Abstract
Composition in the schools has long been under a curse, and not without reason. It has lacked substance, vitality, enrichment. The stream has been so shallow that, in Ben Jonson's words, one could probe it with one's middle finger. There has been in composition teaching too much correcting of morbid English, too much metaphor mongering, too much vaporing about style, to permit it to rise to the dignity of a first-rate discipline. But now composition seems to be coming into its rights. The old superstition which made the composition teacher the Pariah of the public school system is surely passing. The time is at hand when the opportunities for scholarship and general culture in this branch of instruction will be generally recognized.