May 3, 2007
PARALLEL UNIVERSE: ‘ Alas, Poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio’: The Incredibly Shrinking Shakespeare on College Campuses
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
Hinton, WV (HNN) -- An English major not required to take a course in Shakespeare? “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
According to a story in my old newspaper in Milwaukee (at least half of it – I worked for the Sentinel from 1967 to 1976), the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, only 15 of the 70 colleges surveyed for a report titled “The Vanishing Shakespeare” require their English majors to take a Shakespeare course.
Here’s a link to the April 22, 2007 – timed to appear on or close to the birthday of The Bard in 1564 (He was baptized on April 26, 1564) -- J-S story:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=594569
The 60-page report by the nonprofit American Council of Trustees and Alumni says that only three schools in the Big Ten require a Shakespeare course, with the University of Wisconsin-Madison one of them. UW-Madison has always had a strong English department, so I’m not surprised. In Milwaukee, Marquette University also requires English majors to study the Bard.
I majored in English at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb (Class of 1961) and a one-semester course in Shakespeare was required. Also required was a course in English grammar. I wonder how many English majors are required to take a grammar course these days?
The J-S reporter, Mark Johnson, goes to the heart of the matter much as I did when I reviewed Elizabeth Kantor’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature” (Regnery) last winter:
“The debate over Shakespeare goes to the heart of a much larger struggle for identity and mission at colleges and universities,” Johnson says in his excellent story (maybe he was an English major!).
“On one side are those who believe that institutions have so fully embraced pop culture, diversity and social/political issues of every flavor that they are watering down what's truly important and failing to stress the classics. On the other side stand those who believe universities must broaden their offerings to remain relevant, and that such efforts pose no threat to the Big Three: Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton.”
I’m happy to report that Marshall University requires English majors to take a course Shakespeare, arguably the greatest writer in our language.
Like so many things these days, it’s the struggle between liberals (or Progressives as they like to style themselves) and conservatives. Conservatives like Kantor are for preserving the canon, including the Big Three of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare. Liberals are for courses like cross-gender poetry in Costa Rica (I made that up, but you can guess which side I’m on).
“Our university English departments are no longer acting as trustees of our cultural heritage,” says Kantor. “Culture is not genetic; it’s learned. There was a time not very long ago when Americans didn’t consider themselves educated if they didn’t know Shakespeare’s plays. If our colleges quit teaching Shakespeare, are they still turning our educated Americans and citizens of the West?”
Amen, Dr. Kantor!
As part of my December 2006 review of her book (check the archives for a look at it) I contacted Kantor and asked typically penetrating English major/reporter questions.
Here’s an excerpt from my review:
Kantor says that, Instead of teaching Milton, Pope, Shakespeare, Dryden, Marlowe, Beowulf, Wordsworth, etc., today’s English professors teach the literature of pornography; how females are oppressed by “patriarchal” males; Jewish writers in Latin America, films made from literary works and other peripheral subjects that are more “politically correct” than reading the works of Dead White Males. What a loss!
That’s another reason Kantor, who earned her doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (she also has a master’s in philosophy from Catholic University in Washington, DC) , wrote this latest Politically Incorrect Guide (I’ve reviewed a number of them): To demonstrate how far the colleges and universities have declined. I’m glad it’s not just a pre-Boomer like me complaining. I saw Kantor on Fox & Friends Sunday and she’s relatively young. In her book, she singles out UNC professor emeritus – and distinguished Wordsworth scholar — Mark L. Reed for teaching English to her and other students as it should be taught.
She confirms my suspicion – strengthened by reading David Horowitz’s “The Professors” (also reviewed earlier this year on this site) that there’s something horribly wrong with the nation’s colleges and universities, where indoctrination has all too often replaced education. Her description of Reed’s methods (see page 217 ff) remind me of my professors. “Reed’s Rule,” as Kantor calls it, is vital to the proper study of literature.
After seeing Kantor on “Fox & Friends,” where she said that an entering freshman English major is often smarter and a better writer than a graduating senior at many universities, I contacted her and asked why she wrote the comprehensive and insightful book and are there any colleges or universities left that still follow the old practices. Here is her response:
“That’s why I wrote The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature — so people who wanted help learning the great literature in English could start teaching themselves.
“I’ve heard really good things from several students in the Catholic U. English department in Washington, D.C. There’s Hillsdale College, [Hillsdale, Mich.] of course.
“And certainly, anyone who wants to study English in college would be well advised to take a look at university English department course descriptions—they’re mostly available online now.
“The problem, though, is that most students can’t afford to pick the college they go to strictly on the basis of whether it has an English department in which the chief subject of study is the great literature itself, rather than a mish-mash of various kinds of “literary theory”—ranging from radical feminism to Marx and back around to “gender studies” and “queer theory”—or else not-so-great works, including even comic books and The Da Vinci Code. Students have to consider location, price, and where they can get a degree that might help make them employable.
“English literature used to be something students, whatever subject they were majoring in, were getting at least a decent dose of in college. You could trust that almost anywhere you studied as an undergraduate, you’d stand a chance of being introduced to Chaucer or Shakespeare or Milton. Now, you can trust that pretty much wherever you study as an undergraduate, you’ll be introduced to the various strains of postmodernism: through “postcolonial” literature, or feminist readings of Shakespeare, or Marxist literary theory. And while Shakespeare’s poetry is the kind of thing all college students can benefit from, I don’t think the same is true of the content of the typical “English” education going on at American college campuses today.”
So, congratulations, Madison, Marquette and Marshall. There must be something about the “M” schools that sets them apart!
