Lone Wolf or Leader of the Pack?: Rethinking the Grand Narrative of Fred Newton Scott

Aside from his accomplishments, which speak volumes about him, Scott indeed meets the requirements for a hero set forth by historians. The very term great man theory is ascribed to Thomas Carlyle. In his 1841 work, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, Carlyle classified six types of heroes, including the divinity, the prophet, the poet, the priest, the man of letters, and the king (10). Scott meets Carlyle’s definition of the hero as a man of letters—an “unexpected” hero who gathers students around him and imparts his wisdom (152). When he cannot gather students to him, he instead travels to them (159). Ultimately, the qualifications that Carlyle lists as common to the hero as a man of letters include “wit, wild laughter, energy, directness, [and] sincerity” (178). He also includes strong beliefs and healthy skepticism. (249-250).

I would like to argue, however, that while he was a great teacher, he also was very much of his time—part of the larger, organic movement in education, a networked group of teachers and scholars with shared goals and teaching practices. Many other teachers and scholars, some of whom worked closely with Scott, were just as progressive and lauded as he was. To fail to remember them is to continue, as Griffin says, to keep an entire history in the dark.
Acknowledging this larger tradition will also allow us to reposition composition and rhetoric as a field during the Progressive Era—a field with key figures who knew one another, working around the country, doing scholarship, administration, and teach- ing. (251)

Berlin also makes it seem as if Scott’s ideas were original, and not shared by others. (254)

While Mencken’s and Roethke’s assessments of Scott are not ones with which most scholars (and most of Scott’s former students!) would agree, they are wholly missing from any descriptions of Scott by other composition and rhetoric scholars. A balanced history of Scott should include his detractors as well as his supporters. (256)

The history that we tell about Scott (and other key figures in the field) needs to be complicated—radicalized rather than essentialized. While we cannot simply add in other figures and attempt to stir, we must envision what our history would look like if we not only added, but used and privileged other stories that we know to exist. What would this history look like if we added the negative as well as the positive? Avoided blanket statements and overviews in favor of specifics? Questioned the histories that we do have, not to knock them down, but to complicate them? Ultimately, we must recontextualize our history so that we can place other players where they belong—squarely within the box with Scott. We must create a lineage for composition history that is circular rather than linear, creating a three-dimensional collage rather than a flat picture. (256)

However, what struck me most as I reviewed documents concerning Buck and Scott was the evidence that Buck, who is often listed as Scott’s “most famous graduate student,” likely influenced Scott as much as Scott influenced her. A direct argument can be made for their being closer as peers than as teacher and student. (261)

So, what about the relationship between Murray and Graves?

What would a history look like if it put Scott in conversation with the people he knew, rather than putting him on a pedestal above them? What would a fuller exploration of scholar/ pedagogues in the history of composition and rhetoric, as well as the networks they belonged to, reveal? (263-64)

We must change our lore—Scott’s work must be better contextualized in relation with others, and the histories that we currently have must be rewritten in order to give us access to a fuller, richer history than we previously thought existed. We must be careful to understand the complexity of our own history, and our reflections about important figures in the field need to reflect this care. We should not ignore or dismiss nega- tive commentary, but seek to understand its value and place in our history. Blanket statements about scholars and pedagogues being the “only” people to do something, or the “only” models to look to, should be carefully evaluated rather than taken at face value. We must be more careful researchers and better historians in order to create accurate and reflective models of our history. (264)