Meeting student needs in the nineteenth-century English classroom: Alexander Bain revisited

Abstract

Alexander Bain (1818-1903) was the University of Aberdeen, Scotland's first Chair of Logic. He was a prolific and influential writer modern critics have credited with promoting a reductive rhetoric. However, the last forty years of Bain scholarship have been flawed by misleading interpretations of his English Composition and Rhetoric (1866), basing assumptions on a "new-critical" examination of the text. Only gradually has this view of Bain begun to change. Bain's contributions cannot be considered fairly if modern explications of his works continue to be marred by misinterpretation. A close examination of Bain's works and consideration of what he did in the classroom demonstrate that his pedagogy differs from what has generally been written about him by modern compositionists. This study investigates misinterpretations that define Bain as an instigator of bad writing pedagogy and attempts to correct them. By drawing attention to the range of different works Bain wrote on logic, English, and education, as well as the range of different views critics have had of him, this study reveals that Bain was a man of his times, influenced by the philosophical underpinning of his century while at the same time influencing some of the greatest minds of the next. The study surveys Bain's practice and theory in his English class within the context of his times, examining his rhetoric text in light of the ways he and his successor, William Minto, employed it. It summarizes Bain's contributions in education during his lifetime and discusses his influence on issues of nineteenth-century educational reform in Scotland, issues such as the education of women, curriculum reform, writing across the curriculum, and the role of the teacher. Foreshadowing twentieth-century social construction theory, Bain presents his contributions in logic, English, and education to be used as stones with which to build--materials others may use in their knowledge-making process--not as rules carved in stone.