11. How Would You Write a Term Paper?

We have been concentrating on how you should write the great majority of the compositions required of you in high school, the relatively brief ones rarely exceeding 300 words. But in some courses, especially in your senior year, you may be asked to submit much longer pieces of writing that may be loosely classified as term papers or research reports. Typi­cal among these are studies of an author's characteristics or surveys of literary movements in honor English classes, analyses in depth of various topics in your science or social studies courses, and independent investigations encouraged by teachers of special subjects like psychology, merchandis­ing, or home economics.

Learning how to prepare and write a term paper can be helpful to you not only for your immediate needs but for later writing activities as well. If you go on to college, you will discover that a research report is an inescapable require­ment of many courses, and your instructors will assume that you know how to do this particular land of job. Moreover, whether you eventually enter a professional or industrial occu­pation, with or without a college degree, you will learn that research is often the foundation upon which progress in the working world is built—and the ones who can go out, investi­gate a problem, and return with an intelligently written re­port on it are the ones who get ahead.

Let's see what some of the characteristics are of the term or research paper:

§ It's a composition—containing more paragraphs and per­haps somewhat fuller ones than those you usually write—but basically it is just a longer composition. Remember that! This means you must observe every principle of good writing we have discussed in the previous chapters.

§ Its length varies according to demand, normally from 1000-3000 words, or, if we break it down by our paragraph formula (100—150 words each), it contains somewhere be­tween ten and twenty-five paragraphs.

§ It is different from the free-expression type of compo­sition mainly in that background of information you are ex­pected to have before you begin to write. The short themes might be classified as the products of unprepared writing. You get a topic like "Window Shopping," and you are not expected to do more with it than set down some personal ob­servations in an interesting style, writing "off the cuff," so to speak. The source of information is you and your experience. You can start and finish such a composition in an hour or so.

The research paper, on the other hand, must be based upon definitely prepared material. Your own information, ex­tensive as it may be, is not enough. It must be supported by authoritative references, statistics, and quotations that you can get only from outside sources. A report requires consid­erable library work, investigation of all or part of the con­tents of at least five books or periodicals, and incorporation in the writing of unquestionable proof of practically everything you say by direct reference to the source of your information, with footnotes and a bibliography as verification of your re­search. The same topic, "Window Shopping," that might be handled completely personally in one sitting as a regular composition in an English class would probably take you weeks to do as a term paper in a class in merchandising. You would have to broaden your treatment of the subject, gather and use information about such varied aspects of it as when window shopping originated, where it is most popular, what kind of people enjoy doing it, and what the average window shopper likes to see.

§ Your approach to a term paper is determined in ad­vance. You must be thoroughly serious, analytical, scholarly, and well-organized.

To produce a good piece of research, you must proceed in the same series of orderly steps as you would with a shorter composition, but with special emphasis upon the planning stages. That's the key to the whole thing. The way you set up your material will determine the quality of your report. No amount of superior writing skill will substitute for au­thentic details supplied by well-documented notes.

I. PRELIMINARY SELECTION OF THE TOPIC

Ordinarily, you are permitted to choose your own topic, either from a selected list or with complete freedom pro­vided your selection is within the subject or course area and meets with the approval of the teacher. In any case, before you consider any possibility, think about the answers to some guide questions (unless you are arbitrarily assigned only one topic).

How well is it related to my interests or needs?Don't pick a topic because you think you may be interested in it. If you know nothing about a limited field, have never had any experiences in it, or don't even recall ever having heard about it before, you are gambling against time when you de­cide it's worth a try. It may turn out all right, of course, but the odds are heavily against it. You may be led into the mis­take many students make of stabbing at four or five possibili­ties before settling on one. Spending a little time examining your tastes or figuring out how the research you do for one subject can be useful elsewhere will save you wasteful trips up blind alleys.

Make your choice only after you can offer yourself good reasons for wanting to investigate the subject more thorough­ly. Perhaps part of the research you do for a report on Charles Dickens in your English class can be of use in your social studies class when you study social conditions in nineteenth century England. You may have a hobby that ties in; for in­stance, coin collecting might lead you to a survey of the monetary systems of one or more countries. Or your future plans may influence you. What do you hope to become? A sales executive? All right, what about investigating the sales techniques of a Marco Polo or a Benjamin Franklin? You like reading mystery stories? Ask your English teacher whether you can be allowed to find out why Edgar Allan Poe has been called the father of the detective story.

You can see, then, that the primary source of topic selec­tion is still you. But this time your interests and experience direct you toward an avenue of research rather than pro­vide you with the material itself.

How interesting will it be to the reader or listener?

Suppose you were working for an industrial organization and were asked to bring in a report on a highly technical subject that involved equations, formulas, and other extensive mathe­matical data. You would quite understandably confine your­self to these details and carry out your assignment without wondering about how entertaining your material was going to be. You would be sure of your employer's interest because he wouldn't be looking for stimulating language so much as he would be anxious to get the facts and recommendations that might enable the company to make more money.

However, for a school report that must be read by a teacher or heard by students, the matter of interest is very important. Here you are being judged on your ability to write as well as on your skill in research. And you know that a paper consisting mainly of symbols, charts, and diagrams is not going to be welcomed very cordially by people who may be neither as interested in nor as informed about the subject as you are. Avoid, therefore, topics that by their very nature are guaranteed to appeal to a limited audience and make dull reading or listening for most.

