Michael F. Shaughnessy Senior Columnist EdNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University

Dr. Elizabeth Kantor has just-published The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature. This book is an interesting look at the issues regarding English and American Literature and juxtaposes the issues concerning " political correctness". Those who are interested may check out the link below.

Here is: http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-English-American-Literature/dp/1596980117/sr=8-1/qid=1165779684/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6285930-0672835?ie=UTF8&s=books

Dr. Kantor's book really reinforces the idea that there is great literature out there and that it deserves to be read for a multitude of reasons. There are books out there that we have all read that have changed our lives. I still remember Cervantes and Dumas and moved on to Frankl and May. I enjoyed John Goodlad, and B.F. Skinner although they were miles apart philosophically.Kantor discusses the need to read Dryden, Pope, Swift and Keats. She offers Johnson and Wordsworth as important people to read and moves on to the importance of Dickens. This is a book you should give yourself for Christmas. I have already ordered my copy. It keeps alive the good old days of discussing a book for the joy of sharing a story, or a poem or a play.

I hope someday Dr. Kantor will address the issue of writing about great literature as well as discussing it, dissecting it and reflecting on the issues behind great literature.There is still importance to reading Milton, Pope and Jane Austen. Good literature never dies. It may remain dormant until some Don Quixote like figure like Dr. Elizabeth Kantor resurrects it and jousts the windmills of English Departments!

1) I may be wrong, but English classes don't seem to be teaching writing nowadays. What has occurred over the last 20 years or so?

Well, there are plenty of composition classes in our universities. But I share you concern that students are not getting what they need in order to learn to write well. Human beings learn language—both spoken and written—through imitation. If students don't read good writing, they won't become good writers. Grammar is also very useful to writers, and unfortunately it's been out of fashion in composition classes for some decades. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature I footnote a fascinating study on the current state of the teaching of writing in college, published by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education.

2) It also seems that attitudes and dissention are more important than information and knowledge. What has happened to the passing on of knowledge and information?

I'd say both attitudes and information are essential to any kind of learning. But different combinations yield very different kinds of education! For example, consider the traditional English literature survey, arranged chronologically. Students get a chance to sample some very different "attitudes," first of Anglo-Saxon poets, then of a late medieval author such as Chaucer, then of Shakespeare, Milton, and so on, through the Romantic poets into the 20th century. The students won't learn everything there is to know about the great literature in English, but they'll have enough "information" to pursue more learning, if they're interested. They'll have a basic "knowledge" about the classics.

If, on the other hand, an English literature class is organized around the various trendy forms of "literary theory"—Marxism, feminism, "gender studies," "queer theory," deconstruction, and so forth—then the students are the poorer for it. All these different brands of "theory" will tend to communicate a single "attitude" to the student: a sense that the whole history of Western civilization is simply a record of oppression—whether of women, or homosexuals, of the poor, or of "people of color." And meanwhile, the student hasn't been given the "information" he needs to get to the classics, and thus to develop his own informed attitude about our past and the roots of our culture.

3) Books such as Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, and (gasp !) Shakespeare offer more than just literature- but insights into the human condition.

Why are teachers not teaching about personality, character and human nature?

Politically correct English professors consider it hopelessly naïve—or positively dangerous—even to believe in human nature. "Essentialist" (coined on the same pattern as "racist" and "imperialist") is their special term for anybody who has the temerity to believe that human beings are in any sense defined or limited by nature, even by the obvious natural differences between men and women.

4) In trying to be "politically correct" are our University professors becoming knowledge and information incorrect? Or imbecilic?

I don't think politically correct English professors are imbeciles. But I have called them over-educated barbarians. There's a great gulf between the P.C. English professors and the issues and concerns that animate the great literary classics in English. Think about what writers of our classics cared about: sin and salvation; truth, beauty, and goodness; the power of the human imagination. That's all a closed book to them. Or, rather, they see through it all—to the same dreary ideas about patriarchal oppression, homophobia, racism, classism, etc.

5) Those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat it. Those who do not learn the lessons of English and American literature- What will happen to them?

That's a very interesting question. In the 16th century, Sir Philip Sidney—building on what Aristotle had written centuries before—argued for the vital importance of literature in education, and even in civilizing people. History and philosophy, he explained, give us facts and abstract principles. But literature does more. For example, it takes us beyond 'lying is wrong' and 'men should be brave' and shows us characters that embody integrity and courage, and also characters that flesh out dishonesty and cowardice for us. So that we're inspired to pursue and become what's noble and good, and to turn in disgust from what's base.

6) What could our current crop of college students learn from Charles Dickens, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Oh, all kinds of fascinating and beneficial things. A chief lesson I think students pick up from the great 19th-century novelists is a sense of human character. You come away from reading Dickens with the idea that a human life makes a certain kind of shape—either an attractive or an ugly one. And you see that each human action has its own internal logic, which contributes to the shape of the life of the person who chooses that action. Hemingway and Fitzgerald are also interested in character, but in the context of the American preoccupation with the pursuit of happiness and the mystery of evil.

7) Why does it seem that we do not teach students about the Renaissance, the Reformation and these other time periods? Why is this so politically incorrect or so neglected?

Christianity forms a real barrier between our P.C. English professors and a large proportion of great English literature. The issues people were fascinated with in the Renaissance and during the Reformation—human nature, free will, the salvation of the soul—these things are simply not interesting to a lot of English professors. In The Politically Incorrect Guide I quote, for example, a professor who argues that Milton and Donne (of all people!) are great poets somehow despite their Christianity. That's like saying The Declaration of Independence is a great document in spite of its preoccupation with the inalienable rights of man and King George's misgovernment of America.

8) It seems that writing is extremely neglected in high schools. Is this due to teacher overwork, burn out or some other cause?

I'm no expert on what's going on in American high schools. From my experience teaching college undergraduates, I do know that writing instruction is exhausting work.     

9) What question have I neglected to ask about this important topic?

There's always more to say about the riches of great English and American literature, which unfortunately too many college students are not being taught. I hope readers who missed really learning about the classics in English when they were in school—or who know students who are being shortchanged now—will take a look at my Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, which includes a plan for a self-taught survey of the great literature in our language.