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That's what happens when your admissions department gives preference to students based on "diversity" at expense of education, grades, and common sense.
It's like the white students taking a class in Chinese literature and complaining that it doesn't cover enough European authors.
Sooner or later, either the Ivy League schools would find their lost ways, or their reputation will start slipping.
I just question how many students, and especially how many English majors, signed the petition at all. Somehow Reason magazine left that out -- or didn't bother to ask. Which says to me that they have an agenda beyond just neutral reporting.
My suspicion is that VERY few Yalies are dumb enough not to know that a major university like the one they attend offers dozens of opportunities to study a whole range of authors (black poets, women poets, Latin American poets, gay poets, etc., etc.). I also doubt that few if any English majors are dumb enough to seriously believe that they can major in English without reading the "dead white guys" that are in the canon.
Without knowing how widely accepted and signed that petition was, it appears to me that Reason is simply pushing a right-wing, backward-looking, culturally conservative agenda, with no regard for the facts. If five hundred Yalies signed that petition, they might have a point. But I'd be surprised if fifty did. And I'd be doubly surprised if there were ten English majors among them.
EDIT: Oh I see now in the Guardian piece that 160 students signed this. Doesn't say how many were English majors. But one is quoted as saying " It is possible to graduate with a degree in English language and literature by exclusively reading the works of (mostly wealthy) white men. " Yes, that probably is possible. But only if a students want it that way. It's not very likely at all. And I think most kids there know that.
Last edited by citylove101; 06-06-2016 at 07:48 PM..
Not sure why you would take classes in subjects that would bore you to hell. If your concentration was something other than pre-1800 British lit, it's not like you'd have to take a bunch of courses in that time frame. I think I got through my English degree with two: Chaucer and a survey course of British Lit pre 1750 or so.
English major, here. I didn't attend Yale and can't speak to their program, but I'm assuming that every single English major there has the opportunity to take literature coursework encompassing a range of authors of varying ethnicities, cultural perspectives, genders, etc. from across a range of eras, and don't think I'm going out on a limb in doing so. The only "dead white guy" English classes I took were Brit Lit I survey and a capstone seminar on F. Scott Fitzgerald. I find the implication that a token group of Yalies don't have the option of being exposed to a diverse array literature to be fairly dubious, frankly.
English major, here. I didn't attend Yale and can't speak to their program, but I'm assuming that every single English major there has the opportunity to take literature coursework encompassing a range of authors of varying ethnicities, cultural perspectives, genders, etc. from across a range of eras, and don't think I'm going out on a limb in doing so. The only "dead white guy" English classes I took were Brit Lit I survey and a capstone seminar on F. Scott Fitzgerald. I find the implication that a token group of Yalies don't have the option of being exposed to a diverse array literature to be fairly dubious, frankly.
It may depend on the curriculum and offerings. While I was in school a while back and didn't go to Yale, our English curriculum required 3 Brit Lit survey courses that required you to do that awful Norton Anthology. If you didn't want to do the anthology, you had to do 2 courses in lieu. I think that was changed to 2 survey courses by the time I graduated. If you were an English major, your choices were books written in English.
Comp lit was in its own school and had completely different requirements, including a minor in a foreign language. There were certainly no shortage of offerings there, but not everyone wanted to do the foreign language minor or felt that their foreign language proficiency matched their interest in literature.
One of the best courses I had was World Lit. You can only read Keats so many times.
Well, sure. But how many young people never read Keats at all? Ask your kids, age 18 to 30, if you have them, what the foster-child of silence and slow time is. Let me know what you find out :-)
Yale and the entire Ivy League have become bastions of Leftist stupidity. Thankfully, sane people like myself have many options where I'll be able to get a Classical education. Hillsdale, Patrick Henry, and New St. Andrews. All excellent schools.
Yale and the entire Ivy League have become bastions of Leftist stupidity. Thankfully, sane people like myself have many options where I'll be able to get a Classical education. Hillsdale, Patrick Henry, and New St. Andrews. All excellent schools.
I don't see the difference between a school that pushes a liberal agenda and one that pushes a conservative agenda.
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