Andrea A . Lunsford ASSIGNMENTS FOR BASIC

In the late nineteenth century, Alexander Bain, professor of rhetoric, logic, and mental philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, charged that what his profession knew about effective writing assignments was only at the level of the "infant school." After detailing many of the problems and inequities inherent in essay assignments, Bain concluded that "there are very strong objections to Essay or Theme writing" as the basis of writing assignments (Education 351). In particular, Bain ridiculed the inane topics, such as "On Spring Flowers," that were often favored by teachers of the time. In place of such "futile exercises," Bain offered a number of alternatives. The assignment that "seems to me to comply best with the requirements of composition," he says , is the critical explanation of good writing. In such an assignment, the "pupil's mind ... is wholly bent upon the ways ~d means of expression; and I scarcely know any other exercise that is equally recommendable . . .. " (353). In his textbooks, Bain practiced what he preached: His numerous assignments provide students with the "subject matter" and ask them to analyze the given prose and to explain their analyses to the teacher. But Bain's notions of what constituted effective writing assignments were far from universally accepted. Rather than follow