In the Archives of Composition

Writing and Rhetoric in High Schools and Normal Schools

Lori Ostergaard, Henrietta Rix Wood, Lori Ostergaard, Henrietta Rix Wood

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780822981015
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In the Archives of Composition offers new and revisionary narratives of composition and rhetoric's history. It examines composition instruction and practice at secondary schools and normal colleges, the two institutions that trained the majority of U.S. composition teachers and students during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing from a broad array of archival and documentary sources, the contributors provide accounts of writing instruction within contexts often overlooked by current historical scholarship. Topics range from the efforts of young women to attain rhetorical skills in an antebellum academy, to the self-reflections of Harvard University students on their writing skills in the 1890s, to a close reading of a high school girl's diary in the 1960s that offers a new perspective on curriculum debates of this period. Taken together, the chapters begin to recover how high school students, composition teachers, and English education programs responded to institutional and local influences, political movements, and pedagogical innovations over a one-hundred-and-thirty-year span.

PART I

High Schools

CHAPTER 1

The Rhetorical Praxis of Central High School Students, 1894–1924

Henrietta Rix Wood

In 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 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 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 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 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 (Twenty-Fifth 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 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.

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 though...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction: Adding New Stories to the History of Composition and Rhetoric
• Part I: High Schools
• Part II. Normal Schools
• Part III. Building Secondary-Postsecondary Connections
• Afterword
• Contributors
• Index