Where do we go from here?
Sarah K. Wilson
The nineteenth century’s social and academic environment led the English curriculum to become one that includes a strong emphasis on the English and American literary canon. Educators and critics of the twenty-first century are starting to question the practice – and the result of this reevaluation may bring about a change in English curricula with as great an impact as the change that occurred 150 years ago.
Critics today are questioning the canon itself. Few women and very few members of nondominant social groups and races are included in the ranks of “classic literature.” Barbara Hernstein Smith, in her revolutionary book Contingencies of Value, questions how literature is evaluated at all. Perhaps the qualities of “great literature” which make it such are qualities valued by only a certain group of people – for many years, that group of people has been white, upper class, and well educated. Everyone else trusts them (i.e. critics, professors) to determine for the masses what literature is good and what literature is not. Smith points out that perhaps other people – people of different backgrounds, experiences, or cultures – will find value in different books.
Many are also questioning the purpose of teaching “the classics” in American high schools today. In the nineteenth century, it was important to teach the classics in order to improve students’ taste (to make all students value the same books as the critics and professors do) and to improve students’ morals. The students’ interest in the material and in reading in general which was a goal of the earlier readers was largely of no concern to literature book compilers. As well, most literature book prefaces make no mention of including selections which are on the students’ level of comprehension – another large concern of the readers. And, though no preface explicitly states it, by teaching literature in the nineteenth century, the upper classes, the educated and the moral, perpetuated their values and way of life in the midst of a growing lower class.
Why do schools still teach literature this same way after 150 years? The books aren’t particularly enjoyable for many high schoolers. Most students aren’t interested in mimicking the composition style of Jane Austen. Do we teach the canon by tradition? Do we teach the classics because those are the books teachers were taught in college – and therefore know how to teach for high school? Or is it possible that we teach them because we are still interested in perpetuating the authority of the upper classes?
John Guillory calls the knowledge of the canon “cultural capital.” If one knows the great literature, he is somehow in possession of valuable knowledge that positions him as a member of the well-educated elite class of society. He is able to converse with the critics and the professors. Pierre Bourdieu discusses the “market of symbolic goods” – and on this market, a knowledge of the avant-garde of the past or the present is a hot commodity.
I believe that we are on the cusp of another revolution in the discipline of English education. I believe that in the future, as our society continues to become more and more diverse, it will be necessary for teachers to choose their own canon based on the needs of their students and not based on the decisions of the critics. But if literature still serves the purpose of cultural capital in society today, the question is: should teachers continue to perpetuate this system? Should teachers teach the canon in order to give students the tools to rise to the upper class? Or should teachers sacrifice the canon in the name of books that are interesting and meaningful to their students?
Twentieth-century literary critic Northrop Frye believed that a theory of literature is, in effect, a theory of education. For this reason, it is crucial that all English teachers examine their own beliefs about the literary canon in order to understand the values and the messages which are being presented in their classrooms every day. With a knowledge of the history of the discipline, we can better understand the present situation and the possibilities for future change.