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Zitkala-Sa, a 19th century Native American woman who won second place in an 1896 Midwestern oratorical contest, resembles many students who daily cross borders--geographical, economic, linguistic, and cultural--balancing on a tightrope of assured losses and uncertain gains. Known as Gertrude Simmons before and Gertrude Bonnin after her marriage, she was a well-known advocate of her people during the first four decades of the 20th century. To make sense of her feelings of alienation, Zitkala-Sa (Sioux for Red Bird) turned to the characters of her beloved tribal stories, in particular to Iktomi, the Sioux spider man, trickster, and wanderer whose metaphor she chose to anchor herself. After receiving a diploma from White's Manual Labor School in Wabash, Indiana, she disregarded her mother's instructions to return to the reservation and entered Earlham College, a Quaker School in Richmond, Indiana. "Side by Side," her second-place-winning oration, confronts her White audience with the "Indian problem" as viewed by an Indian. Her speech is a tour de force of rhetoric that balances "controlled rage" against White atrocities with the desire to convince America of the Indian's humanity. One moment of transformation in her life was in choosing her name for herself, a name which proclaims her independence and her cultural ties. Zitkala-Sa demonstrated the same mixture of self-reliance and connectedness in a second moment of resolution--a dream vision that demonstrates to her the need for her to spend her energies in work for the cause of Indian reform. (Contains 19 references.) (RS)

Literary societies, while dying or already defunct in Eastern U.S. schools, still played significant roles in 19th-century frontier colleges like Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, and it is the thesis of the paper that a systematic investigation of the document left by these societies, although largely neglected by historians, will have important implications for the understanding of 19th century rhetoric and composition instruction. Involving most of the students at any one college, the societies (of which the first is usually thought to be the Spy Club at Harvard, founded in 1719) usually met once a week for the purpose of orations, declamations, essays, debates, parliamentary practice, and the edition of a student paper. At Butler, belonging to a literary society was an integral part of being a student. Three typical society activities--literary exercises, the critic's report, and the literary paper--demonstrate that societies complemented regular rhetorical education and offered students the opportunity of individual growth, peer support, and training for public life. The progress 19th-century women made toward equality in higher education can often be measured by their involvement in literary societies. At Butler, unlike other universities at the time, women were able to speak in class, read their own essays, and perform on a public platform. However, no opportunity to practice for public occasions existed until the women formed their own literary society. Generally said to have been in decline, nineteenth-century rhetoric emerges from a study of literary societies as central to education and society. (RS)

While concerns over literacy are common in contemporary times, similar concerns have been raised in other historical periods. Despite earlier predictions of American mastery of English, the Harvard Reports of the 1890s reflected anxiety over literacy among freshman college students from even "the best families in point of culture and breeding, and from the best schools." In addressing who was responsible for the problem, language critics and educators of the era engaged not so much in soul searching as in blame shifting. Preparatory schools took the brunt of the attacks. The students themselves were criticized for spending too much time in the lower levels of education. Other targets included "the home, the very cheap newspaper, the street" and even advertising, which was labeled an "acknowledged evil" and a "perversion of talent." The colleges themselves and their entrance examinations were attacked by critics. It is hoped that present-day calls for educational reform will seek out effective solutions and not just a revival of educational methods that do not work. (Fifty-eight references are attached.) (SG)