Composition: History & Theory: 1900 - 1919
Current-Traditional Rhetoric
Description
In Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 (1987), James Berlin explains how Current-Traditional Rhetoric, founded at Harvard, still reigned supreme during this period. It was supposed to provide “the tools to [help writers] avoid embarrassing themselves in print” (35). Current-traditional rhetoric was based on the assumption that “knowledge in all areas of human behavior could be readily discovered and validated through scientific method” (37). The freshman composition course during this time as a way to teach that which all students must know: logical writing. Truth, even in writing, was thought to come from outside the individual (the kind of thinking Berlin attributes to schools where a lot of time and money was being put into research). “The result of this naïve faith,” Berlin writes, “was that the economical and political interests of the new professional middle class were perceived as being inherent features of the universe” (37).
Date of Upload
3/13/09