Literacy and Literature

ions. But we neglected to teach them to read and write. Training in grammatical nomenclatures and rhetorical abstractions has slight relation to the function of the English department or to the broader functions of the college or university as a whole. It is not particularly important that educated persons be able to define predicate nominatives or to distinguish between descriptive exposition and expository This content downloaded from 157.55.39.127 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 05:15:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms LITERACY AND LITERATURE I 7 description-if, indeed, such a distinction can be made. Our fundamental problem is not linguistic analysis or stylistic adornment. It is the ability to read with comprehension and write with clarity which is fundamental to educational progress. Reading and writing both demand clear thinking. When we train students to read and write with accuracy and clarity, we shall be laying a foundation of accurate and clear thinking which will prepare them not only for the study of literature but for all courses and all activities in which reading and writing and thinking may be used. But the English department should be more than a service department, even though that service be indispensable to the institution. Every good English department is the great civilizing department of its school. We recognize that the decline of the humanities in modern education is in part the result of our neglect to teach students to read. This neglect extended beyond the freshman level. Students who could not read when they came to college, too often were unable to read after a year of drill in grammar and rhetoric. Still semi-literate, they were required to take a course which surveyed the literature of England. Well-meaning teachers carried into the sophomore survey the historical and methods which they had learned as candidates for the Ph.D. The historical approach to literature supplanted all other approaches. Worse than that, the historical approach began to supplant the literature. Then, almost imperceptibly, we were not teaching literature from the historical approach; we were teaching the historical approach. We never got to the literature. The ground was all background. We shall probably be more successful in our attempt to civilize and educate our students when we discard a good part of the apparatus of historicity and scientism and teach literature as a living art. Perhaps we should encourage less memorizing of the facts about historical backgrounds and more independent and critical thinking about literary values. Advanced courses in the English department, as in other literatures, should demand the prerequisites of reading ability, critical thinking, and some rudiments of taste or aesthetic perception, rather than knowledge of the facts of literary history in England. On the sophomore level, as on the freshman, courses which develop these abilities are of far greater value not only to the English department but to the broader aspects of humane education than courses which require the memorizing of even large lists of names, dates, and titles, or the reproduction of even good critical opinions at second hand. FOR some time there has been a movement away from the narrowly restricted teaching of literary history toward the broader view of literature as an interpretation of life, as a medium for analysis of character, critical examination of society, determination of immediate and ultimate values. We are seeking to find in literature, and through literature to interpret to our students, the wisdom of the past, the problems of the present, the hope for the future. Teachers of literature generally are becoming increasingly aware of This content downloaded from 157.55.39.127 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 05:15:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION the place of literature in relation to the rest of the curriculum. Thinking in this direction is moving away from the scientific study of literature toward the critical evaluation of literature as one of the arts. Pedestrian research in the field of literary scholarship, dominant especially in the field of American scholarship during the past few decades, was based upon analogy with research, receiving its greatest impetus through the Johns Hopkins importation of the Germanic methods of research. This system of compilation of factual minutiae, valuable as it may be in the sciences, and much as it has contributed to our factual knowledge about literature, has been detrimental in many ways in the field of the arts. It has manifested itself particularly in the cult of Ph.D.ism, in narrow specialization, in fact-grubbing. This has often led to the placing of too great emphasis upon knowledge of facts about literature, and too little emphasis upon critical evaluation and creative expression. It is being generally felt that training in the field of the arts should complement, not copy, training in the field of the sciences. We are realizing that only a tiny fraction of the great number of students we teach will become research scholars in the field of literary history; we are modifying our objectives and our methods to meet more adequately the needs of all our

CLARITY · Curriculum · Linguistics · Literacy · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Reading (process · Reading comprehension · Rhetorical question · Literacy, Media, and Education · Philosophy · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis