U. Connor's The Abolition Debate In Composition?

According to Connors, a significant event at Harvard University in the late 1800s sparked the different literacy crises, earning titles such as “Illiteracy of American Boys” and “Johnny Can’t Write” (Connors 58). In the nineteenth century, more students began enrolling into college, and a delay in these students’ understandings of classical material quickly became obvious. As a result of the test scores, Harvard created an English entrance exam. In short, the students failed the test (Connors 48). Consequently, the institution established a freshman composition course as a temporary solution to fix what the Academia deemed a crisis (Connors 48). In “The Abolition Debate in Composition”, Connors outlines the abolitionist and reformist movements

Moreover, Connors uses the institutional condition of the communication movement as a reason behind reformists’ attempts to change the composition course rather than to abolish it; communication classes were used in place of composition classes to teach similar concepts but with progressive intentions (Connors 54-55). Furthermore, reformers started using the social condition, “training for social experience”, to argue for reformism instead of abolitionism (Connors 53). Also, another condition, which can be considered institutional, cultural, or social, that Connors uses as an explanation for reformism was the many students enrolling in public universities who were less proficient in Enlish reading and writing than previous students (Connors

Their shock was a result of the common belief that literacy is solely the ability to read and write. According to the dominant culture, if one cannot read or write at an expected level, he or she is considered illiterate and thus must be caught up to speed with the rest of society. Consequently, when the majority of students failed the entrance test, they were viewed as illiterate and unable to communicate properly because they did not have adequate language skills, as explained by the “skills discourse” (Barton 160). However, a newer perspective on literacy is that it is not just based upon one’s ability to read and write in the dominant language. Instead, it is based upon people’s abilities to communicate in a variety of ways; these multiple methods of communicating with the world manifest themselves further and change as people experience more and change themselves. In the context of education and this new perspective on literacy, written works are not the only form of literacy in the classroom. Instead, teachers consider other forms of literacy familiar to students and use those forms to mold well-informed and self-sufficient students (Barton 206-208). Perhaps if Harvard had not labeled their prospective students as literate or illiterate based on writing and reading skills, the entire issue of abolishing versus