How easy will it be to find material? This is where you start working. Mind you, the actual research is not done now. Your objective is to browse through several reference sources so that you can make up your mind whether to keep your topic, revise it, or try something else. You go to the library and begin to look around. Be sensible about it. If there is very little material available or you will have to wait weeks before some of it can be secured for you, go back to your teacher and talk it over. You may have picked a topic that doesn't lend itself to research or isn't important enough to warrant having things written about it. In that case, get busy on a new choice at once. But don't start off with the idea that your report must be the last word on the subject. If you can locate about a half dozen references, you should be able to cover your topic well enough to satisfy the require­ments of most high school reports.

Now, a bit of advice. It is your obligation as an intelligent student to become familiar with the frequently used sources of information in a well-equipped library. Unless you have a first hand acquaintance with these valuable aids to research, you cannot hope to do a quick and efficient job of gathering material for your report. It wouldn't make sense for you to have to give up on a topic because you didn't know where to look for the information. Test yourself on the following questions, which can serve as a self-analysis of your knowl­edge of library tools. If you don't know the answers to some of them, go to the nearest library and investigate personally until you do. You won't find the answers here because that would be defeating the whole purpose of this chapter.

Library Questionnaire

1. The best place to look for the latest information on a current topic is (a) an encyclopedia (b) Readers' Guide (c) the card catalogue.
2. Only living people are listed in (a) Dictionary of American Biography (b) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Mythology (c) Who's Who in America.
3. A biography of Daniel Webster may be found in (a) American Yearbook (b) Dictionary of American Biography (c) Who's Who.
4. A bibliography is a (a) Me of a person (b) list of references (c) debate.
5. The best brief history of the American labor movement would probably be found in (a) Encyclopaedia Britannica (b) World Almanac (c) Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
6. To bring this history of the labor movement up-to-date, the best place to look would be (a) the vertical file (b) Readers' Guide (c) a combination of both.
7. To locate a quotation from a famous poem you would look in a book by (a) Fowler (b) Roget (c) Bartlett.
8. One of these encyclopedias has a detailed alphabetical index volume: (a) World Book (b) Britannica (c) New International.
9. To look up information about a play or short story, you would consult the Index by (a) Untermeyer (b) Krapp (c) Firkins.
10. The quickest way to locate a particular topic in a book is through the (a) appendix (b) table of contents (c) index.
11. To find out in which of Dickens' novels the character Uriah Heep appears you would consult (a) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (b) Brewer's Reader's Handbook (c) Granger's Index.
12. The name of the Nobel Prize winner for literature last year would be found in (a) Cambridge History of English Literature (b) Goode's Atlas (c) World Almanac.
13. To learn how to pronounce the name of a country you would consult a book by (a) Knott (b) Lippincott (c) Rand McNally.
14. To get a brief summary of the plot of a novel you would turn to (a) Walsh's Heroes and Heroines of Fiction (b) Oxford Companion to English Literature (c) Reader's Digest of Books.
15. The copyright date of a book is found (a) on the title page (b) on the reverse side of the title page (c) in the appendix.

Assuming you are reasonably familiar with library refer­ence sources, you would not abandon your topic until you had checked with each of the following:

1. Your Textbook

If your topic is an extension of a subject studied in class and covered in your textbook, look at the end of the chapter that dealt with the subject. The author has probably listed the names of the books he used to get his information. Or he may have supplied the titles at the end of the book in a bib­liography. Get some cards or slips of paper and jot down this information for each book:

Author (last name first)

Title of the book (underlined)

Publisher

Date published or latest copyright

Number of volume (if more than one)

Pages (if supplied)

B. Reference Works

These are the books, in single or multiple volumes, that supply condensed accounts of any subject you can think of. The various biographical dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, gazetteers, yearbooks, annuals, literary histories and hand­books, indexes, and language guides summarize for you per­tinent information about famous people, places, events, his­torical movements, scientific achievements, and literature. Perhaps more important than the facts you can get from these general reference works is the titles of additional books that are often listed at the end of articles. These, too, jot down on cards or slips in the same way you did the textbook ref­erences.

C. The Card Catalogue

You have probably learned in the library work that is part of every course in English how to handle the title, author, and subject cards that are found in this primary source. Start with the references suggested by your textbook and by the general works. Look up the call numbers of the books on your cards. You will find these numbers on the upper left hand side of the catalogue card. Jot them down. While you are at the cabinet, check the key words of the title of your topic against additional catalogue cards. For instance, if you have selected "Fur Trading in the West," try "Fur," "Trad­ing," and "West." Use more cards for listing these.

D. Readers9 Guide to Periodical Literature

If your topic is the kind about which articles appear in newspapers, magazines, or journals, you must also consult the Readers' Guide, which is a monthly publication later bound into volumes covering one or more years. Here again you can find information, by title, author, or subject, about articles that have been published in hundreds of periodicals. The advantage of using such a source is clear when you realize that you may have selected a topic that is so new that it has not yet found its way into books. Again, you put any suggested lead on a card or slip by:

Call number (if periodical is bound)

Name of author (last name first)

Title of article (in quotation marks)

Name of periodical (underlined)

Volume number

Pages covered by article

Date of issue (month, day, year)

E. Vertical File

You may have observed librarians cutting out articles from various periodicals or leafing through pamphlets and bro­chures that come in daily. These materials are eventually placed into large manila folders that are then labeled and filed upright in cabinets reserved for this purpose. Filing is alpha­betical by subject headings or identifying names or titles. Here you have the most up-to-date information it is possible to get. Accounts or analyses of important recent events thus become available for your inspection long before they get into magazines, let alone books. Continue to use your cards to jot down reminders so that you will be able to find the informa­tion again later.

