THE BRIGGS REPORT

The Briggs Report, a study conducted by Professor John C. Briggs about the state of freshman composition teaching, was sponsored by a grant from the ALSC. The Council has endorsed its conclusions and recommendations. The following is an excerpt from an essay written by Professor Briggs entitled, "Writing Without Reading: The Decline of Literature in the Composition Classroom." The complete Briggs Report is now available for viewing and download. It is also available in print as the inaugural issue of Forum, the special projects publication of the ALSC. Contact us for details on how to order.

"Thousands of subjects are offered in our colleges and universities. Of these subjects only one is so highly valued as to be universally required: freshman composition. Increasingly, composition is the one course almost every student (several million each year) will take regardless of major. For many, it will be their only course dedicated to the study of English. At the same time, many composition programs are separating from English departments, in outlook if not in administration. Our study examines a representative sample of these offerings to determine the present state of the requirement. It focuses on the role of literature in the composition curriculum, looking into the ways in which that role has diminished, and the consequences of that change."

ALSC STATEMENT ON THE UNDERGRADUATE LITERATURE MAJOR

The ALSC STATEMENT ON THE UNDERGRADUATE LITERATURE MAJOR was created by an ALSC committee chaired by long-standing member Mark Bauerlein, who is also Director of Research and Analysis for the National Endowment for the Arts, and Professor of English at Emory University. The Executive Council of the Association has endorsed this statement and adopted it as the official ALSC position on the subject. What follows is an excerpt of the full statement, which is now available in a printable PDF.

"Ever since its inception in the late-nineteenth century, the literature major has been the cornerstone of liberal arts education. People of different politics and beliefs agree that literary study is crucial to the formation of adult selves and enlightened societies. The repository of tradition and cultural standards, literature departments are one of the few places in which humanistic values may be preserved, disseminated, and analyzed. Majoring in literature, students acquire critical intelligence and aesthetic imagination, learning and eloquence, and an awareness of ethical complexity, their understanding of the present deepened by contact with works of the past.