Open Admission and the Birth of Modern Composition

     Dr. John Trimbur of Emerson College gave a lecture today concerning open admission of colleges and the birth of modern composition. I was only able to stay for solid 45 minutes because it did not really interest me, although I must admit I did learn some interesting facts. The education of writing began going through a reinvention around the 1970s. Students who began entering the City Colleges of New York precipitated a new kind of writing due to new open admissions (meaning anyone who graduated high school could enter college) which caused the reinvention of writing. One of the 'classics' of this new writing is an essay written by a student called "Reality Essay." The paper was in response to a prompt from a college, "What is reality?" (The actual essay is posted at the end of this blog post). When reading this essay, one will notice the many simple grammatical errors. However, this was birth of modern composition. It was a new kind of reading in writing. An essay like the "Reality Essay" has its own kind of order and logic that can be read by a new attentive reader. Rather than reading the essay and  automatically looking for corrections, the birth of modern composition was looking for readers to read how particular pieces of writing like the "Reality Essay" were operating, through a new "language" of writing.
     When open admissions first initiated around the 1970s, writing programs were created and populations of colleges doubled. However, it was difficult for the faculty members at first because the faculty wasn't developed. No one knew what was coming; Dr. Trimbur quoted "What is this shit?" from professors from that era, hence this being the birth of modern composition. With the birth of modern composition, writing became a much more significant area for colleges. Due to open admissions and the creation of writing programs, more proficiency testing were created, and tuition of colleges began to increase. All in all, the birth of modern composition was prevalent for the increase in higher education for the students in the United States. Although the lecture was quite boring to me, it was interesting to see how much writing has changed since the birth of modern composition. It's insane to think of the difference between the "Reality Essay" as a response to a prompt to get into a college, to the responses colleges are looking for today.

"Reality Essay"

Reality is what I say it is, I say is to live for "God." It's real or I such say that he is for real and he is more real if you know that your just here on earth for just some time, maybe fourty year, fifty, eighty years, but who realy knows. I guest nobody here on earth knows. You know in "good book," I mean the "Bible," it said there is two kinds of life, this kind fo life, that where living on earth and the life where he lives. This is reality to know that I'm just here for a short while because I donn't know when he is coming for me (death and passing away of the body) I'm glad I wont pass away just my body. But I have to take under consideration that there are other people that were born before me and there turn has to come before me. Because its just a line, your just waiting to be called.

A funny thing happen to me when I went to the A.P. shopping for food. I was with my wife and we got all the food that we can get for us to eat for two weeks. Something distriked my eye when I was about to pay for the ideoms. There was a book on the counter by the cash-register and this book (books) where for people to buy. It was publish by Readers Digest and it said "How to live a longer life in nine easy steps." This was realy funny to me because people of today are trying to prolong life, I mean a lot of people, doctors inventing something like a heart transplant (thats jsut one ex.) How far can you get. Like in the story of Edgar Allan Poe, Allegory and The Masque of the Red Death and Bartleby the Scrivener. Death comes and there no way in the world that you can stop it because the lord comes like a shadow at night, or the Angle of Red Death.

This is reality if people can see it but thay have eye's but they cann't see and they have ears but they cann't hear.