F. The Librarian

A slogan found posted in many stores could well apply to libraries: "If you don't see what you want, ask for it." Librarians welcome the opportunity to help visitors find infor­mation. Don't hesitate to talk over your problem with a li­brarian if you are having difficulty locating useful refer­ences. She is a professional at this game and can offer you in­valuable assistance.

G. The Questionnaire or Personal Experiment

Suppose you can find very little help in the books or peri­odicals you examine, but you still believe that your topic would make an interesting report. You can do something about it by becoming your own authority. Get your teacher's approval first. Then decide what information you will need to support your main ideas. Let's say the topic is like one mentioned before: "Window Shopping." Construct a ques­tionnaire in which you list those questions that will get for you the facts you need. Cut a stencil, if you know how, or ask one of your friends to help you with this typewriting job. You should have no difficulty thereafter getting permission to have your stencil run off on one of the school mimeographing machines. Distribute copies of the questionnaire among your classmates in every subject and ask them to return the com­pleted forms by a given date. If you are successful in doing all this (and if you are persistent the project is not too hard), you will have available genuine first hand information that you can refer to in your report, information that will be very interesting to your teachers and classmates because they helped gather it.

Another original research technique that can be substi­tuted for or added to book or periodical references is the experiment. Your topic is, for example, "Using the Right Seed to Grow a Good Lawn." You find that there is much to read about organic content of the soil and its relation to various seed strains. Wouldn't it be a good idea for you to find out how the soil around your house can be tested? You could get a testing kit, take samplings from several sections, and run the tests yourself. Your findings included in your re­port would give it a positive quality that is often lacking from accounts of what other people have done.

II.        FINAL SELECTION OF THE TOPIC

If you did not stop before you were halfway through with your browsing among the reference sources to decide that the material available was too scanty, difficult to organize, or not likely to supply an interesting report, you will by now have completed your preliminary investigations. You may, however, at this late date wonder whether you really have chosen wisely. This is no time to change. You would lose time, certainly, and would find it difficult to get started again. The best thing to do, if doubts have been raised in your mind, is to change the direction of the topic so that you can take advantage of the material you have already lo­cated. Discuss it with your teacher. In most cases, your re­quest to convert a listed topic like "Fur Trading in the West" into "Early Methods of Trapping Animals" (because the lat­ter has more interesting possibilities) will be approved. What­ever you do, get your topic into its final form as quickly as possible. Don't get involved in an unrealistic search for per­fection, or you will find the deadline for handing in your report upon you before you have written a word.

III.       NARROWING DOWN THE TOPIC

Now you must pause to re-examine your topic in terms of the number of words you are expected to write. For a com­paratively short research paper, you will not want to go too far afield. In such a limited space, it would be better to give many interesting details about a few ideas rather than little bits of information about a great many. Consider, then, whether your topic needs further refinement or limitation. While you might be able to give fair coverage to "The De­velopment of Education in Colonial America" in 5,000 words, you would have to narrow down your topic to perhaps "Pub­lic Education in the Massachusetts Bay Colony" if the assign­ment called for only 1,500 words. It is essential that you think about the scope at this point, so that you don't do a lot of reading and note-taking only to discover later that you have to get rid of much material because you have far more than you need. This doesn't mean that you may not want to make more changes as you gather your notes or prepare the outline. Even if you do, however, you will at least have started your actual research with a reasonably clear idea in your mind of the approximate range of the subject.

IV. TAKING NOTES

After you have narrowed down the topic to the general limits within which you expect to pursue it, look over the cards or slips you have gathered during your preliminary search for reference material. If your topic has been revised substantially, you will have no use for some of the cards be­cause they are no longer pertinent. Put these aside. Now take the rest, one by one, and turn to the pages you had decided earlier would give useful information. Don't start your note-taking right away. Read the section through first to get the feel of the author's ideas and to decide where they will fit into your outline. Then, if you believe that a quotation from the original can clinch a point you will want to make, good. Take it down, word for word, mark the page number, and leave some reminder to yourself to use quotation marks when you incorporate the passage into the body of your report. If you expect to say something later that will have to be backed up by authority, briefly summarize the main idea from the source and again list the page number.

Use additional cards for the notes and, to keep things in order, adopt some lettering or numbering system. For exam­ple, if your first source card refers to a book, place the identi­fying numeral in the upper right hand corner thus:

Call	Author I
Number	Title
	Publisher
	Copyright date
	Volume number
	Pages

(Reminder of the main idea-in a word or two)           I-A

A quotation or a good idea summarized or a series of facts or a chart, diagram, etc.

Page number

Your next note card gets the numeral plus the next letter.

(Either a new idea or point or a                         I-B

continuation of the notes on the previous card)

Page number

Proceed in the same way with your next reference, numbering the cards II, II-A, II-B, II-C, etc. Be sure to include the page numbers where your material was found and could be found again if you had to check it. Besides, you will need this information for the footnotes, which we will talk about shortly.

