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A recent theme I've seen in right wing media is to complain about colleges and the "diversity agenda" and moan about the "loss" of the Western Canon. That seems to be where this comes from.
I don't get it. In the intro classes there is a push to be more inclusive. If you're going to include more diversity in a 16 week course, you've only got so much time, so yeah, something will get cut. However, it's not like the study of Chaucer, Virgil, Homer, or Milton has ended. You just have to specifically sign up for those classes vs. the past when that's all you would get.
In fact I just looked up Yale's English department and there are two other departments that focus on the Western Canon to a high degre - Humanities and Classics, and English links to them and recommends some of those classes for their majors as electives. So the issue here seems to be Reason magazine not understanding how Yale works.
Last edited by redguard57; 06-10-2016 at 02:27 PM..
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 :-)
But at Yale you can take this:
Quote:
HUMS 152a, Poetic Influence from Shakespeare to Keats Harold Bloom The complexities of poetic influence in the traditions of the English language, from Shakespeare to Keats. HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
Some of the best English literature I've read was written by women, but because of extreme sexism in the past, most of their literary works will be from the 1800s forward as mentioned above. There are many English, literary works written by non-white people; but, again, most of them were written more recently. I think there is a disconnect between the title of "English" and what's actually offered by English departments. English departments usually house all literature courses, even the ones that cover non-English literature. And, some of the required readings in English courses were not originally written in English. With all of that taken into account, it no longer sounds ridiculous that English students at Yale want more diversity in their courses because English programs are more general literature programs.
This. The students seem to misunderstand the purpose of the course, which is to teach the historical canon of England, not literature(any literature) that's published in the English language. Some of the confusion might be eliminated if everyone stopped calling literature courses, including HS courses, "English" class, since a lot of HS "English" teachers don't teach language (i.e. grammar, good writing) anyway, and called those courses what they are: literature. And courses about British literature could be called that, or at least, the course catalog and course descriptions could explain (which they may already do--you'd think) that those are courses about England's historical canon.
Why are English Departments so labelled, anyway, as if they're teaching the English language, vs. Russian, French or Asian Languages? It doesn't make much sense.
Gee, I wonder why the early English literature canon is so dominated by white males? How do you "decolonize" English literature by eliminating the major English writers who have shaped it? Did the English colonize their own culture?
The academic left has a lot to answer for.
I don't even know what to say about this sort of thing any more. I'm just dumbfounded.
Who gives a **** what color the authors are? Why does everything have to be about race!?
It's like a fight between a mouse and an elephant. I'm rooting for the mouse.
There is nothing you can do about certain personality types being attracted to a certain ideology. Some fields attract more liberals than others. Some fields attract more conservatives than others. There is the tendency for people to become more conservative as they get older. There is also the tendency for people to become more liberal as they become more educated, and that is independent of any kind of "agenda" a school is pushing.
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.
There's nothing wrong with admitting a diverse pool of students. The problem in this case seems to be that the "diverse" students opting to major in "English" aren't aware that it's a major all about the literary traditions of England. Their bad.
This. The students seem to misunderstand the purpose of the course, which is to teach the historical canon of England, not literature(any literature) that's published in the English language. Some of the confusion might be eliminated if everyone stopped calling literature courses, including HS courses, "English" class, since a lot of HS "English" teachers don't teach language (i.e. grammar, good writing) anyway, and called those courses what they are: literature. And courses about British literature could be called that, or at least, the course catalog and course descriptions could explain (which they may already do--you'd think) that those are courses about England's historical canon.
Why are English Departments so labelled, anyway, as if they're teaching the English language, vs. Russian, French or Asian Languages? It doesn't make much sense.
The English department where I got my degree was called English Language and Literature. Couldn't be clearer. American literature was taught in that department.
And, no, I don't call French or Japanese literature classes "English." :-)
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