"They must know about characters, the pattern of a story, they are otherwise unfit for conversation, positions in running organizations, knowing how to behave. They do not have to know how to read books and do all of the normal things that adults do in society but if they don’t they will be losers."
They need to know how to read and write well. And studying literature in high school is worthwhile.
But, the article is talking about college, and I was referring to college majors when I wrote: "I don’t think ‘literature’ should be a required course for all majors."
All STEM majors should be required to take courses in technical writing, for example. But, why should they be required to read and analyze literature in college?
“All STEM majors should be required to take courses in technical writing, for example. But, why should they be required to read and analyze literature in college?”
Good question.
To be educated. Part of our job or role as citizens is to educate the young. That means at least in our own way supporting parents in their endeavor. The IRS does a lot of that for us
Still and especially then we have a say
Our country will thrive in the future with educated kids
In college, as the article points out, kids are saying they can’t read. That’s the topic. They learn to read a lot sooner than that. The job of grammar school teachers is teaching them to read
An educated person needs to know literature.
My father and my husband. Naval academy and West Point (our military academies are considered the best educations at the moment by many) knew greek, Greek and Roman mythology, Latin, a foreign language ( speaking, reading, writing, listening). Why do military academies teach this. One was a champion boxer the other a starting football player check the star photos in the lucky bag of a particular year. Both were engineers. Their sports prowesses were stellar but they each earned engineering degrees and theycould recite lines of literature to make a point.
Why?
In high school inthe forties people knew how to write a paper they all knew how to write a cohesive 5 paragraph essay in no time. How to write a research paper. George Eliot, Blake, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Robert Louis, Taming of the Shrew
Why did they know all this? In the same Lucky Bag (USNA yearbook) there are photos of astronauts.Jim Lovell is in there right in my living room. Why would the Apollo 13 Chief need to know literature
Most people don’t realize what they learn from literature. All classic stories have time signatures. So do good/intelligent movies. Maybe the producers don’t know why but they do. My father would ask, who wants to go to the flicks? I want to see Dirty Harry. “Personnel is for A holes”. My father would at, ‘oh, that guy’s gonna do this then watch what happens, that guys going to do that’. Game theory. He used it in running the sales department at a Fortune 500 co at age 45. Senior VP ground floor semiconductors in the early 80s
These people thrived on knowing what people are going to do next. That’s literature. Fiction, classic fiction, is the study of human nature. Most of those characters are either real characters or composites of real people. Caricatures of people and how they behave morally and immorally. And the consequences of their choices
Watch any good 2 h movie. 10 minutes in what happens. 25 minutes in. 50-60 minutes When does it wrap up
Like a symphony
Same as classic literature
Then look at classic characters. If you say we’re gonna need a bigger boat what do you mean.
If you say we’re not in Kansas any more
Look at Tom Sawyer and the way he gets out of painting the fence. Or “it’s alive!” Or even “we seek the Grail”
When my Aunt who put three kids through good schools visited with her niece having a party with swanky New York multi millionaires, of whom she came from, she told me she was dismayed that the men knew nothing about making conversation about anything but their jobs.
That doesn’t build a culture. A society of Americans full of ideas and philosophies about where we’re going, the world we’re putting together for our kids’ futures. It’s about money now for me
Anyone can go to college and get out with a trade. All kids should get out of college with a skill. Intense language studies,Coding, engineering no matter what else they study
But without literature, Greek myth, American lit (and its requisite American history lessons), Brit lit its trade school. Which is fine and necessary. But not a complete education.