Don't copy too much. Your teacher will expect the great majority of the words in your report to be in your own lan­guage. Moreover, frequent interruptions in the continuity of the paragraphs, in the form of long quotations, can lead to interference with the reader's progress. Let your style come through, not that of a half dozen other writers. To avoid the temptation to quote more than you should, make most of the entries on the note cards reminders rather than detailed copies of the original text of your references. The single word or two that you write at the top of a note card to indicate the point covered will often be enough to bring to mind an item you plan to include eventually in a paragraph, and the brevity of such a note will force you to be original in your choice of words. The two main purposes of your notes should be:

—to provide you with references to support your statements

—to help you form the outline that must precede the writ­ing of the report.

V. PREPARING THE OUTLINE

Because of the greater number of words to be written, the outline for a research report must be more elaborate than the one for a short composition. The planning is done on four levels.

Direction of the Topic

To achieve the true purpose of research, your report must do more than merely summarize what you read in selected books and periodicals. While you are gathering your notes, decide upon a clear statement of what use you will make of your research material—what criticism you want to offer, what opinion you want to express, what comparisons you want to draw, what recommendations you want to propose, what predictions you want to make. You must go beyond your notes and do some original thinking of your own. This will give your report direction and prevent its sounding like a digest of reference works.

For instance, if you were to write on "The Helicopter in Commercial Aviation," it would be pointless to give a bare recital of the history of this aircraft. The reader could under­standably say that if he wanted only this information he could have gone to the sources himself and very likely have gotten a more comprehensive coverage of the subject than is contained in your paper. On the other hand, you could or­ganize your material so that it promotes the idea that the heli­copter has only scratched the surface of its commercial possi­bilities, and you could make suggestions for increasing the use of this odd-shaped plane. The evaluation of the helicop­ter's potential and the suggestions would be your original contribution to the report. The first thing you would do in preparing your outline, therefore, would be to write directly under the title a complete sentence indicating the direction your report will take:

The Helicopter in Commercial Aviation

Much greater use can be made of the helicopter in commercial aviation.

Incidentally, your guiding statement, sometimes also re­ferred to as your thesis, automatically sets up the main ideas you will want to .express in the introductory and concluding paragraphs.

Once you have made up your mind how to handle your material, re-examine your note cards. Discard any that will not help you advance your ideas. Arrange the rest in ac­cordance with the plan suggested in the next step.

Breakdown of the Topic into Major Ideas

Now you consider the total number of words to be written and divide your material into broad headings, under which related ideas can be grouped to represent the individual para­graphs. It's as if you were preparing to write a series of com­positions, each dealing with a specific aspect of a general topic. A 1,000 word report might break down this way:

Introduction (100 words)

I.          Major Idea (400 words)
II.         Major Idea (400 words)

Conclusion (100 words)

For 2,500 words you might do it this way:

Introduction (200 words)

I.          Major Idea (650-700 words)
II.         Major Idea (650-700 words)
III.       Major Idea (650-700 words)

Conclusion (200 words)

Let's see how this worked out in an outline prepared for an excellent report written by a student on "The Search for Perfection," a survey of some of the early attempts in Amer­ica to establish Utopias, or ideal communities. The writer chose this as the thesis (direction of the report):

The Search for Perfection

Ideal communities have invariably failed in this coun­try because of weaknesses in human nature and the sys­tems of government attempted
.
Since this was going to be a 5,000 word report, the writer quite sensibly decided to break down the topic into five major ideas. An analysis of the notes suggested that the best arrangement would be a study of five typical communities that attempted the ideal and failed. Thus the preliminary outline looked like this:

Introduction (250—500 words) (Statement of thesis)

I.          Community of Rappites (700-900 words)
II.         New Harmony (700-900 words)

1. Brook Farm (700-900 words)
2. Oneida (700-900 words)

V.        The Icarian Movement (700—900 words)

Conclusion (250-500 words) (Evaluation of thesis)

Note that the Roman numerals stand for the broad head­ings under which the related paragraphs will later be grouped. Note also that as the total size of a report increases, the introduction, major ideas, and conclusion correspondingly increase. Compare this with the organization suggested above for a 1,000 word paper.

The breakdown of the topic now enables you to gather your notes into an appropriate number of bundles, in this case five. Again you have the opportunity to eliminate any that will not fit in. A good idea is to put a rubber band around each bundle so that none of the cards gets mis­laid.

Arrangement of Paragraphs Under Major Idea Headings

Your next step is to proceed with each major idea as if it were a composition unit in itself. You plan the actual para­graphs, and their number will depend, of course, upon the total words. For 1,000 words you would have possibly this arrangement:

Introduction (100 words)

}

 I. Major Idea (400 words)
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2 125-150 words each

Paragraph 3

}

II. Major Idea Paragraph 1 Paragraph 2
Paragraph 3 125-150 words each
Conclusion (100 words)

For 2,500 words, this:

Introduction (200 words)

}

I. Major Idea
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3 125-150 words each

Paragraph 4

Paragraph 5

II.         Major Idea

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

Paragraph 4

Paragraph 5

III.       Major Idea

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

Paragraph 4

Paragraph 5

125-150 words each

125-150 words each

Conclusion (200 words)

You understand, I'm sure, that such an arrangement must be flexible. You may vary the number of major ideas and the paragraphs related to them to suit your purpose and the size of your paper. Always bear in mind what was said be­fore; it is wiser to say much about a few things than to say little about a great many.

Since the writer of "The Search for Perfection" was plan­ning for a long paper, the introduction and conclusion were broken down into paragraphs, as well as the middle. The still tentative outline now looked like this:

introduction (250-500 words)

Thesis: ídea communities have invariably failed in this country because of weaknesses in human nature and the systems of government attempted.

