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[strebensphilosoph]

I've been reading some criticisms of institutionalized PC and multiculturalism as in part responsible for the fact that students arrive at college with impoverished vocabularies and no feel for English idiom, no coherent background knowledge of American political life, or of Western history, religion, literature, and philosophy, an often hysterical and incoherently hubristic readiness to accuse their professors of racism, sexism, and homophobia, and no real capacity to develop new conceptions, nor any capacity to reflect upon competing conceptions, which are necessary for intellectual discipline or love, and for articulation of all the confusions surrounding the causes one wants to support, and for being able to stand one's ground, or to straighten what others twist, and to be vigilant against one's fellows' misrepresentations of their own problems, grievances, aspirations, and the like. 

Most of the criticisms I have read are written by self-confessed conservatives; though some of their arguments against the proponents of PC and multiculturalism are telling, too often I find them embracing fantasies about "the market" and "Christianity" which really have nothing to do with education.

I have read one criticism from someone who understands himself to be on the left--that is, not as conservatives use the term "the left," as if there were no distinctions among liberals, social democrats, environmentalists, and so on;  Walter Benn Michael's account concerned the neglect of class.  This does not really concern me as an educator. 

Are there any efforts, on the part of schools or publishers or others, to restore intellectual standards and ideals and eliminate PC and Multiculturalism from curricula and student materials, without any insistence that education serve conservative or liberal or progressive causes? 

By intellectual standards and ideals I mean these:  mastery of English through study of English and American literature from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison; study of Western history, religion, and philosophy enough to acquire frameworks for understanding American social and political life (no teaching on the presumption that college is the one and only occasion when students will have a chance for serious conversation, or to make up their minds about their ideals and the causes they wish to support); promotion of formal and literate English as necessary to civic and political conversation and public deliberation; some study of other peoples and their cultures (not "other cultures") enough to understand some central relations between culture, society, language, and history, but severed from these absurd notions: that ours is a "multicultural society" (which is impossible); that reading a several novels, poems, or memoirs is going to help students deal with globalization, or their company's international partners; and that "cultures" are to be "celebrated"--all in light of the basic ideals that preservation of one's high culture and the ability to engage in pitched civic and political deliberations both in private and in public are both essential to our way of being civilized. 

I have mentioned "sentimentalism" in my title because of all the nonsense about "a love of reading" or "life-long learning," which suggest to me that people who use such phrases do not understand the role of serious conversation, in various types of convivial and civic relations, and the social capital that comes from being literate, as the reason for people to read, and do not understand social and political pressures, or the ups and downs of one's affairs and fortunes, as reasons to pursue an independent intellectual life. 

I also consider bombast about "excellence," "leadership," "heritage," and "preparing students for the 21st century" to be sentimental.  Most of us are sick of this, I imagine, but I'm interested in legitimations of curricula and study materials which are modest and realistic about the role that literate language plays in civic, professional, and political life--legitimations which persuade people to give their time or money or both to any efforts of reform. 

At any rate, I'd like names of books, links to websites.  Thanks!

[polly_mer]

I have mentioned "sentimentalism" in my title because of all the nonsense about "a love of reading" or "life-long learning," which suggest to me that people who use such phrases do not understand the role of serious conversation, in various types of convivial and civic relations, and the social capital that comes from being literate, as the reason for people to read, and do not understand social and political pressures, or the ups and downs of one's affairs and fortunes, as reasons to pursue an independent intellectual life. 

I'm offended by this passage and if you have to ask why, then you lack critical thinking skills that I want in my students (hint: you can't talk intelligently about something if you haven't read extensively on the topic).

I'm interested in legitimations of curricula and study materials which are modest and realistic about the role that literate language plays in civic, professional, and political life--legitimations which persuade people to give their time or money or both to any efforts of reform. 

I'm not at all sure what you are asking here because the legitimation is not the point.  If one is not convinced by the arguments themselves and by participating in discussions that are relevant to one's life (e.g., participating in bull sessions in the coffee shop and then going out to do something about the results is much more likely to lead to students who are the kinds of people who participate in civic and political life), then no amount of classroom teaching is going to have the same effect.

This is one of those topics where people learn by doing in actual situations by choice because they see a need instead of reading the best literature and theory about what someone thinks they ought to be doing.  Otherwise what you get are students who can parrot the party line (whatever line you feed them) without actually putting the theory in practice or incorporating the essential acts into their daily lives.

[yellowtractor]

I'm also unclear about what you want:  arguments in favor of a more traditional/conservative canon of texts and approaches that do not depend on the Christian right?

There's always the Great Books philosophy/approach (St. Johns, Deep Springs, Shimer, et al.)....

[strebensphilosoph]

I have mentioned "sentimentalism" in my title because of all the nonsense about "a love of reading" or "life-long learning," which suggest to me that people who use such phrases do not understand the role of serious conversation, in various types of convivial and civic relations, and the social capital that comes from being literate, as the reason for people to read, and do not understand social and political pressures, or the ups and downs of one's affairs and fortunes, as reasons to pursue an independent intellectual life. 

