TOO EXCLUSIVE AN EMPHASIS ON ‘GREAT BOOKS’ CAN HAVE THE INADVERTENT EFFECT OF REMARGINALIZING WHOLE GROUPS OF WRITERS.”
FROM PR E V IOUS PAGE As you know, I worry that too exclusive an emphasis on
“great books” can have the inadvertent effect of remarginalizing whole groups of writers and their views of the world that have only recently been brought into the canon. Too much stress on foundational texts and humanistic ideals may not leave enough room for the kind of focus on practical skills we’re talking about and, at the same time, might narrow once again the diverse intellectual traditions that in the last three decades have made the humanities such a vital place.
TONY CARDOZA As usual, the devil is in the details. While we agree that there
should be a balance between skills and content, the question remains where that balance should lie, and, more problemati- cally, what the content should be. You warn of “too exclusive” an emphasis on great books and big ideas resulting in the loss of intellectual diversity and the exclusion of previously marginal perspectives. I would argue that the general tendency in the past few decades has been in the opposite direction—namely, toward too little emphasis on big ideas and great books. We run the risk of building an educational Tower of Babel, with little in the way of shared intellectual content or experiences. Our stu- dents would benefit from a common starting point in the great books and big ideas of the humanities before they embark on their voyages of exploration and discovery in the diverse intel- lectual traditions of previously excluded cultures and groups.
PAUL JAY
I agree that the details define our different positions, especially if taken to their extremes. For example, a curriculum emphasizing skills seems like it can get by with a wide range of texts for study, since it’s the skills used in analyzing and writing about them that count. If it’s really all about skills, however, why not hone your analytical, writing, and rhetorical skills while taking apart popular romance novels, scrutinizing TV shows, or analyzing mass culture across historical periods? Under this model, what you’ve called the “common starting point” gets defined by the skills taught as much or more than the texts and authors read, and the fundamental ones can get marginalized. A curriculum committed to teaching the content of great books,
on the other hand, makes those foundational texts the common starting point, avoiding the risk of filling courses with trivial content. That model does run the risk of narrowing the field of inquiry in a way that reestablishes the dominance of a single intellectual tradi- tion (Western humanism) just at the moment when we’ve come to value the study of diverse intellectual traditions—traditions that often productively challenge the dominant ones (and when you’ve got ideas challenging one another, students are in a better position to hone their analytical and argumentative skills). The humanities need to avoid both extremes. It seems to me that the best approach would integrate the two models. It would find a way to value both foundational texts and those that challenge them, while facilitating an emphasis on those practical skills we both see as valuable prod- ucts of a humanities education. Gerald Graff, my co-author in “Fear of Being Useful,” has always advocated teaching our conflicts rather than hiding them from our students. Perhaps the common starting point for some of our courses ought to be the differences of opinion we’ve been discussing.
“TERMS LIKE ‘CRITICAL THINKING’ HAVE BECOME
LITTLE MORE THAN MARKETING DEVICES, ENDLESSY REPEATED, BUT BEREFT OF ANY REAL MEANING.
20 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
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