There was an article in The New York Times the other day on using video games to inspire more kids to read (here). The article contains lots of grand assumptions passed along in a casual way, such as “Spurred by arguments that video games also may teach a kind of digital literacy that is becoming as important as proficiency in print, libraries are hosting gaming tournaments, while schools are exploring how to incorporate video games in the classroom.”

It doesn’t mention any grounds for those “arguments,” nor does it clarify just exactly what “digital literacy” is. Instead, it offers quick statements such as this one: “I think we have to ask ourselves, ‘What exactly is reading?’” said Jack Martin, assistant director for young adult programs at the New York Public Library. “Reading is no longer just in the traditional sense of reading words in English or another language on a paper.”

The commenters jumped on that remark, and they also jumped on another remark, this one from an English professor.

“Some people argue that video games are an emerging medium likely to undergo an evolution. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if, in 10 or 20 years, video games are creating fictional universes which are every bit as complex as the world of fiction of Dickens or Dostoevsky,’ said Jay Parini, a writer who teaches English at Middlebury College.”

One has to ask, why would an English professor go this far? Why not say, “Video games are growing more and more sophisticated, and their fictional worlds are rich and challenging”? Nobody would dispute that. It may not make it into the paper, and no doubt Parini said many other things to the reporter that dropped out. The citation of Dickens and Dostoevsky giving way to video games, though — now that’s worth including. And it put Parini on record for a prediction that not only sounds bizarre, but sounds absolutely inscrutable to come out of the mouth of a literature teacher.

What leads English professors to downgrade their own material — and by extension, their own expertise? I’ve seen it happen over and over. They knock the greatness, brilliance, beauty, sublimity, and power of canonical works. They guard against judgments of excellence. They suspect hierarchies of cultural/aesthetic value.

Fine, we all know the critiques that underlie those arguments, and the debate should continue. But when humanities professors announce to the general reading public that Dostoevsky and video games will sit on the same shelf in a couple of decades, the public has but one question: “Why, then, are we paying so much tuition to have our kids study with you?”