I'm offended by this passage and if you have to ask why, then you lack critical thinking skills that I want in my students (hint: you can't talk intelligently about something if you haven't read extensively on the topic).

I don't know why you're "offended." I'm not malicious, and meant no offense; but I do believe you are able to see, with a reminder, that "being offended," and saying nothing but that one is "offended," without any attempt to articulate the reasons for one's reaction, is to try to blackmail me morally. But certainly a failure really to have thought one's own point of view through in light of those who might disagree isn't to lack elementary "critical thinking skills"; I've never heard that it is part of "critical thinking" to be able to divine what is on someone else's mind.  Nor is it true that one can't talk intelligently about something without extensive reading--our best students do that all the time, and you and I do it when we talk to others who are expert in fields of which we have only a superficial acquaintance; they simply can't, as no one can, speak authoritatively about something without such reading.  I do know that it is part of "critical thinking" not to attack others personally, e.g. by implying that if they aren't able to divine your reasons for opposing their views they have no education at all; it is part of civil discourse to meet their arguments with arguments.  Won't you do me the courtesy of actually telling me why you think I have failed to take into account what you take to be the meaning of those phrases, so that I can correct myself?   
 
There's a distinction also between attacking a well-considered view, articulated by experts, which lay people do not hold, and a shallow view which many "experts" and lay people promote, in the public sphere, without engaging in much discussion about what that view, expressed in a bromide, really means.  I don't think it necessary, either, for me to have steeped myself in educational theory, for instance, to be able to see that all the posters of celebrities reading to youngsters, all the public service announcements encouraging parents to read to their children, etc., haven't done much to create a reading culture in America. 

So I was really only thinking of the thoughtless way in which academics I have known, and others I have heard, have spoken of a "love of reading" as if they imagined that what really counted was to motivate young people to do nothing but "enjoy" the act, and so acquire the habit, of sitting down, in silence, with a novel; as if encouraging the enjoyment itself were a sufficient cure for the loss of a reading culture. 

To put it differently, we need an answer to the question of why people who already have a habit of reading acquired that habit, and an answer to the question of how people not disposed to acquire that habit may acquire that disposition; "love of reading" seems to me too nebulous a formula; I was simply pointing out what seemed to me obvious--that when non-readers participate in serious conversation with readers, they have solid reasons to begin reading themselves, because they want to enhance their own participation in the talk, because they want to grow closer to others, or want more power, and so on.  "Reading is FUNdamental" bespeaks a profoundly alienated understanding of how adults transmit or children acquire a certain culture. To talk blandly of "love of reading" seems to me to remain blind to this, and I don't see why anyone needs to read extensively about it to see that, rather than talk about reading, engaging young people in literate conversations they will enjoy more if they do read is to connect the act of reading with people.  I'm simply pointing out the solipsism implicit in the formula, and called it "sentimental" because it seemed to be an unwarranted appeal to excess emotion.

As for "life-long learning," I was thinking of people who use that phrase as if ours were the task of making sure that our students, in their private lives, will, at the ages of 30, 50, 70, and, if they live that long, 90, will always be reading about new topics, visiting museums and other cultural events, etc.; as if we should hold this trajectory up for the highest praise as the authentic fruiting of our efforts, and so as something that should figure in the way we justify teaching the liberal arts and the humanities.  It seems to me implicitly to put far too much emphasis on a relation to learning which is unrelated to any upheavals in one's life which might prompt one, at different periods, to learn something new, not for the sake of remaining "intellectually alert" or for satisfying "curiosity," but really to come to terms with others as they affect one's fortunes. 

I started from the assumption that most non-academics will need very strong reasons indeed to withdraw, after work, and with spouses and children and friends and many types of entertainment open to them, to spend their time doing serious reading.  After all, we don't have to teach our students how to waste their time reading just anything--but some of us do write books like, say, "An Introduction to Liberalism," because we hope that our lay public will read them as a way of really understanding our public conversation.   And it just seemed to me that, rather than talk about "life-long learning" in this vague way, we might point out to students that, in fact, after the attacks of September 11th, many Americans began reading more literature, written by scholars, about Islam, the Middle East, and so on, because such reading was the only way to acquire an authentic orientation to that event--an orientation, not a position. Our ideal is not the vague one of making sure that people have a pure, intrinsic motivation to learn unconnected to anything else, but that of a lay public which knows that, if they really want to do justice to themselves and to their causes, part of what they must do is to read more than straightforward arguments for this and that--a public that understands, for instance, that the symbols of serious novels and of poetry can be particularly illuminating. My claim is not, "Read George Eliot and you will understand the modern world"; it is only, "read somebody like George Eliot, who puts some of the greatest demands on your understanding of English, and ability to follow a complex story, and you'll be able to meet a great many more demands on you and your moral imagination, when the time arises, than you will if you spend most of your leisure time acting as if the world of your contemporaries were self-sufficient, or than you will if you read for nothing other than reasons to attack opponents you think you already know."   I take it we also want our students to know that we scholars fulfill our duties as citizens by making serious literature available by which to help others keep up with the twists and turns of affairs in the world.  Again, I don't see why I need theory to justify this observation.

