Higher education fails in preparing students for life as a result of unclearly defined educational objectives and the lack of a coherent philosophy. The first step toward a coherent philosophy of education is to require that anyone who graduates from college be able to communicate to the world clearly, precisely, and forcefully. The responsibility for effecting this objective falls on the shoulders of those educators in composition and communication. Currently, students express themselves in terms of what the teacher expects them to say or in terms of the fashionable orthodoxy acquired through the mass media. Instead, teachers should ask students to write about those things which they have never heard discussed and for which there are no preprogrammed expressions. For example, teachers might assign interpretations of what John Donne said about religion or introduce students to the ideas of George Herbert. (RB)