Yale Students Tell English Profs to Stop Teaching English: Too Many White Male Poets

Reason ^ | June 1, 2016 | Robby Soave

[C19fan]

Some Yale University students are demanding changes to the English Department curriculum: specifically, they don't think it should feature so many English poets who were straight, white, wealthy, and male.

"It is your responsibility as educators to listen to student voices," the students wrote in a petition to the faculty. "We have spoken. We are speaking. Pay attention."

[Bigg Red]

When I was a college student in the 1960s, hearing that a person had attended Yale would have left me impressed with that person's intellectual abilities. These days, since it seems that any moron can be admitted to Yale -- or to any of the ivy-league schools -- I am not impressed at all about one's acceptance to Yale et alia.

[golux]

English is racist.

I teach my children to beat their chest and stop their feet when they are hungry,fearful, or when their territory is threatened.

[mom.mom]

Yale English majors object to studying English writers because they are white and wealthy? The fact that they are they are really great writers isn’t a factor.

So, the attainment of knowledge is to be based on its subjective racial test, not it’s excellence or historical impact.

[dfwgator]

Just use some Nipsey Russell poems, problem solved.

[Vaduz]

Educators listen to student voices = Dumbing Down

[LambSlave]

Well, I guess none of these idiots have taken math, physics or chemistry classes yet then.

[Borges]

The Sonnets are mediocre?

[ganeemead]

If you want to read good poetry your best shot is to learn some language that has it.

[Borges]

Is that your mantra? The English poetic tradition is massive and renown. If you’re claiming the Shakespeare sonnets, Paradise Lost, Donne, Keats are not good poets you’re full of beans.

[Borges]

PL obviously is a poem and not a poet.

[ganeemead]

There is no real grammar in English (English generally uses word order and prepositions in lieu of grammar) and hence no large body of words which rhyme in any natural sort of way. The limits wrt word order make trying to write poetry in English sort of like trying to play tennis in a straight jacket.

Other than that, Shakespeare was the world's greatest dramatist but a mediocre poet by any normal standards.

"Born aloft on ebon wings,
a raucous note, his song he sings
Caw Caw, Caw Caw!", a cry of fear
unpleasant to the farmer's ear..."

You call that poetry??

[Borges]

By the standards of just about the entire civilized world he’s one of the world’s great poets as well. The plays themselves are filled with verse. I don’t know where that verse you quoted came from.