A.        Meaning and Significance of Utopias
B.         Background of Utopias in America
C.        Preliminary Comments on Utopias

I. Community of Rappites (750-900 words)

A.        Origin

B.         Facts about the Leader

270      *          Sheftor's Guide to Better Compositions

C.        Adoption of Collective System

D.        Life in Harmony

E.         A Similar Group

F.         Decline and Downfall

II.         New Harmony Community (750-çoo words)

A.         Securing the Land

B.         The Leader

C.        Beginning of Non-religious Community

D.        Daily Life

E.         Constitution

F.         Decline

III.       Brook Farm (750-900 words)

A.         Origin

B.         Organization

C.        Daily Life

D.        The School

E.         Decline

IV.       Oneida (750-900 words)

A.         General Characteristics

B.         Leader and Religion

C.        Exodus from Putney

D.        Strange Beliefs and Practices

E.         Departure of Noyes

F.         Decline

V.         The Icarian Movement (750-900 words)

A.         "A Voyage to Icaria"

B.         Early Beginnings

C.        Various Settlements

D.        Community Prosperity

E.         Failure

Conclusion (250—500 words)

A.         Decline of Utopias in America

B.         Possible Causes Reviewed

C.        Likelihood in Contemporary America

D.        The Future of Utopias Here

Note that the Roman numerals stand for the major ideas and the capital letters represent the paragraphs.

Arrangement of Details Under Paragraph Headings

When you get to this point, you have reached the final stage of the outline: the insertion, in detail, of the material you will include within each paragraph. You sort your notes within the bundles in accordance with your outline of major ideas and paragraphs, and mark the cards again so that you will remember where to place particular quotations, facts, diagrams, etc.—and in what order you will want to place them. This time you should use a red or blue pencil so that the new markings will stand out.

In our sample below, based on the report we have been using as a model, we will not repeat the entire outline. At the end of this chapter, you will find another example of a completed outline. For the moment, we will take two ex­cerpts, showing the introduction and one of the middle major headings in detail. This should be enough to give you the idea of how the final breakdown is handled:

Introduction (250-500 words) (Statement of thesis)

A.         Meaning and Significance of Utopias

1. Search for a better world
2. Backward glances, over-ambitious plans
3. Reality vs. idealism

B.         Background of Utopias in America

1. Mainly first half of nineteenth century
2. Belief in innate goodness of man
3. Jacksonian influence
4. 1609—Jamestown

C.        Preliminary Comments on Utopias

1. Search for religious, intellectual freedom
2. Typical "joiners"
3. Record of failure

IV. Brook Farm (750-900 words) A. Origin

1. Transcendentalism
2. Famous persons connected with it

B.         Organization

1. Really an association
2. Shares of stock
3. Membership rules

C.        Daily Life

1. Community dining hall
2. Nursery group
3. Industries
4. Other activities

D.        The School

1. Education in all grades
2. One hour of manual labor
3. Teaching devices

E.         Decline

1. internal differences
2. Fourier
3. New plan
4. Austere rules
5. Departure of noted members

In your final version of the outline, as you can see, the Roman numerals stand for the major ideas, the capital letters for the paragraph headings, and the Arabic numbers for the details within the paragraphs. If you wanted to break it down even further, you would use the lower case letters— a, b, c, etc.—under the Arabic numbers.

VI. WRITING THE REPORT

As with any composition, you write a rough draft first. In the introduction, you try, of course, to create interest, suggest the contents covered by your outline, and suit the length to the total number of words to be written. As you noted in the outline sample above, you will surely need more than one paragraph for this purpose in the longer reports. Similarly, the ending should be flexible in length and do its job of re-emphasizing your point of view and your conclu­sions based upon your findings. In general, you follow the suggestions made previously for creating good opening and closing paragraphs, remembering that in these two parts of the report you have your best opportunities to display the originality of your thinking.

In the middle paragraphs, you simply convert the outline into a smoothly flowing development of the major and sub­ordinate ideas. As you write, you may want to leave out some parts of the outline, or additional ideas may occur to you that should be included. Don't hesitate to make altera­tions that you think are desirable, but adjust your outline later so that it corresponds with the text of your report. Take special pains to maintain good continuity within and between paragraphs. Make sure, when you go from one major idea to another, that the change is clear but not so abrupt as to be confusing. On the whole, try to give the impression that, although much of your information is based upon references, your handling of the subject matter is entirely the product of the way you have analyzed and directed the topic. Let me add one more statement here, without comment. "Plagiarize," according to the dictionary, is "to take and pass off as one's own [the ideas, writings, etc. of another]."

VII. FOOTNOTES

You should try not to refer directly to your sources more than two or three times on any one page. When you do have to identify something (a quotation, summary, idea, chart, diagram) as coming from one of the books or periodicals you read, you indicate it as a footnote. There are various ap­proved techniques for handling these entries. If your teacher wishes you to use a particular style, you will be told what it is in advance, I'm sure. But, should you fail to receive specific instructions, use the method that is simplified and being widely adopted nowadays:

§ Place each footnote at the bottom of the page where the reference was made.

§ Number the footnotes consecutively. On the first page for which you have to enter a footnote, start with 1. The next one, whether it appears on the same or a subsequent page, gets 2, and so on. If you use 25 footnotes in all, the last one will be numbered 25.