I'm interested in legitimations of curricula and study materials which are modest and realistic about the role that literate language plays in civic, professional, and political life--legitimations which persuade people to give their time or money or both to any efforts of reform. 

I'm not at all sure what you are asking here because the legitimation is not the point.  If one is not convinced by the arguments themselves and by participating in discussions that are relevant to one's life (e.g., participating in bull sessions in the coffee shop and then going out to do something about the results is much more likely to lead to students who are the kinds of people who participate in civic and political life), then no amount of classroom teaching is going to have the same effect.

This is one of those topics where people learn by doing in actual situations by choice because they see a need instead of reading the best literature and theory about what someone thinks they ought to be doing.  Otherwise what you get are students who can parrot the party line (whatever line you feed them) without actually putting the theory in practice or incorporating the essential acts into their daily lives.

I have said nothing at all about "reading the best literature and theory about what someone thinks they ought to be doing," and I have no opinions about what millions of undergraduates ought to be doing with their lives.  I don't claim that education always involves feeding them a party line that they will parrot, and certainly don't imagine that, no matter what courses they take, they will be putting some theory into practice or incorporating "essential acts into their daily lives." 

To the extent that I was concerned about students, I was only asking whether, since the sections "words students don't know," "most entertaining student sentences," and "upserd student spellings" show us all concerned when even bright students prove to be illiterate, anyone knows of people who say, in essence, that that illiteracy bodes ill for them and for us--do we really want, in our old age, to live in a world in which students don't know when some social proposal is quixotic, or some bureaucratic reality Kafkaesque?  Do you really want to trust your fortunes to people who can't think in any other but folksy language, or who take Ludacris seriously as a social activist?  Meaning people with so little historical sense, so little literary sense, that every ten years their feel for the language, for its possibilities, is dominated by the popular culture of their childhood, and the adolescent attitudes they continue to strike in their 20s? 

I was asking people who have had enough of quivering when they discover that words they had uttered in innocence have been taken by their students as evidence of "sexism," "racism," or "homophobia," or have had enough of having discussions about some matter derailed because students don't have much capacity to think about language beyond these concerns.  I assume that there are such people because, whether on the left or the right, they know that addressing our political and social problems calls for linguistic sensibilities that aren't so cheaply won, but which are indispensable even for saying what our problems are--saying what they are for ourselves, in conversations with those who "agree" with us, before taking a stand against those we think of as our adversaries.  And I was asking about people who are trying to do something to combat stultifying pedagogies.

I don't think any of us can reasonably have a say about what students "ought to do" five, ten, twenty, or thirty years from now; even if coincidently they share our political ideals and concerns now, we can't determine what they ought to do about them, and certainly can't say whether they will hold to those ideals and concerns for the rest of their lives.  I don't imagine that conversations in coffee shops are best taken as a starting point for "going out to do something about the results" because I have no presuppositions about why people participate in civic or political life.  I try to be realistic:  most of our students do not have, and are not going to have, daily lives in which they are primarily activists; certainly they may become more politically concerned, and even active, when they have jobs in sectors affected by new legislation, or own property and have children; but since we have no control whatever over what their lives turn out to be, I think it reasonable to restrict ourselves to representing what we do as giving them possibilities of disciplining their thought and expression which might help them understand how, at some crucial moment, they can get a more authentic grip on what they mean by what they say, what they envision by the ideals they hold. 

I think that restriction reasonable because these civic and political affairs are complex, and anyone who participates in such public conversations is going, sooner or later, to have to deal with those moral and political and religious questions which admit of no articulation without literate language, and will have to deal with people whose imaginations have been formed through some solid humanistic education, and such literate language and humanistic imagination is not to be had by accident. 

You have emphasized students and their actual participation in civic life, rather than their preparation for such engagement, because you've ignored the question I asked about efforts for reform.  I'm someone who thinks, with Stanley Fish, for instance, that in a composition course one should teach writing, and nothing else; and if, as it seems, far too many schools use their composition courses for something else, then it seems to me that, if one is going to propose a reform, then one does need to legitimate the reform.  One does not address the legitimations to students, but rather to administrators, to boards of directors, to alumni, and so on; and one needs to be able to say that monies are needed for textbooks and readers, for instance, in which the proper sorts of exercises are developed to help counteract at least some of the social forces which leave our students coming out of high school quite unable to write a coherent sentence, and quite deaf to the strangeness of, say, using the phrase "back in the day" to refer to the period of the Civil War, or even earlier.  Surely students capable of writing "in this dane age" aren't ones we'd really like to see going out and "doing something about" the results of their conversations? 

