As writers who honor and uphold the impressive works set forth by our predecessors, we need to raise our creative output to the standards set by great literature. Condemning the lesser products of the present while redirecting to the achievements of the past is not as strong an argument as producing and showcasing monuments of our own.
We need to think and operate as great artists, not as peevish pedants.
It’s really weird too, because I remember learning a LOT of liberal values from the classics I read in school. Plus I got to read beautiful sentences and increase my vocabulary. I mean you can learn that cancel culture is wrong from The Scarlet Letter and that the rich don’t give a crap about anyone else from The Great Gatsby. (I don’t know what you can learn from Catcher in the Rye. It sucks IMO.)
That idea that language arts should not be focused (decentered is such a crap word) on reading books and writing essays is absurd.
I am not a native English speaker. My grasp of the English language leaves a lot to be desired. In the last few years, 3 to 5, I have had to correct both spelling and grammar on many occasion. When I am the one correcting grammar and spelling of adult native speakers, the situation is dire.
Yes, of course, absolutely. But you have to see that Catcher in the Rye is part of the problem, not part of the solution. When Catcher in the Rye replaced David Copperfield, the rest was just one long slide downhill. And you have to see also that as long as literature is presented as being about ideas, then why this idea and not that? And why does it matter how sophisticated the language with which the idea is expressed, as long as the idea gets across?
The problem in the universities today is not that the students lack for ideas. Their heads are full to bursting with ideas. The problem is that they have such a deficit of experience that they can't tell a good idea from a bad one. The only available cure, since in real life, adventures have been replaced by vacations, is good books that are long on experience and wisely mute on ideas. A steady diet of such stories would make students wise enough to see through the ridiculous ideas they are being taught.
I can’t help but wonder if what you are noticing is not also impacting the quality of literature that is now being written. Not all great literature was popular at the time it was written, but a fair amount of it was. Looking at the current best sellers, what’s happening appears somewhat analogous to what has happened with movies during the past decade. So much that is being written seems to be formulaic, in that it’s written so as to include certain attitudes, characters, or narratives (and by certain kinds of preferred people) - how is this not lowering the probability that any great literature is presently being generated? Is this a time and place that we might not want to remember, and memorialize?
So undeniably true, Liza! Students absolutely are reading garbage! It's no wonder we have a literary crisis in this country when you have students reading garbage like Born a Crime and Between the World and Me and using Chat GPT and the NCTE is saying book learning should no longer be the focus of English education. The result of this is that you get students who don't know to read, write or spell and come to think that literature is all about fighting social injustices like racism, sexism, economic inequality, homophobia, ableism, etc. rather than the profound universal moral messages contained within them. Our students need to be reading great works of literature like Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Adeventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Monster, Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk, Crime and Punishment, The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, The Sound and the Fury, Moby Dick, Of Mice and Men, A Midsummer's Night Dream, 1984, Brave New World, The Count of Monte Cristo, and David Copperfield. Reading trash like Between the World and Me, White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist, Bad Feminist, Born a Crime, The Nickel Boys, The Hate U Give, and The Underground Railroad won't help them become good writers or better critical thinkers. All it does is poison their mind with toxic ideas that right at this very moment, are helping to destroy western society. Worse still, students are getting dumber, more close minded, less able to express themselves in a civil or adult way, and more and more illiterate and able to spell even the most basic of words properly. If we want to reverse the literary crisis in this country, we must re-focus English education on book learning and give our children and young people actual works of literature to read. I think it would also be a good idea to restrict the use of Chat GDP and flunk students who use it. Also, critical race theory, ethnic studies and gender ideology should be pulled from the curriculum at all public schools. It's very important that Generation Alpha and the generations that follow them know what real literature is and is not. Real literature is William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Henry Davis Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Theodor Geisel, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Rudyard Kipling, Zora Neale Hurston, G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Ian Fleming, Margret and H.A. Rey, Norman Birdwell, Marc Brown, and R.L. Stine. It is NOT Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander, Edward Said, Mychal Denzel Smith, Angie Thomas, Dr. Cornel West, and Karl Marx!
I'm as pro-fiction as the next person, and I wish more people read the classics. But at a time when our nation's leaders are trying to memory-hole slavery, deny climate change, shut down any sort of compassion for suffering Palestinians as antisemitism, and turn the military loose on our city streets, I find this writer's continual carping about how the left has ruined publishing and education to be facile, even comical. There are much greater threats to our kids than reading Trevor Noah's book—a book that might actually get them thinking about what's happening in their world.
“While updating our curricula beyond the canonical classics that have historically been taught may be necessary, media education need not displace the study of literature. A growing number of teachers value the opportunity to help students make connections between classic literature and contemporary media texts to advance multicultural understanding and address issues of equity. “
Well-said as always, Liza! Just read this on the heels of watching @Hilary Layne's YouTube video, “How Modern Schools Make Terrible Writers (Deliberately)” - a thoughtful analysis well worth the time of any fellow writers who’ve long been concerned about the connection between decreased literacy, critical thinking, and writing ability.
As writers who honor and uphold the impressive works set forth by our predecessors, we need to raise our creative output to the standards set by great literature. Condemning the lesser products of the present while redirecting to the achievements of the past is not as strong an argument as producing and showcasing monuments of our own.
