Tuesday, February 11, 1997
CURRICULUM:
Ethnic and women’s works included with traditional requisitesBy
Glenn Highcove
Regarding your article on the English department curriculum on
Friday the 7th:
As a third-year English student, I was appalled to read your
article on how the English curriculum is supposedly too
"constricting." The article cites that the requirements for the
major rest on "predominantly white males" such as Chaucer, Milton,
and Shakespeare, while giving little-to-no attention to female and
ethnic authors. What those who challenge this curriculum fail to
realize is that these authors were not chosen because of their
ethnicity or sex, but because their works encompassed an
originality and insightful spirit that marked a turning point in
the era. These authors are considered to be the cornerstones of
modern English thought and language due to various innovations
evident in their large body of work. Their influence is widely felt
throughout our culture; Who isn’t familiar with the phrase "To be
or not to be …?"
In response to Amy Ford, the fourth-year English student who
said,"I don’t necessarily find that Milton and Chaucer are the most
important for me to study as a woman," you are not studying to be a
woman, you are studying to get a degree in English, and Milton and
Chaucer are the forefathers of English’s body of work. Would it
make her any happier if we had a class entirely on Jane Austen and
made it a major requirement? Though her works are significant, they
are not nearly as pivotal to the development of English literature
as the aforementioned authors. To give her undue credit based
simply on her sex smacks of revisionism. To ignore the foundations
of your field of study is to never truly master that subject. Can
you imagine if engineering students decided to ignore "that pesky
calculus stuff" because they found it annoying or "math-biased?"
English, just as other subjects, has a concrete foundation, a solid
history, and a definite progression of styles which must not be
ignored because of personal bias.
Finally, regarding the so-called lack of ethnic studies in the
English curriculum: The article fails to mention that besides the
10 series, which is the general overview of English literature,
undergraduate requirements also state that the student should take
several humanities and foreign literature classes, many of these
filled with "ethnic" writings. In addition, many classes offered
today specialize in various ethnic fields of literature, and with
the way the major requirements are structured, one cannot help but
be exposed to at least one of these classes.
When I took English 172B, (American Lit. after 1945), I was
exposed to at least four different types of ethnic literature and
women’s movements, none of which were listed in the course
description. It is clear that there is more than enough emphasis on
ethnic and women’s literature. With over 1400 years of literature
to cover, we take what we can get, and all-too-often what was
published during those times were literary works from white males.
This is not a bias on our part but on theirs. What we can do is see
how these works led up to what we write today, and though we should
treat all groups fairly, we should also treat them logically.