ABSTRACT
While the University of Wisconsin developed a professional writing curriculum, other schools also began to experiment with advanced courses for Progressive rhetors. As chapter 1 indicated, the first generation of advanced electives, from the late nineteenth century, stressed forms of discourse along with creative genres that reflected individual teachers’ interests, providing more general skills training for the liberal arts graduate. But the second wave of advanced courses, developed between 1890 and World War I, stemmed from a new source and inspiration affecting higher education: the belief in specialization and reform originating in Progressivism. New offerings moved writing into the realm of a vocation, appropriate to the land-grant school, a professional subject like agriculture, home economics, or pharmacy taught through workshops and lab experiences, with instruction provided by practitioners rather than traditional academics. These new courses trained writing specialists, an elite class that could serve democracy by persuading the citizenry to accept modern governmental and scientific developments. Writing courses in Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois exemplify this growing Progressive influence. Similar offerings spread out from the midwestern states to other regions of the country. As happens with any curricular trend, however, these writing courses appeared in modified versions in various states and universities, suited to local political situations and to the institutions’ goals. Certainly not every program administrator and advanced writing teacher shared the vision of a new democracy promulgated by Bob La Follette. In fact, advanced writing courses soon encountered a paradoxical influence. State administrators in Florida, Texas, and Montana sought new legislation that would control business and industry, but they also wanted the prosperity that could only be achieved by business growth. A writing form that combined facts with persuasion could be effectively used to achieve both corporate reform and corporate might.
