The Malady

The Malady One of the gravest weaknesses of U.S. education was bluntly pointed out by Dean William C. Warren of the Columbia University School of Law in his annual report. While the art of writing, said Dean Warren, "is indispensable to the achievement of distinction in the [legal] profession . . . the inability of college graduates who come to us to read and write is a malady of epidemic proportions." But one question remains: What will be an effective cure?

"As a practical matter," said the dean, "it would place an intolerable burden upon an instructor who must at semester's end read and grade from 275 to 600 examination books to require that he mark the misspellings, the solecisms, and the abuse of language, and undertake to explain to the errant the proper usage." A course in remedial writing would not be feasible either. Warren's recommendation: that the colleges give each prospective law student an examination in expository writing at the end of his junior year to see if he needs extra work. Passing a second test would become a part of the law school's regular requirements for admission. "It is perhaps too much to hope that by this measure the apparently moribund study of English grammar will be revitalized in secondary schools. We can at least expect that the literature of the law will eventually be the better for.it."

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