Some clarification might be in order, lol. This is an appendix to the 1904 edition of Espenshade's Essentials of Composition and Rhetoric, a textbook for high-school students and college freshmen....
Some clarification might be in order, lol.
This is an appendix to the 1904 edition of Espenshade's Essentials of Composition and Rhetoric, a textbook for high-school students and college freshmen.
At the time, in the US, students were routinely assigned "themes" - written papers on a topic of their or their teacher's choosing. Some were short, a page or two; others were longer, four or five pages. They were very rigid and codified, in much the same way as is taught in schools today (or at least, fairly recently); lay out the subject, develop it paragraph-by-paragraph, give a conclusion. They had to be written on "theme paper" or "composition paper" and handed in, folded in half, with the student's name on the outside. The teacher would read them, make notes, and either ask for a revision - generally made on the back of the original - or a complete rewrite. The general idea lives on in some countries, but not (AFAIK) in the US any longer. But composition paper remains - your standard lined "filler paper". The left-hand margin is where the teachers left their marks, in days of yore.
And here is a list of such marks. They weren't completely standardized, and many teachers or districts undoubtedly had their own variations, but most were pretty similar.
What I find most interesting is the sort of... casual brutality, available for use. F denoted writing that was "feeble". Ms indicated writing that was "slovenly or illegible". V warned against vagueness, suggesting a "want of clear thinking". You could also get dinged for having "faulty coherence", using writing that was "hackneyed or trite", ambiguous, or jerky, and for using tautologies, among many other things.
The emphasis on written English composition in American schools faded somewhat as the 20c progressed. In the belief that people, once matriculated, rarely had cause to write 500-word papers, the focus for a few decades shifted to rhetoric, on the theory that everyone needs to clearly express themself through speech. Nowadays, well... the less said the better.
I appreciate this comment and agree with its overall point, but I disagree with one line: A good majority of the the science that most people will learn today was discovered prior to 1904. Most...
I appreciate this comment and agree with its overall point, but I disagree with one line:
Nearly all of what is taught in science classes wasn't even known in 1904, not to mention the rest of STEM.
A good majority of the the science that most people will learn today was discovered prior to 1904. Most people never do more than Newtonian physics which is all 16/1700s. Darwin and Mendel were both mid-1800s which is most of high school biology. Many organelles were also discovered in the 1800s which is a good chunk of cell biology. Mendeleev got us towards the periodic table in the 1800s.
There have obviously been some major advances in the 20th century, but not a ton are taught in high school or intro college science classes. One big one is The Central Dogma (DNA to RNA to Protein) by Watson, Crick, Franklin, Sanger, and others. There's also the atomic model by Rutherford and Bohr among others. I'm racking my brain, but I can't think of any other major topics covered in high school or intro college classes.
There have been several advances in Astrophysics, Quantum/Particle Physics, Medicine, Genetics, and Neuroscience, but most people never take classes in these.
p.s. Sorry that this ended up being so long. Once I started, I got really excited about thinking about major advances in science.
I actually disagree with this. I don't really like this system because many of these marks are vague or unhelpful in telling the student what they did wrong. For example, what does "T: Bad taste"...
Nowadays, well... the less said the better.
I actually disagree with this. I don't really like this system because many of these marks are vague or unhelpful in telling the student what they did wrong. For example, what does "T: Bad taste" mean, and how is the student supposed to fix it? Or "Good use violated. You have used a word not used by the best writers?" Who decides what the best writers use, and why are we comparing schoolchildren to them in the first place? Or especially, "X: Some fault too obvious to require particularization". It may seem obvious to the teacher, but is it obvious to the student? And what makes this even worse is that in 1904, you couldn't just go to the internet or necessarily even the phone for help or advice. I think that perhaps this is optimized for a very large number of papers, and you can see the teacher to student ratio has indeed fallen significantly, but my English teacher in California had a class of around 35 students and she always managed to give us personal advice for every assignment. Especially if the teacher had even just one aid or student helper, there's no reason why a system like this is necessary, and I think it's a solid improvement that we switched away from this.
Yeah, I'm by no means saying this method of feedback was good, or that we should try to return to it or something. I'm pretty sure you'd get fired today for calling a pupil's writing "feeble", or...
Yeah, I'm by no means saying this method of feedback was good, or that we should try to return to it or something. I'm pretty sure you'd get fired today for calling a pupil's writing "feeble", or telling them an assignment contains "faults too obvious to require particularization". O.o Primary education oughtn't be a blood sport. But I do lament the state of English education in schools today. Once we taught people to write clearly. Later we taught people to speak clearly, instead. Now, we... do neither, and claim progress, somehow.
