Excerpt from College Life, Its Conditions and Problems: A Selection of Essays for Use in College Writing Courses The remainder of the book deals with the student interests outside of the curriculum, such as general reading, recreation and athletics, college spirit, college morals, student government, etc. The second value that this material has for the course in English composition is that it enables the instructor to make the course incite to thinking and to intellectual expansion. In the composition course it seems wise to emphasize ideas, rather than literary models or set exercises, by allowing the student to encounter fresh and stimulating thoughts, which one may adopt and apply to one's own experience, or which one may combat or modify in accordance with individual conviction. To throw the emphasis upon formal matters is unwise and is an illustration of what Huxley has described as making the student practice the use of knife, fork, and spoon without giving him a particle of meat. But if the student is provided before he writes with the materials of thought in the form of some reading which, firmly thought out and clearly expressed, stimulates to thinking, the ways and means of clear expression assume new significance to him. The field of college life offers many inviting subjects for writing and oral discussion which are well within the comprehension and experience of the student. The selections in this book are therefore intended as a body of stimulating material. Though suggestiveness in point of ideas has been the main criterion of choice, these selections will serve well also as models of clear, direct, and incisive modern English. The selections have not been brought together for the purpose of representing the different types of discourse, but simply to set the student to the general task of correct and effective writing. It so happens, however, that these selections will readily serve as a basis for the expository and argumentative writing which, in most colleges, is the fundamental part of the first-year course in writing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.