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''YOU CAN'T WRITE WRITING" NORMAN FOERSTER AND THE BATTLE OVER BASIC SKILLS AT IOWA It is our present education which is highly specialized. one-sided. and narrow. It is an education dominated almost entirely by the mediaeval conception of learning. It is something which appeals for the most part simply to the intellectual aspects of our natures. our desire to learn. to accumulate information and to get control of the symbols of learning: not to our impulses and tendencies to make. to do. to create. to produce. whether in the form of utility or of art. -john Dewey. The School and Society On April 5, 1944, the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts at the State University of Iowa approved a new undergraduate program in general education. This program required all students enrolled in the college to take a foreign language and physical education, plus core courses in natural science , social science, literature, and history. The new program also required students to take a series of courses called "basic skills" if they could not demonstrate sufficient levels of competence in speaking, writing, and reading. Iowa's new undergraduate requirements did not differ much from those adopted by many American universities during the forties under the headings of liberal or general education. At Iowa, however, adoption of the program was accomplished only after intense struggle among faculty and the administration. At least two prominent faculty members resigned because of their dismay over the program, and the unpleasantness surrounding its adoption may have played a role in the decision of the dean of liberal arts to take a presidency elsewhere, as he did in the year following the program's implementation . One of the faculty members who resigned was the eminent scholar and critic, Norman Foerster. In his letter of resignation, Foerster claimed to 132 YOU CAN'T WRITE WRITING +>- 133 be upset about a faculty promotion that had been made without his knowledge (he was director of the School of Letters at the time). However, other documents and books, articles, memos, and letters written by Foerster himself suggest that his discomfort went far beyond chagrin at the supposed circumvention of his administrative authority. Foerster joined the faculty at Iowa in I930 as professor of English and director of the School of Letters. Immediately after his arrival, he managed to implement a two-year, twelve-credit hour course in literature that was required of every student who matriculated in the College of Liberal Arts. This hefty requirement was in keeping with Foerster's humanist sympathies, which mandated that the development of taste and moral sensitivity was a lengthy process. The course, at first called "Literature and the Art of Writing " and then simply "Reading and Writing," expected students to confront "some of the central questions of human life as they have been represented in literature" (I936, I5). Students read classical and Christian literature, including works by "Homer, the Greek tragedies, Plato, the Bible," and "works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and later English and American authors to suggest the continuity of the tradition" (I946, vii). According to Foerster, the course was not a "historical survey or a study of literary art; it was a study of human values." Instruction in composition in the course supposedly took place in connection with students' reading. This ambitious course was not without problems. It was taught chiefly by graduate students, since professors were not especially inclined to take on a teaching responsibility that might interfere with their advancement (undated unsigned memo, Foerster papers).' The English Department worried that the graduate students were inexperienced, overworked, and underpaid. Certainly they were overworked: the typical teaching load was two sections, and since each section could enroll as many as fifty or sixty students it must have been difficult for the TAs to give much attention to students' writing. Faculty in other departments complained about transgression of intellectual turf. The philosophy department expressed concern about the inclusion of Plato in the required course, and faculty in religious studies objected to its use of the Kingjames Bible. Apparently there were also complaints that teachers of the course "indoctrinated" students (Foerster toNewburn, I 5May I943)· A professor of chemistry argued that if students were to be educated in citizenship, twelve hours of political science would be preferable to the same amount of literary study: "while every student should have a basic command of English, it seems to me as ridiculous to attempt to make all students [3.143.244.83] Project MUSE...

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