§ In the text, at the end of the reference, insert the num­ber that matches the footnote slightly above the last letter and punctuation of the last word.

§ In your footnotes, list the information about your sources as follows:

Book: Full name(s) of author(s), title (underlined), and page  number

Periodical: Author(s), if any, title of article (underlined), name of periodical, and page number Handle bulletins, pamphlets, and brochures in the same way. If it is a newspaper, add the column number to the page reference.

General references: Author(s), if any, title of article,name of reference work, volume and  page number.

It is assumed that in your bibliography you will give all the necessary information about your sources.

§ You needn't bother trying to remember the elaborate Latin reference signs formerly used with footnotes. If you have two footnotes from the same source on one page, in­dicate the second one by the simple "Ibid," which means "In the same as above." If your teacher permits it, mention only the last name of the author and the page number after you have used a reference at least once before. This assumes that your bibliography does not include two books by the same author or two different authors with the same last names.

§ Study the excerpts from a completed report at the end of this chapter for examples of how footnotes are entered in the text and at the bottom of the page.

VIII. CREATING LANGUAGE INTEREST

There is no reason why a research report has to make dull reading. Good continuity, avoidance of repetition, varied sentence structure, economical phrasing, and carefully chosen words are devices that are just as effective in a lengthy paper as in a short one. Be informative and scholarly, but be in­teresting, too. That's the only way to get maximum results and grades.

IX. REVISING YOUR PAPER

Here you follow the suggestions made in Chapter VII about polishing your written product before preparing the final draft. There are several additional things you should look for in a term paper or research report while you are in the revision stage. Double check your quotations to be sure they have been properly punctuated and have been recorded word for word (correctly spelled). Make certain that the footnotes appear at the bottom of the proper pages and that you have provided the required information about author, title, and page number. Go back over your outline and check it against your text to see that both agree. Get rid of any phrases or sentences that you may have unconsciously taken from your sources without marking them with footnotes. Finally, take a count of the total words used. If you think your report is a trifle short or considerably longer than ex­pected, talk it over with your teacher before you do anything drastic.

X. THE FINAL DRAFT

—Try to type the copy you will hand in.

—Use a folder inside of which you will insert your report. Your name and class are sufficient on the outside cover. In some classes, you may get extra credit for an illustra­tion that symbolizes your topic.

—On the first page list:

The title of the report (centered)

Your name, class, the name of your teacher, the school, and the date (lower right) (The exact order and position of these entries varies. Find out if there is a standard form for your class before using the recommendations above.)

—Attach your outline next so that it acts as a table of con­tents. Some students list the page numbers next to the major idea headings for further aid in locating points covered.

—Now put in the report itself. Skip about four spaces be­tween the text and the footnotes on each page. Some writers draw a line at the bottom of each page of text and insert the footnotes beneath it. Remember the con­secutive numbering and the simplified listing.

—Collect all your primary source cards for your bibliog­raphy, which is the listing of the references you have used. Arrange the cards alphabetically by the last names of the authors. If a reference has no author's names at­tached to it, use the title as your alphabetical entry. Now head a page "Bibliography," and copy the informa­tion from your cards. Take down everything except the call numbers and the identification symbols you added in the upper left and right hand corners. Spell carefully and punctuate properly.

—Number your pages, but not those containing the outline and the bibliography. When you have done this, you are ready to hand in your report.

To summarize some of the suggestions made throughout this chapter, herewith are excerpts from a 5,000 word report submitted by a student in a social studies class. We will study the introduction, several pages of middle paragraphs, and the conclusion. Observe how the outline serves as a table of contents; note carefully how the footnotes are entered; examine the arrangement and punctuation of the bibliography listings. And keep this in mind when you read the text. It is a documented piece of research, but it is a well-written composition, too!

The Development of Education in Colonial America

OUTLINE

Thesis Sentence: Education in colonial America, al­though irregular and struggling, pro­duced many of the guiding principles that still influence our schools today.

Introduction

A. Background

1. Obstacles
2. Struggle
3. Desire for education

B.  Determining Factors

1. Problems
2. Major influences

C. Suggested Study

1. Differences
2. Practices
3. Our debt

I. New England
A.        Massachusetts Bay

1. Boston Latin School
2. Dorchester
3. Ordinance of 1642
4. The laws of 1647
5. First tax-supported school

B.         Main Principles Established

1. Public education a duty
2. Community, not central, responsibility
3. Separation of elementary and secondary
   schools
4. Selectmen

C.        Other New England Colonies

1. Rhode Island
2. New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont
3. Connecticut

D.        Types of Schools

1. Dame
2. Latin Grammar
3. Academies, prep schools

E. General Features of Schools

1. Curriculum
2. Books
3. Teachers, discipline
4. Policies with girls

II. New Netherland
A.         Comparison with New England

1. Neither compulsory nor public
2. West India Company
3. Attitudes toward public education

B.         New Amsterdam

1. First public school
2. Poor teachers' pay, facilities
3. Latin School—1052
4. Dr. Curtis—1659

III.       Middle Colonies
A.         Pennsylvania

1. William Penn
2. Enoch Flower—1683
3. Problems of lack of unity
4. Society of 1754

B.         Delaware

1. Law of 1640
2. Contributions by Sweden
3. Later developments

C.        New Jersey

1. English efforts
2. Period after 1702

IV.       Southern Colonies
A.         Influence of England

1. Absence of Puritan, Dutch influence
2. Private schools favored
3. Orphan schools

B.         Maryland

1. Law of 1696—county schools
2. Similarity to Latin grammar schools
3. Low teacher salaries, poor facilities

C.        The Carolinas

1. Charleston grammar school
2. Laws of 1710 and 1712

V. The Colonial Colleges
A.         Harvard

1. Bequest of 1636
2. Admission requirements in 1643
3. Courses of study
4. Headmasters: Eaton, Dunster, Mather, Leverett

