Now that the NY Times has dropped its "Times Select," we can get articles like Rachel Donadio's on the Canon Wars for free. Which is a good thing.
Donadio's article is a fairly safe account of the various reassessments humanities people have been giving as of late. It is of particular interest to see the lists of big shots in academia she cites who are saying that maybe teaching literature is a good thing.
The problem is that the canon wars themselves were ridiculously ill-advised to begin with. And the fall-out has had a terrible effect on the humanities as a whole. Instead of recognizing, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, that "the humanities" are "essential ingredients of democracy," politicians, parents, and even professors themselves have cowed to the claims and promises of fast-capitalism and scientific expansionism. Here is the fact of the matter: English classes will probably not make you more money. Art history definitely won't. Nor will such classes cure cancer. But that isn't the criteria by which they should be evaluated.
The canon wars, as well, were fought over the wrong criteria. And continual reassessment of what was gained or lost often falls back into the same debate, using the same terms. We must get out of that.
So what is the right criteria? I would put it simply this way: the definition of literacy is not whether or not someone has read Hamlet, but whether they have the ability to read a text like Hamlet well. Education is not about stuffing one's head with information--it is about cultivating the ability to think, to assess, to judge, to imagine. There is no single reading list that one must follow to develop these strengths, which is why arguments that "every educated person must have read X" are misguided. But that isn't to say that there aren't texts that do this better than others. Such as Hamlet. Or Homer. Or Emily Dickinson.
Unfortunately, only one small paragraph in Donadio's article is devoted to this issue, but it contains a fairly money quotation from Gerald Graff: “What does it profit progressives to get minority writers like Walker and Black Elk into the syllabus if many students need the Cliffs Notes to gain an articulate grasp of either?”
Indeed. Reading lists are always flexible; as many critics of the canon are eager to point out, few books are recognized as "classic" from the very beginning, and often their status changes depending on the period. But the essential skills of thinking are in constant need of renewal. And that is what humanities classes do best.
I apologize if my posts have been sounding repetitive as of late. It is simply remarkable how many new articles keep popping up on these issues. Pictures from the Olympic Mt. Hike are forthcoming.
I like your point on literacy, Paul -- how we read and imagine, not only what.
One thing, tho: Universities make quite a profit from English, no? (Consider the deployment of composition curricula to high schools, as well as your salary-labor ratio.) What I'm assuming is that you are stressing the student (and not the institution). Nevertheless, I think a consideration of who profits (and how) is crucial to questions about canon formation, no?
Best,
-j