I think grammar should be taught and assessed. That said, I can understand why it has been de-emphasised - and I always loved how xkcd put it in this comic.
I think grammar should be taught and assessed. That said, I can understand why it has been de-emphasised - and I always loved how xkcd put it in this comic.
[Grammar Police] - vindictive about things that are often uncomfortably transparent proxies for race or social class.
Some clarification might be in order, lol.
This is an appendix to the 1904 edition of Espenshade's Essentials of Composition and Rhetoric, a textbook for high-school students and college freshmen.
At the time, in the US, students were routinely assigned "themes" - written papers on a topic of their or their teacher's choosing. Some were short, a page or two; others were longer, four or five pages. They were very rigid and codified, in much the same way as is taught in schools today (or at least, fairly recently); lay out the subject, develop it paragraph-by-paragraph, give a conclusion. They had to be written on "theme paper" or "composition paper" and handed in, folded in half, with the student's name on the outside. The teacher would read them, make notes, and either ask for a revision - generally made on the back of the original - or a complete rewrite. The general idea lives on in some countries, but not (AFAIK) in the US any longer. But composition paper remains - your standard lined "filler paper". The left-hand margin is where the teachers left their marks, in days of yore.
And here is a list of such marks. They weren't completely standardized, and many teachers or districts undoubtedly had their own variations, but most were pretty similar.
What I find most interesting is the sort of... casual brutality, available for use. F denoted writing that was "feeble". Ms indicated writing that was "slovenly or illegible". V warned against vagueness, suggesting a "want of clear thinking". You could also get dinged for having "faulty coherence", using writing that was "hackneyed or trite", ambiguous, or jerky, and for using tautologies, among many other things.
The emphasis on written English composition in American schools faded somewhat as the 20c progressed. In the belief that people, once matriculated, rarely had cause to write 500-word papers, the focus for a few decades shifted to rhetoric, on the theory that everyone needs to clearly express themself through speech. Nowadays, well... the less said the better.
I appreciate this comment and agree with its overall point, but I disagree with one line:
A good majority of the the science that most people will learn today was discovered prior to 1904. Most people never do more than Newtonian physics which is all 16/1700s. Darwin and Mendel were both mid-1800s which is most of high school biology. Many organelles were also discovered in the 1800s which is a good chunk of cell biology. Mendeleev got us towards the periodic table in the 1800s.
There have obviously been some major advances in the 20th century, but not a ton are taught in high school or intro college science classes. One big one is The Central Dogma (DNA to RNA to Protein) by Watson, Crick, Franklin, Sanger, and others. There's also the atomic model by Rutherford and Bohr among others. I'm racking my brain, but I can't think of any other major topics covered in high school or intro college classes.
There have been several advances in Astrophysics, Quantum/Particle Physics, Medicine, Genetics, and Neuroscience, but most people never take classes in these.
p.s. Sorry that this ended up being so long. Once I started, I got really excited about thinking about major advances in science.
I actually disagree with this. I don't really like this system because many of these marks are vague or unhelpful in telling the student what they did wrong. For example, what does "T: Bad taste" mean, and how is the student supposed to fix it? Or "Good use violated. You have used a word not used by the best writers?" Who decides what the best writers use, and why are we comparing schoolchildren to them in the first place? Or especially, "X: Some fault too obvious to require particularization". It may seem obvious to the teacher, but is it obvious to the student? And what makes this even worse is that in 1904, you couldn't just go to the internet or necessarily even the phone for help or advice. I think that perhaps this is optimized for a very large number of papers, and you can see the teacher to student ratio has indeed fallen significantly, but my English teacher in California had a class of around 35 students and she always managed to give us personal advice for every assignment. Especially if the teacher had even just one aid or student helper, there's no reason why a system like this is necessary, and I think it's a solid improvement that we switched away from this.
Yeah, I'm by no means saying this method of feedback was good, or that we should try to return to it or something. I'm pretty sure you'd get fired today for calling a pupil's writing "feeble", or telling them an assignment contains "faults too obvious to require particularization". O.o Primary education oughtn't be a blood sport. But I do lament the state of English education in schools today. Once we taught people to write clearly. Later we taught people to speak clearly, instead. Now, we... do neither, and claim progress, somehow.
Yeah, sadly, this is so true. I still remember people in university complaining about being docked points for grammar mistakes.
I think grammar should be taught and assessed. That said, I can understand why it has been de-emphasised - and I always loved how xkcd put it in this comic.