B.         Yale

1. Act of 1702
2. New Haven, Elihu Yale, 1718
3. Bishop Berkeley

C.        Other Colleges

1. Princeton
2. Rutgers
3. Pennsylvania

Conclusion

A.         Influence of Church

1. Religious leaders
2. Dual role of church

B.         Early Policies Still Prevalent

1. Community responsibility
2. Need for education

C.        Forecast

1. Present importance
2. Space age
3. Desire to learn

The excerpts that follow illustrate the complete introduc­tion (3 paragraphs), the development of the first major idea (New England·-4 paragraphs), and the complete conclusion (3 paragraphs).

The Development of Education in Colonial America

All Americans take great pride in recalling the persever­ance and courage of the early settlers of this country. To establish a foothold, the refugees from European religious and social persecution had to fight against a strange en­vironment, frequently hostile natives, and rather indif­ferent and grasping rulers overseas. We know how they struggled with crude tools to build, homes and houses of worship, bent their backs over the soil to make it yield crops, and kept their flintlocks oiled and ready for sud­den attacks. But some of us do not know that in the midst of their grim fight against man and nature these dedicated pioneers also found time to do something about the education of their young.

With loosely organized governments and public funds not readily available, the task of building schools was not an easy one. But somehow these valiant people managed to sow the seeds that grew into the handsome schools and well-trained teaching staffs that we know today. Many factors influenced the development of edu­cation at this time. Among the most important that determined the eventual pattern "were the compactness of community life, the aggressive singularity of Puri­tanism, a well educated leadership, many of whom were college graduates, the combination of church and state, and an alliance with commercial enterprise." 1

Although these influences existed among the colonies as a whole, they by no means produced the same kind of results everywhere. A study of the individual systems shows how greatly they differed from one section of the country to another. Despite these differences, certain practices emerged that are still in existence today. Cer­tainly it can be said that public education as we know it can be traced to colonial days, and, as we think about it, we realize how greatly we are indebted to the vision and courage of our forefathers
.
Our survey must start with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was the first to make its schools a public charge, it was strong and prosperous almost from the beginning and had settlers who saw the need for teach­ing the children. Moreover, they were eager to supply the means. In 1635, at a Boston town meeting, the people voted to hire a schoolmaster and thus founded the Bos­ton Latin School, which was largely supported by the wealthier citizens. However, a few years later a school was established at Dorchester maintained wholly by a public tax. This started the way for the development of other Latin schools, in the more prosperous townships, and in 1642 an ordinance of the colony made education compulsory.2 This law made it a must for parents to give an account of the instruction received by their children, If the officials felt that a child's education had been persistently neglected, they had the right to apprentice him to an occupation. The law would have been a very good thing if not for the fact that it required education but could not provide it.1 By 1647, the colony realized the need for more adequate education and made it obligatory upon every township of fifty householders to employ one person who was competent in the field of teaching reading and writing. Failure to do so meant a fine. In addition, every township of 100 families had to establish a college preparatory grammar school. This was the foundation for the first American tax-supported pub­lic school, and set a tradition that is followed today.

1              William Drake, The AmericanSchool in Transition, p.

2              Edwin E. Slosson, The American Spirit in Education, pp. 1-21

These ideas would have worked well were it not for the fact that some towns found it cheaper to pay a fine than support a schoolmaster. Another obstacle was the Indian raids, which made parents afraid to let their youngsters leave the house unprotected. Despite these problems and the fact that fees were sometimes charged in the schools and children were not compelled to attend if parents preferred to give them private instruction, some main principles were established. In fact, it is surprising to learn how many of our basic educational statutes can be traced to this colonial source. The first is that no community, regardless of how small it is, may evade the duty of supplying public instruction. The sec­ond is that it is the responsibility of the community, and not the central government, to provide education. The third is that elementary schools must be organized and handled separately from those on the secondary level. Finally, the idea of having a committee of selectmen run each school is directly comparable to our own local school boards, and the reason for their existence is the same. Parents want to have control over the education of their children.

Elsewhere in the New England area, all of the colonies except Rhode Island had made provision for education within a few years of the first settlement. Newport and Providence gave donations of land for schools, but before 1800 there was no general law authorizing the towns tomaintain schools. It may have been because there was no union here between church and state, and the govern­ment did not concern itself with sustaining an educated ministry. But in New Hampshire and Maine progress was as extensive and as rapid as in Massachusetts. Vermont, too, got started early and by 1777 it had passed a law putting upon the legislature the duty of establishing a school or schools in each town "for the convenient in­struction of youth." As for Connecticut, its record for schools was to be envied. Before 16$0, education was compulsory; in 1672, 600 acres of land were given to each city in the state to be used for erecting a grammar school. Generally speaking, New England was an excel­lent example of how the churches and the various gov­ernments worked together to encourage instructional programs.

