English 101 is perceived primarily by students and faculty as a box to check like many other GURs and not much more. Some do harbor hopes that the course will be helpful to students and if students internalize this positive mindset, as with any other course, will help them to glean whatever is useful in the curriculum to the full extent possible. Faculty have a bit of split perception of English 101 as simultaneously a last chance to buffer what will soon be their future students’ writing before they as teachers are stuck with these students who could not write themselves out of a paper bag.

English 101 serves as one last attempt to normalize/standardize students to what appropriate writing looks like. In quarter-based schools this idea is particularly ridiculous and that is why I appreciate the move away from this antiquated and frankly quite boring curriculum that has been implemented in the 101 program since I was a freshman in fall of 2004. Is what we teach now particularly useful to the students that come through English 101? To sidestep the answer, I do not think that it is even close to possible to design a curriculum that is useful to everybody or even the majority of people. The positive of the English 101 program right now is that it challenges our students. It may not be “useful” but it challenges them all the same and I firmly believe cognitive discomfort breeds a strong mind the same way muscles must be a little sore if you want them to grow.

I am with Crowley that English 101 should 100% not be a required course, but maybe heavily recommended, specifically if students were not enrolled in honors/AP English classes in their senior year of high school. That does not mean that I think a writing course should not be required. What I would like to see and I let my students last year who complained about having to take English 101 know as much is that there should be a required writing course for every student when they declare for a major that serves as an introductory course into the discipline that they have chosen. That way they can have a “useful” class that teaches them how to write in the field that they will be majoring in and likely be seeking work in after.