I said what I said only to put the question to people on the left or on the right concerned about the liberal and humanistic illiteracy of our students whether they know of any efforts to address a double problem: the first, an unjustifiable abandonment of strictly intellectual ideals, or an unjustifiable promotion of political concerns over sound intellectual formation of our students; the second, "feel good" legitimations of liberal education which anyone interested in reform must abandon if those who teach are to have the institutional support they need, from boards and publishers, for instance, in order to be able to do something they can do (see to it that college students graduate having a mastery of English, able to write, and disposing over a fund of basic interpretive contexts for moral, spiritual, and religious matters which presuppose only our history of arguments, not commitment to any particular ideal) rather than support for something no one can possibly do (turn students into leaders, assure that they will engage in learning their whole life long, etc.), and rather than try to do things which are irrelevant to their aims (encouraging a "love of reading" rather than literate and liberal conversation). 

So again, my question is, does anyone know of efforts for a reform?  That's what this section is about, right?

[strebensphilosoph]

I'm also unclear about what you want:  arguments in favor of a more traditional/conservative canon of texts and approaches that do not depend on the Christian right?

There's always the Great Books philosophy/approach (St. Johns, Deep Springs, Shimer, et al.)....

I'm not looking for arguments in favor of a more traditional or conservative canon of texts--I just used those as examples of the only sorts of texts over the only span of time which will give students a linguistic and conceptional universe complex enough for them to develop the types of sensibilities a literate person should have. 

But in asking about efforts for reform, I was thinking of efforts both inside and outside the academy--not just high schools, but publishers, changes in children's television, writers of children's books, what have you.  I have heard rather too much about the Christian right and home schooling, etc., so I am interested in hearing more about the left's arguments against this sort of thing.  But I have also read about publishers who produce readers, for instance, for elementary and high school, in which pieces are included only because they promote PC and multiculturalism, and do not, in their series, introduce students to increasingly complex literate language, and literary language increasingly removed from the present, so that, by the time they get to college, they are really able to read texts in at least 19th and 18th century English, and not find such texts utterly beyond them, and in writing about them are able to write good strong formal English which is not filled with solecisms and barbarisms. 

And I want to know whether there are any efforts in which people say, in essence, that we, as a people, really need a material order, not broken by our ideological disagreements, of securing the transmission of this culture.  I'm particularly interested in textbooks, because it seems to me that the ideological corruption is at home in attempts, on both the left and the right, to force publishers to create textbooks after their ideological leanings, and damn the question of whether the textbooks give students a solid historically varied universe of the English language in its various literate levels, in various genres, so that they provide a foundation for students to acquire a mature grasp of the language. 

I'm interested in them, of course, because that's where we, as a people, can begin to decide whether we want to embrace the modest aim of reforming the schools so that they transmit the limited order of culture which it is the business of schools to transmit, where the transmission requires intellectual work, and so have some security that we can stop producing illiterates, or whether we want to embrace the immodest attempt to make schools the primary instrument in the transmission of highly specific political positions and ideals, and continue producing graduates who, even when they are smart enough to write for the NYT, show more and more that they don't know the meaning of words, have an impoverished linguistic sensibility, etc. 

I want to know because I'd like to be a part of that effort.  I, personally, am sick of seeing students who are hyperpolitical, whether conservative or progressive, but who can't speak, read, or write formal, let alone literate English, and who think that, at 20, the popular culture which they have acquired effortlessly over the course of 15 years will somehow stand them in good stead once they enter the larger world, or who think that high schools and colleges have the task of making sure that every ethnic group's high culture must be a part of the curriculum, as if no a people had any part in preserving its own high culture for itself, not in its universities. 

[polly_mer]

Strebensphilosoph, 

I love literate people who have a solid background in the humanities and who are a joy spend time with because they have quick wits and a wealth of material from which to draw.

I would love to have classrooms filled with students who wish to become those people.

However, you are not making the case for why we should have more of those people.  Instead, what you have done is pompously assert that your very narrow field of how society ought to work is the right one and outright dismissed all of us who want to be surrounded with people who are wonderful companions because of their love of books, even if that love doesn't translate into civic engagement or any other practical.  Instead of making a convincing case for why I or anyone should adopt your view, you have spewed a bunch of verbiage that boils down to, "Those damn kids ought to be more involved in civics [in some undefined way that apparently has nothing to do with actual politics or engaging with the best thoughts as evidenced in great literature].  Who has a quick fix to make it happen?"

 Although, to be fair, I gave up reading your ranting reply to me and your one to YT after the first couple of paragraphs because, if you can't lay out the bones for why I should continue within a paragraph in a post specifically for the purpose of persuading people to help you, then I certainly have no desire to help you remake society in your ill-defined image so that we end up with more people who proclaim an allegiance to great thoughts and actions without demonstrating that they themselves have any clue what that sort of life entails.

But, hey, good luck on finishing that dissertation and then convincing a hiring committee that you can teach a 4/4 load of survey classes to students who are barely literate and intent to stay that way because their greatest goals in life are to drink beer, watch football, and eventually own their own car dealerships just like Uncle Mike.

[kedves]

I'm too depraved to be interested enough to advise you in the manner you would like, but I will say this:  you need a blog. 

[strebensphilosoph]

Polly Mer,

Thanks for your reply.  I can see now how I might have appeared insensitive, even insulting towards people who do hope, in teaching, to awaken a love of reading in their students.  I certainly am not arguing against the value of that love or that hope, because I think intellectual love of various sorts is crucial to a sound basic liberal and humanistic education, and I have that hope myself.

