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Show Subduing the Barbarian: Freshman English at Weber State Levi S. Peterson Sometimes, as I chat at conferences with friends who have appointments on graduate faculties, I find myself apologizing for the fact that my fated lot at Weber State is a plenteous scheduling of Freshman English. My friends join me in a gentle lamentation that each quarter I must teach, along with whatever literature courses I am lucky enough to be assigned, at least two sections of Freshman English a course I was considered competent to teach when I entered graduate school over thirty years ago. Yet my distress is more or less perfunctory, an indirect compliment to my friends for their achievement. Back on my own campus I feel otherwise, the truth being that Im happy teaching Freshman English. I like it because, as I see it, the students need me. I am zealous by nature and they give me a cause. I dont have to go to faraway places to find the Heart of Darkness; at eight twenty-five I will find it in my classroom where these amiable young men and women assemble, blithely unaware that they are, each and all, true born barbarians. The battle for civilization goes on in the Freshman English classes of Weber State College. Freshman English ranks high for inherent dullness. For students lower division draftees, many of whom arent certain they want to be in college in the first place it is a pain to be endured, at best a toughening of their will, a test of their determination. Presumably almost everybody likes to write, but certainly not everybody likes to write in the technical manner prescribed by handbooks and rhetorics. A person has to be born with special gifts and talents, perhaps even with a taste for self-abuse, to enjoy the technicalities of composition. Natural, untutored writing rambles congenially, asserts baldly, ignores evidence, and confounds rules, whereas Freshman English insists on thesis statements, precise transitions, substantiating details, well-cleated clauses, and sanitized usages, all of which imply labor, tedium, and, for the vast majority of students, an inevitably mediocre product. A professor of English, Levi S. Peterson has been at Weber State College since 1965. He has served as chairman of the Department of English and as director of the Honors Program. His published works include The Canyons of Grace (stories), The Backslider (a novel), and Juanita Brooks (a biography). No wonder they have an aversion to it. Because I venerate a good handbook as much as the next teacher, I am willing to publish, proclaim, and endorse its principles by any means whatsoever. Do my students make errors in verb agreement and pronoun reference? Odious! Do they confuse exposition and argumentation? Alarming! Do they separate main clauses by commas, do they segregate modifiers with semicolons? Unspeakable! The deities of progress are not satisfied, and neither am I. But of course there is no law against enlivening the technicalities. I for one cant stand to teach Freshman English in monotone; Id rather candle eggs or repair furnaces for a living. A little humor, a little exaggeration, sandwiched between weighty slabs of principle and technique, make instruction more palatable, more apt to be retained. So I say to a student in my class: Please read us one of your paragraphs, if you can find one that isnt obscene. Explaining parallelism, I say: Im sorry that this concept will be too obtuse for students from Davis County. Though that is sixth-rate humor, my students laugh gratefully, even those from Davis County, sixth-rate jokes being better than none at all. Equally important is enthusiasm. Although students rightfully doubt that anyone could feel passionate over the formalities of practical writing, a dissembling instructor can fetch them in and disarm their incredulity. Even if on a given day I am depressed or sour, I enter the classroom feigning pleasure and delight, making on as though Freshman English is a subject of great splendor and curiosity, a precious treasure which I have fervently mined and now share. I declare that my students are mastering more than a useful craft; they are achieving high civilization. At the beginning of the quarter they enter my classroom on all fours, mere unwitting animals, as it were; as the quarter proceeds, they arise and stand erect, discovering themselves to be scions of that noble species, homo sapiens a joke good for a laugh four or five times in a quarter if Im careful to lead into it from a fresh angle. But of course the big joke is that my enthusiasm is not entirely mock. I believe in my jest: Freshman English civilizes. By current standards, despair over civilization is one of the marks of the civilized person. Truly I cant say that I believe in progress or in any sufficient remedy for war, brutality, and suffering. However, I want to believe. In fact, I find myself rather constantly trying to live as if enlightenment, progress, and peace were distinct human possibilities. Having the gift of life, I want to dignify and enhance it by maintaining an alert, curious, and moral mind, understanding the sciences and technologies, enjoying the arts and sports, treating other persons with respect, supporting humane policies among governments and institutions, and urging others to do likewise, for no other reason than that such attitude and behavior will make me happier than I would otherwise be. The Weber State campus is a good place for becoming civilized. It has a variety of modern, commodious buildings; wide, tranquil lawns; friendly trees; a shimmering pond ruled by a congregation of serious-minded ducks. It also houses a perpetually renewed community of knowers and learners, faculty and students who in a real sense are a concentration and a summary of diffuse knowledge, values, |