We need to think and operate as great artists, not as peevish pedants.
For Exhibit A: https://wildsonnets.substack.com/notes
It’s really weird too, because I remember learning a LOT of liberal values from the classics I read in school. Plus I got to read beautiful sentences and increase my vocabulary. I mean you can learn that cancel culture is wrong from The Scarlet Letter and that the rich don’t give a crap about anyone else from The Great Gatsby. (I don’t know what you can learn from Catcher in the Rye. It sucks IMO.)
That idea that language arts should not be focused (decentered is such a crap word) on reading books and writing essays is absurd.
Beautifully written books will still blow students minds. Write Conscious is really good on this.
I am not a native English speaker. My grasp of the English language leaves a lot to be desired. In the last few years, 3 to 5, I have had to correct both spelling and grammar on many occasion. When I am the one correcting grammar and spelling of adult native speakers, the situation is dire.
Yes, of course, absolutely. But you have to see that Catcher in the Rye is part of the problem, not part of the solution. When Catcher in the Rye replaced David Copperfield, the rest was just one long slide downhill. And you have to see also that as long as literature is presented as being about ideas, then why this idea and not that? And why does it matter how sophisticated the language with which the idea is expressed, as long as the idea gets across?
The problem in the universities today is not that the students lack for ideas. Their heads are full to bursting with ideas. The problem is that they have such a deficit of experience that they can't tell a good idea from a bad one. The only available cure, since in real life, adventures have been replaced by vacations, is good books that are long on experience and wisely mute on ideas. A steady diet of such stories would make students wise enough to see through the ridiculous ideas they are being taught.
I can’t help but wonder if what you are noticing is not also impacting the quality of literature that is now being written. Not all great literature was popular at the time it was written, but a fair amount of it was. Looking at the current best sellers, what’s happening appears somewhat analogous to what has happened with movies during the past decade. So much that is being written seems to be formulaic, in that it’s written so as to include certain attitudes, characters, or narratives (and by certain kinds of preferred people) - how is this not lowering the probability that any great literature is presently being generated? Is this a time and place that we might not want to remember, and memorialize?
So undeniably true, Liza! Students absolutely are reading garbage! It's no wonder we have a literary crisis in this country when you have students reading garbage like Born a Crime and Between the World and Me and using Chat GPT and the NCTE is saying book learning should no longer be the focus of English education. The result of this is that you get students who don't know to read, write or spell and come to think that literature is all about fighting social injustices like racism, sexism, economic inequality, homophobia, ableism, etc. rather than the profound universal moral messages contained within them. Our students need to be reading great works of literature like Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Adeventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Monster, Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk, Crime and Punishment, The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, The Sound and the Fury, Moby Dick, Of Mice and Men, A Midsummer's Night Dream, 1984, Brave New World, The Count of Monte Cristo, and David Copperfield. Reading trash like Between the World and Me, White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist, Bad Feminist, Born a Crime, The Nickel Boys, The Hate U Give, and The Underground Railroad won't help them become good writers or better critical thinkers. All it does is poison their mind with toxic ideas that right at this very moment, are helping to destroy western society. Worse still, students are getting dumber, more close minded, less able to express themselves in a civil or adult way, and more and more illiterate and able to spell even the most basic of words properly. If we want to reverse the literary crisis in this country, we must re-focus English education on book learning and give our children and young people actual works of literature to read. I think it would also be a good idea to restrict the use of Chat GDP and flunk students who use it. Also, critical race theory, ethnic studies and gender ideology should be pulled from the curriculum at all public schools. It's very important that Generation Alpha and the generations that follow them know what real literature is and is not. Real literature is William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Henry Davis Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Theodor Geisel, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Rudyard Kipling, Zora Neale Hurston, G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Ian Fleming, Margret and H.A. Rey, Norman Birdwell, Marc Brown, and R.L. Stine. It is NOT Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander, Edward Said, Mychal Denzel Smith, Angie Thomas, Dr. Cornel West, and Karl Marx!
I'm as pro-fiction as the next person, and I wish more people read the classics. But at a time when our nation's leaders are trying to memory-hole slavery, deny climate change, shut down any sort of compassion for suffering Palestinians as antisemitism, and turn the military loose on our city streets, I find this writer's continual carping about how the left has ruined publishing and education to be facile, even comical. There are much greater threats to our kids than reading Trevor Noah's book—a book that might actually get them thinking about what's happening in their world.
Coates is many things—quasi illegible is not one of them
Your source seems to agree with you:
“While updating our curricula beyond the canonical classics that have historically been taught may be necessary, media education need not displace the study of literature. A growing number of teachers value the opportunity to help students make connections between classic literature and contemporary media texts to advance multicultural understanding and address issues of equity. “
Well-said as always, Liza! Just read this on the heels of watching @Hilary Layne's YouTube video, “How Modern Schools Make Terrible Writers (Deliberately)” - a thoughtful analysis well worth the time of any fellow writers who’ve long been concerned about the connection between decreased literacy, critical thinking, and writing ability.
References here: https://www.hilarylayne.com/p/very-carefully-educated-to-be-idiots