I was attempting to diagnose a different problem.  It is simply this:  Since (a) we can't reasonably expect high school and college education to transmit intellectual love for the liberal arts and the humanities to most students; and since (b) it seems that the culture wars have really interfered with one modest thing high schools and colleges can do (i.e., give students a formal and literate vocabulary, solid humanistic frameworks, and the ability to look at things according to different frameworks), and since (c) I have read books by well-placed individuals who, concerned that our schools and colleges are failing to achieve this rather modest aim, have given me the impression that they want to see to it that some Americans attempt to rescue our schools from the culture wars (and not just "teach the conflict"), then (d) it seemed reasonable to ask whether American educators, on the left or the right, have, in groups independent of one another, already started efforts to reform a situation that some intellectuals have been diagnosing, as far as I know, since the late 1980s--efforts which, because they concentrate on modest aims, and are ideologically non-aligned, won't simply exacerbate the culture wars. 

Having a modest notion of what two closely related institutions can achieve differs from having a narrow view about how society ought to work.  I don't have any ideas about how society ought to work; I have merely pointed out that neither high school teachers nor college professors can determine what students will do or profess or achieve over the whole course of their lives.  I have made no claims about encouraging students or expecting them to participate in civic and public affairs; I have merely made the observation that, in civic and public affairs, which are common to us all, we have historically engaged in a conversation in a way which is heavily dependent upon shared formal and literate vocabulary and shared humanistic frameworks. 

It doesn't have to continue to be that way--societies break down.  But so far as we educators have the primary task of transmitting the basics of the high culture which have made the conversation as we have known it possible, then, it seems, we have noted, if not with alarm then with concern, that our college students aren't getting in high school what they ought to get--even the brightest show evidence of serious lacuna in their vocabulary and familiarity with certain basic humanistic frameworks.  I certainly did not curse students or express any ideal of engagement to which I think they ought to conform.

The conception of what they ought to get can be articulated in terms independent of specific political commitments on the left or the right.  For instance, that students ought to know how the historical sequence Greco-Roman/Judaeo-Christian Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian Era, etc., sorts with names and terms like the Inquisition, Alexander the Great, Jesus, Augustine, the Holocaust, Aquinas, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Churchill, Locke, Calvin, Shakespeare, Simone de Beauvoir, socialism, William Blake, Commodore Perry, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Underground Railroad, quisling, draft dodgers, the Manhattan Project, Prohibition, and so on.   Whether or not students participate in civic or political affairs, when they leave college they ought to have heard or read enough so that they are familiar with the distinctions between patriots, nationalists, chauvinists, jingoists, and the like; they ought to be able to talk, in various contexts, about purists, rigorists, apostates, heretics, schismatics, sectarians, fanatics, apparatchiks, mandarins, obscurantists, quietists, mystagogues, irredentists, or refer to Svengali, Rasputin, Big Brother, or say that something is Promethean or Faustian.  They ought to be able to invoke history, geography, biology, ceremony, level of scientific knowledge, the difference between mythic tales and sacred texts, or the various registers of a language as the contexts, sometimes competing, sometimes not, for articulating and discussing some matter.  And they ought not to think that, every time they raise race, sex, sexuality, class , religious faith, economic individualism, or American exceptionalism as contexts, they have thereby made all other contextual possibilities irrelevant, and that they have observed the alpha and omega of securing "social justice" or protecting "our freedom."

I think it also reasonable to point out that, if they can't sort names and terms with historical eras, but they think my list is "sexist" because I mentioned only one woman, or "racist" because I didn't mention any "African-Americans," or "Eurocentric" because I used a historical scheme which doesn't "acknowledge" that Muslims, the Chinese, Indians, the Japanese, and Latin America or the Orthodox countries, or "secular" because I have treated religious figures as if they were on par with non-religious, and haven't argued that Christianity is the origin of Western civilization, then they have an untenable view of what a basic education is.  That view implicitly, so it seems to me, denies that students can have an independent intellectual life not only outside a particular curriculum, but in their lives after college; implies that they have no connections to any people, institutions, customs, or media, no relations to any affairs, by which they could come to a wider knowledge of important, indeed fundamental matters that no 5-year high school, no 4-year college curriculum could possibly include.

In other words, I'm just repeating the argument that, in 9 years, there is only so much that high schools and colleges can teach, and that it is not necessary to act as though these two institutions can possibly carry the load of transmitting the basic content of all the high cultures of the world's civilizations, or could possibly do the work of determining that students will have a fixed set of political commitments or of serving themselves, as primary instruments of social change.  It is the argument that the attempt to overload high schools and colleges, and the attempt to force them to be agents of political indoctrination is undermining teachers' and professors' abilities simply to transmit indispensable elements of the culture necessary for any sort of deliberation and expression commensurate with our common needs.

