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Student Newspapers: A Border Site for Reading 19th Century Student Writing
For a long-range project on the history of writing instruction in 19th century
schools, I've read many samples of student writing in many genres and in many sites:
I've looked at student writing in textbooks, in personal journals, in prize books, in
commencement programs, in school catalogues, in family memoirs, in unpublished
manuscripts, and even on scraps of paper. For me some of the most provocative
samples occur in student-edited school newspapers--of which there are many more than
I had ever imagined. As early as 1854, a writer in the Pennsylvania School Journal
noted that "the rapid increase of periodicals ... designed to give publicity to
compositions by pupils in the schools" was, in his words, "remarkable." What I find
interesting in my reading

of.m~dJ~fs~rfa10re than 75 of these publications is that

in these texts, school-age students routinely and energetically authorize themselves to
talk about writing and--even more importantly--to talk about themselves as writers.
Typically in these papers there is an Editors' Column on the first page; this is
the space where the editors reported the financial difficulties of running the paper and
encourage subscribers to settle their accounts; (one newspaper about to fold wrote, "To
those who put down their names as subscribers, but have afterward refused to pay, we
can only say that to them belongs the honor of the discontinuance of our sheet"
(Bedford Street Budget, March 1845)). Almost without exception, the editors' next

move in these columns was to solicit manuscripts from their readers. Although the
number of submissions was a primary concern (the editors of The Jabberwock wrote,
"Do send more contributions, girls. Do not be afraid of the editorial wastebasket. We
have not bought one yet.") what's also striking is the editors' request for "original"
materials; in 1875, for example, one paper wanted their readers "to compose something
... on some subject that requires some thought," and not to scrawl off "one of the old
hackneyed descriptions." They conceded that, "Of course it will come pretty hard at

1

first to write anything really original; but ... the earlier one begins the sooner will he
be able to write well" (Horae, March 1875).
The editors of these student publications also encouraged their readers not to be
disheartened if their submissions were turned down; in an 1887 Latin School Register

~ the editors counseled, "if your first contribution was not accepted, there is
ample opportunity for you, by writing articles frequently, to get one into the Register
before the end of the year" (November 1887). In a later issue, no doubt hoping to
increase the number of submissions they received, the editors even offered a writing
heuristic, "No [student]," they said, "should be discouraged by the utter lack of ideas
which seems to overwhelm him at the start. If he will sit down, pen in hand, he will
find that ideas will come to him quicker than he could have believed possible" (March
1888).
The Harvard Reports are well-known for their discrediting of the way schools
prepared students for college writing. There's more to be learned from those reports,
however, than is commonly reported. In the student writing samples in those reports,
for example, one student wrote that although his school gave him no formal preparation
for the Harvard Entrance Exam, it was newspaper work and the editing of the school
paper that gave him facility in writing; a student from another school wrote, that the
students themselves organized a literary society and met once a week to practice essay
writing. And way back in 1846, in an issue of the Bedford Street Budget, a student
recognized the value of writing for the school paper when as part of his solicitation of
manuscripts, he wrote, "the habit of composition of all kinds is a very valuable one,
and one moreover, from which those boys who hereafter go to College, will derive
great advantage" (The Budget, April 15, 1846). Students, therefore, both in the essays
they wrote for the Harvard Committee on Composition and Rhetoric and in the writing
they produced for their school papers, reflected on the value of learning to write by
writing.

2

According to Wendell Barry, the ditch at the edge of a farm is an important
space to Amish farmers. Unlike the regularized, predictable acreage of the farm and
unlike the private and individually designed and cultivated space of the kitchen garden,
the ditch is pretty much left alone: it is a place of natural experimentation

wher~

plants can cross-pollinate and new, strong varieties of a plant can spring into life; it is a
place where small wildlife are protected and birds raise their young; it is a place where
k~t::

the moisture of the earth--hence the life--is almost constant. I ~o suggest
that another name for a ditch is a border space and that students who wrote for school
newspapers were writing in a border space, a space somewhere between the farm, the

and-

highly regularized English-class-assigned writing, and the kitchen garden, the highly
privatized out-of-school writing,

J;v {j}UJ cC hz-0
~ere

~r space between assigned

claiming that
writing and private writing, students
newspapers, students authorized
of writing frequently

pretty much left alone; I'm further

wer~ write:

in their school

themseh:~s to write original text~lled the benefits

,~qued each other's texts?r"1earned to gen:rate ideas "pen in
~

A

hand," and, perhaps most significantly,11fll2ed about themselves as writers. In sum, by
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enabling this border site for student writing, schools were indeed preparing students for
college composition--but in a way the Harvard Reports never imagined. So--here's to
ditches, and to border sites, and to student newspapers.
Lucille M. Schultz
March 1996

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