3Ibid.., pp. 10-12

4 Harvey Wish, Society and Thought in Early America, p. 55

Among the types of schools developed in this active area were the Dame School, which taught its pupils to read and write, and the Latin Grammar School, which did not function too well because of frontier conditions. An idea of the quality of the instruction can be derived from a statement by Reverend John Barnard, of Marble-head, Massachusetts, who wrote: "By that time I had a little past my sixth year. I had left my reading school, in the latter part of which my mistress had made me a sort of teacher, appointing me to teach some children that were older than myself as well as smaller ones."" The grammar schools, which prospered most in Massa­chusetts because of then proximity to Harvard, were soon replaced by the private academy or prep school.

What went on inside these schools is worth mention­ing here. In the Latin schools, boys were given intensive training in the complexities of Latin grammar and were often made to speak the language in class. The curricu­lum of the common schools included reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Reading and spelling were taught from books containing the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer." The advanced children of the day used the New England Primer, which lasted until the end of the colonial period, or the American Primer Book. The former contained spelling words, short sentences for read­ing, and a series of theological couplets, such as this:

5              Alice Morse Earl, Child Life in Colonial Days, pp. 97-99

6              Stuart G. Noble, A History of American Education, pp. 25-29

"In Adam's fall We sinned all"1

As for the teachers, they enjoyed high social prestige, es­pecially if they had been imported from England. Their major requirement was to be sound in faith. Discipline in the ungraded classes was harsh. As a rule, the more conscientious the teacher, the worse time his pupils had. As the frontier was pushed farther west, it became incon­venient for children to go long distances to a single school, and so the custom grew of having the teacher come to the town. In 1789 a Massachusetts law made it a requirement for all teachers to have a college educa­tion. Before leaving this section, a word should be said about the policies toward girl students. They were hard­ly ever admitted to the grammar schools, but did re­ceive instruction in the Dame Schools, including training in sewing through the use of samples. An examination of the practices outlined above shows that there was not much uniformity, but unmistakable progress toward a regular school system was evident.

(Now that you have had the opportunity to study the intro­duction and some of the middle paragraphs, here are the ending paragraphs of this paper.)

Our analysis of the growth of educational policies and facilities in colonial America shows clearly that the need for providing instruction for the young was strongly stim­ulated by the religious leaders of the day. They knew how important it was to keep the flame of learning alive, and with it the spread of the faith. That's why they often stepped in, as was shown, when the community itself made no effort to organize classes. This was a fine example of how the churches fulfilled their purpose of serving God by ministering to the needs of man. Although our present system is founded on the principle of separation of church and state, made necessary I'm sure by the many different religions among us, we should not forget what we owe the brave men of the cloth who would not let their people forget that at times a book is as powerful as a gun.

7 Wish, p. 55

8 Slosson, p. 20

We must also pay tribute to the intelligence of the frontier planners of education because they recognized the worth of the philosophy of community responsibility for education. Many of the lawmakers came of the wealthier classes and could well have afforded private tutoring, but they saw in public schools the best means available to promote progress within their communities. This attitude has become so well accepted through the years that its merit is not even debatable. Our parents may complain about rising taxes, but they wouldn't dream of arguing against the necessity of providing pub­lic funds for schools. Even childless couples understand that they have a stake in the education of other people's children. They know how rapidly a state or a nation can deteriorate if the citizens do not keep pace with scien­tific and cultural progress, it is unquestionably true that this nation grew stronger and assumed its position of leadership in the world faster because its first settlers worried about schools almost as much as they did about food and shelter.

They left us a rich heritage. Proper education has be­come more important than ever to the growth of our country, in this space age, as the rocket race grows hot­ter and hotter among nations, the answer to the charges that we have been falling behind must be found in the schools. The demand in recent years that science courses be increased and standards generally raised is proof of the fact that only by turning out more and better-educated young men and women will we be able to catch up or forge ahead. Our problems may have occurred lately be­cause everything has been made too easy perhaps for us, with our beautiful buildings and well-equipped class­rooms. Our public schools still operate under the broad principles established hundreds of years ago, but we need a return of some of that colonial desire and courage. Then nobody would surpass us because the United States would have the best-trained minds in the world. We are not missing the means nor the facilities; we don't have to seek instruction in log cabins by barely literate school­masters. All we need now is the will to do it.

The Development of Colonial Education in America

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Butts, Freeman, and Cremin, Lawrence A., A History of  Education in American Culture, Henry Holt & Co., New York, l958

Can by, Henry Seidel, American Memoir, Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, 1947

Cubbedy, Ellwood P., The History of Education, Houghton Miffin Co., New York, 1948 , Public Education in the United States,

Houghton Muffin Co., New York, 1947

Drake, William, The American School in Transition, Prentice-Hall, inc., New York, 1955

Earl, Alice Morse, Child Life in Colonial Days, Macmillan Co., New York, 1957, Home Life in Colonial Days, Macmillan Co., New York, l954

Feininger, Andreas, "Citizen Ben Fianklin and His Be­ loved Philadelphia,"Life, Time, inc., New York, 1959

Langdon, William C, Everyday Things in American Life—1607-1776, Charles Scribnei's Sons, New York, 1937

Meyer, Adolphe E., An Educational History of the American People, McGraw Hill Book Co., NewYork, 1957

Noble, Stuart G., A History of American Education,

Rinehait & Co., New York, 1954

Slosson, Edwin E., The American Spirit in Educa­tion, YaleUniversityPress, New Haven, 1921

Wish, Harvey, Society and Thought in Early Amer­ica, Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1950

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...