It is not an insult to people who cherish something to argue that they have misguidedly taken those feelings and ideals as starting points for institutional decisions because those feelings and ideals are intrinsically irrelevant to the problem, even if they are intrinsic expressions of the highest realization of the affair itself.  I love being surrounded by literate people, too, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether our high schools are preparing students for college, and our colleges providing students with the shared literate vocabulary and humanistic frameworks which have configured our public discussions.  I have only mentioned the civic and public spheres because in them the shared language is an absolute necessity, but obviously, no matter what one's field, it is always necessary to have a command of the Latinate and Greek vocabulary of English to make one's point--to be able to use the word "mechanism" in a variety of contexts, whether one participates in wider civic and political affairs or not. 

Finally, I'm not interested in persuading people to help me with reform; I simply asked whether anyone knows of reform efforts already underway which are a response to a problem about whose extent I have learned more through my reading.  And, again, I was particularly interested in hearing about more criticisms of PC and multiculturalism from the left, and suggestions of reform from the left.

I apologize for the length of my previous post and of this one, but really, I tried to say more so that I could placate you in having inadvertently aroused your anger and contempt, and could clear up what you made me see was my failure really to make clear the rather restricted character of my concerns. 

[der_gadfly]

<yawn>

I was attempting to diagnose a different problem.  It is simply this:  Since (a) we can't reasonably expect high school and college education to transmit intellectual love for the liberal arts and the humanities to most students;

somewhere about here the logic falls off. The premise is flawed: why would we expect a public high school education to do anything more than keep the kiddies off the streets and out of the workforce? The needs of society have evolved so much faster than what can/is delivered by public education. There is no reason to believe that public education, even through the college level, is there to instill an intellectual love for anything other than how to make a living.

[t_r_b]

<yawn>

I was attempting to diagnose a different problem.  It is simply this:  Since (a) we can't reasonably expect high school and college education to transmit intellectual love for the liberal arts and the humanities to most students;

somewhere about here the logic falls off. The premise is flawed: why would we expect a public high school education to do anything more than keep the kiddies off the streets and out of the workforce? The needs of society have evolved so much faster than what can/is delivered by public education. There is no reason to believe that public education, even through the college level, is there to instill an intellectual love for anything other than how to make a living.

Isn't that essentially what the OP said in the phrase I bolded?

OP, it sounds like you're very much on the Hirsch, Cultural Literacy bandwagon.

FWIW, I sympathize with your frustration that students reach college (and sometimes leave it!) with inadequate preparation for substantive intellectual discourse. I also agree that part of the problem is faddishness at both the K12 and college levels that leads to the neglect of fundamentals.

But I disagree with your (and Hirsch's) assumption that the solution is to drill students in the key names and ideas of a purported "canon." I frankly am not that concerned about whether students leave college able to distinguish Thomas Aquinas from William Blake. After all, the importance of particular authors, etc. to contemporary American (and world) culture fluctuates quite a bit over time. At one time, Longfellow would have been considered a far more important part of the canon than Jane Austen. No more.

The problem lies less with the mastery of specific content than with the mastery of the skills necessary to understand and interpret content, particularly reading comprehension, critical evaluation, and writing. I don't mind all that much if my students can't tell me who Emerson was, but if I give them a passage from an Emerson essay, I would like them to be able to tell me in their own words what it means. Many of them can't. So my own preference for curricular reform, at both the K12 and college level, would be to stop arguing over the relative merits of teaching Anglo American or Chinese American literature, and instead focus on helping students develop the reading and writing skills they need to study any kind of literature, or any other subject.

[helpful]

If by PC you mean so-called Political correctness, I advise you to read up on the history of the term, because the origins of the term are not how it is being used today.

[polly_mer]

I was attempting to diagnose a different problem.  It is simply this:  Since (a) we can't reasonably expect high school and college education to transmit intellectual love for the liberal arts and the humanities to most students; and since (b) it seems that the culture wars have really interfered with one modest thing high schools and colleges can do (i.e., give students a formal and literate vocabulary, solid humanistic frameworks, and the ability to look at things according to different frameworks), and since (c) I have read books by well-placed individuals who, concerned that our schools and colleges are failing to achieve this rather modest aim, have given me the impression that they want to see to it that some Americans attempt to rescue our schools from the culture wars (and not just "teach the conflict"), then (d) it seemed reasonable to ask whether American educators, on the left or the right, have, in groups independent of one another, already started efforts to reform a situation that some intellectuals have been diagnosing, as far as I know, since the late 1980s--efforts which, because they concentrate on modest aims, and are ideologically non-aligned, won't simply exacerbate the culture wars. 

This is the paragraph that your first post should have had as its first paragraph.  I am happy to discuss this issue.

However, I am amused about how you follow up on that notion with:

Having a modest notion of what two closely related institutions can achieve differs from having a narrow view about how society ought to work.  I don't have any ideas about how society ought to work; I have merely pointed out that neither high school teachers nor college professors can determine what students will do or profess or achieve over the whole course of their lives.  I have made no claims about encouraging students or expecting them to participate in civic and public affairs; I have merely made the observation that, in civic and public affairs, which are common to us all, we have historically engaged in a conversation in a way which is heavily dependent upon shared formal and literate vocabulary and shared humanistic frameworks. 

