indeed, if basic grammar is the notes, a sentence is a simple tune, and an essay is a concerto, many students enter English 101 unable to compose a tune (sentence) without numerous sour notes, let alone a concerto (analytical essay).  Nevertheless, many English departments are so unrealistic that they refuse to teach the notes (basic grammar) at all in English 101, insisting that, after twelve years of school (and a remedial course, if necessary), they should be ready to write concertos (essays).  Yes, they should, but they aren't.

This approach is insane.  Forget whether or not it is fair; it is unrealistic and unproductive.  Many students, including those with considerable aptitude in the nonacademic fields they are studying, fail or drop out because they cannot fulfill this requirement.  More significantly, because the professors who teach English 101 don't want to fail three-fourths or more of their students, they lower standards and pass with a C students who haven't really learned how to write analytical essays anyway.  English 101 becomes a remedial course, even when it purports to be a relatively sophisticated course in essay writing.  Just as we call people hypocritical when they pretend to be what they are not, we could say that pretending that English Composition teaches what it does not is a form of hypocrisy.

We would like to pretend that all college graduates, regardless of field of study (whether it is nursing,  technology, accounting, or something else) have acquired a broad-based academic education.  In truth, many have not.  That may be unfortunate, but more to the point is whether they need to.  If we say that everyone should go to college and that college should represent a mastery of academic knowledge, we are saying that everybody needs and should have a mastery of academic knowledge.  In a culture that requires a vast array of nonacademic skills and knowledge, that viewpoint is poppycock.

Going back to the traditional English Composition requirement with its emphasis upon the analytical essay based on academic topics, we can see that modifications are necessary.  Nearly everyone benefits by learning principles of writing that are common to virtually all forms of written communication – clarity, conciseness, organized thought, a modicum of correctness – but not everyone needs to be able to write an analytical essay.  Furthermore, many have neither need nor aptitude for this type of writing.  They may be capable of producing a satisfactory or even good business memo, clinical report, marketing piece, or something else – but analytical and academic writing is not their forte and is not relevant to their goals anyway.

We should not abandon the English Composition requirement altogether, but we need to drastically alter the one-size-fits-all approach.  We must customize freshman composition to suit the needs, aptitudes, and career goals of an increasingly diverse array of college students.

The next installment of this discussion proposes ways to implement a more realistic approach to writing instruction at the college level.