Let's start with semantics.  At no point have you proposed a modest anything because you are trying to institute a large change in how things currently work.  In addition, I strongly disagree that college and high school are closely related institutions.  High school exists for the purpose of instilling a bare bones education consisting of literacy, numeracy, and other things necessary to function at any sort of level in grown-up life.  Then, ideally one can either decide to specialize in vocational training, business training, or academic training. 

People who then go to college can get more specialized training yet.  They can choose community college to get a certificate or participate in a formalized apprenticeship program.  They can choose a regional comprehensive college to get the skills necessary to enter a given profession like nursing or engineering.  They can choose a field of specialization like chemistry, sociology, or education in a variety of college and university settings.  And, yes, they can choose to go to a place that focuses on training in the liberal arts to acquire those habits of thoughts.

It doesn't have to continue to be that way--societies break down.  But so far as we educators have the primary task of transmitting the basics of the high culture which have made the conversation as we have known it possible, then, it seems, we have noted, if not with alarm then with concern, that our college students aren't getting in high school what they ought to get--even the brightest show evidence of serious lacuna in their vocabulary and familiarity with certain basic humanistic frameworks.  I certainly did not curse students or express any ideal of engagement to which I think they ought to conform.

You are just so cute.  I do not have the kind of formal education that you describe.  In fact, few of the people with whom I have any kind of relationship by meeting off of these fora obtained the kind of formal education that you describe at either the college or high school level.   Yet, I and many of them do have the background to engage in the kinds of conversations that you wish occurred more frequently  in public life.  We have the perspective and ability to do so because we are the life-long learners and readers that you dismissed in your first post for which you apologized and then still seem inclined to ignore.

I read a lot of biographies of people: some famous, some not.  I read a good many historical treatments from a variety of eras, locations, and societies.  I read a good many historical novels detailing lives under various conditions, time periods, social classes, and cultures.  Consequently, while I desire for all people to have as much education as they can hold regardless of birth circumstances because education is seldom a bad thing, I also know that very few people at any time in any society have the kind of education that you propose.  I know that the majority of people who do have that kind of education in conjunction with the ability and desire to use it acquired  it, not by force or coercion, but through their own inquisitiveness and dint of effort to find good books and the company with whom to discuss them.

I am in favor of fostering those situations in schools and public life.  I am in favor of exposing more people to that kind of life during K-12 education and making sure that even our poorest schools are stocked with libraries and those who love them to share the joy with those who may not otherwise encounter it in their lives.  I want K-100 students to be historically literate, be exposed to good literature, and have a solid education that they can use.

However, like TRB, I am against drilling a canon in the method proposed by Hirsch and others because that misses the point.  Instead, I would prefer that they use what they know, like people who go to college to follow a great books curriculum.  Everyone's education necessarily has gaps because no one can know everything.  However, it seems to be me to be far more relevant to focus on establishing a working framework of knowledge that includes historical literacy.  For example, being able to place the American revolution in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and as the start of the end of the colonial age around the world is far more important than being able to name the dates of any six specific battles of that particular war.  Knowing why France was our ally during that time and how that alliance came to be in conjunction with reading the relevant European literature of that time to contrast it with earlier philosophical European thought is likely to be far more useful than being able to give a date of signing and recite the American Declaration of Independence.

While people do need facts to be able to speak and write intelligently about things, thirteen or more years of regurgitating series of facts is a waste of time.  Instead, I would prefer that students learn how to assemble arguments by looking up the specific facts (names, dates, places) as necessary to fill in the gaps in their education.  In an argument about changing the method of elementary and secondary education to better reflect what students will need to be able to do to thrive in a rapidly changing world, I would prefer that students spend far less time with textbooks of any type and far more time in small groups doing multidisciplinary projects that incorporate history, science, math, literature, and other disciplines where the experience is the thing instead of cramming to earn a grade on a test.  If pressed as to what needs to change in K-12 education, I think that we need to bring back the practices of rhetoric and elocution far more than we need to have people learn a core canon of facts.

[strebensphilosoph]

I was attempting to diagnose a different problem.  It is simply this:  Since (a) we can't reasonably expect high school and college education to transmit intellectual love for the liberal arts and the humanities to most students; and since (b) it seems that the culture wars have really interfered with one modest thing high schools and colleges can do (i.e., give students a formal and literate vocabulary, solid humanistic frameworks, and the ability to look at things according to different frameworks), and since (c) I have read books by well-placed individuals who, concerned that our schools and colleges are failing to achieve this rather modest aim, have given me the impression that they want to see to it that some Americans attempt to rescue our schools from the culture wars (and not just "teach the conflict"), then (d) it seemed reasonable to ask whether American educators, on the left or the right, have, in groups independent of one another, already started efforts to reform a situation that some intellectuals have been diagnosing, as far as I know, since the late 1980s--efforts which, because they concentrate on modest aims, and are ideologically non-aligned, won't simply exacerbate the culture wars. 

This is the paragraph that your first post should have had as its first paragraph. 

Sometimes you just need someone else's misunderstanding or apparent misunderstanding to find the best way to say something. 

[strebensphilosoph]

Having a modest notion of what two closely related institutions can achieve differs from having a narrow view about how society ought to work.

At no point have you proposed a modest anything because you are trying to institute a large change in how things currently work. 

By "modest" I was not referring to the scope of any reform of our high schools and liberal arts college curriculum in themselves, since I used the term in contrast to what seemed to me two types of over-ambitious claims.  The weakest is that we can make students "life-long learners" or "leaders"--both seem to me to violate the limits on our ability to follow students through their lives, and to ignore all the contingencies, over which we have no control, to which people respond by pursuing independent studies, or rising to some occasion and, through their knowledge and eloquence and charisma, winning a following.  The strongest is that we can make either high schools or colleges instruments in the realization of "social justice," or in ending racism, sexism, or homophobia (on the "left"), or that we can make them "bastions of freedom" or "shapers of character" (on the right).  These seem to me rather Titanic aims, completely out of proportion to what high school teachers and liberal arts professors are in any position even really to ground, let alone to realize. 

We are, however, in a position to tell whether, at whatever point they show up in our classes, students have enough background knowledge and the vocabulary to read C. S. Lewis and Harvey Cox, or both Friedan and Wollstonecraft; whether they can talk about symbols, analogies, metaphors, and allegories; whether, after taking a class in informal logic, they are able to re-state, in formal English, an argument informally by making all its implicit premisses explicit, and correctly use terms like denotation and connotation, valid and cogent, and so on.  As difficult as imparting to them these skills might be, I consider the aim modest in comparison to the other aims. Now, given the state of our schools now, the actual work of reforming them might be Herculean, but that is a different matter. 

But please note, I have not proposed any changes myself.  My original question was about reform efforts anywhere already underway.  I did not mean, for instance, efforts for reform at this college or that.  In another message, someone mentioned Hirsch; I have learned about the Core Knowledge Foundation, which is attempting the create materials, as far as I understand it, that will be more demanding than those offered by the big publishers because free of the political demands to substitute the aims of multiculturalism for the simpler intellectual ones of introducing pre-adolescent children to a graduated program of formal and literate English, etc.  I wanted to know two things:  if there are such efforts pitched for high schools, and if any of them are based on left-leaning criticisms of PC and multiculturalism.

[strebensphilosoph]

In addition, I strongly disagree that college and high school are closely related institutions.  High school exists for the purpose of instilling a bare bones education consisting of literacy, numeracy, and other things necessary to function at any sort of level in grown-up life.  Then, ideally one can either decide to specialize in vocational training, business training, or academic training. 

People who then go to college can get more specialized training yet.  They can choose community college to get a certificate or participate in a formalized apprenticeship program.  They can choose a regional comprehensive college to get the skills necessary to enter a given profession like nursing or engineering.  They can choose a field of specialization like chemistry, sociology, or education in a variety of college and university settings.  And, yes, they can choose to go to a place that focuses on training in the liberal arts to acquire those habits of thoughts.

By "closely related" I meant only that, at present, no high school can afford to pitch the level of its graduates' education at anything "lower than" a liberal arts college (even if not all high school graduates attend such colleges), and that liberal arts colleges, on the whole, still have sound reason to offer courses in which say, an 18th-century poem (excerpts from Pope's Essay on Man), a 19th-century political tract (excerpts from Whitman's Democratic Vistas), and a 20th-century scientific essay (excerpts from Gould's Mismeasure of Man) should be linguistically accessible, because they presuppose extensive enough reading in high school for the vocabulary and style to be transparent, although comparisons of three conceptions of human beings might be novel and difficult.   

The presupposition cannot be predicated, of course, upon the real variety among high schools, or the possibility that some students may have been home-schooled; it is predicated instead upon the broadest level of conversational "work" so to speak, that is likely to be done in common discourse.  Until about the 1960s, from what my desultory reading has given me to gather, students in a typical American high school would have read Milton, and many novels, speeches, etc., of far lesser difficulty and thereafter, entering the workforce, would have learned a great deal more from their participation in voluntary associations (I'm thinking of Skocpol's Democracy Diminished).  Even so, high school would still have been a preparation for college. 

And I'm assuming that the institution of the college, as it stands now, simply cannot afford to set the bar lower, because we've got only two years to introduce most students to the formal and high culture, and only four for those who major in one of the humanities. Again, it seems to me that the complexity of our affairs, in general life, and the twists and turns of our deliberations (for instance, about the new biotechnologies and neurotechnologies and our relations to the human condition in general, to God if we are believers, or to the possibilities of enlightenment if we are Buddhists or something), are such that we simply cannot talk about them without formal and literate language--the first for precise terms, the second for the metaphors, symbols, analogies, allegories, and myths we need in order to orient ourselves to ideals that science and business and technology simply cannot give us and teach us to talk about.

To the extent that high schools serve some functions which do not relate them much institutionally to colleges, those functions are irrelevant to my question.