And Education with Half the Mind

Still, it's not entirely the fault of publishing houses and book selling.  Some weeks ago a friend who teaches English Literature at a one of the new universities told me (despairing) that her department had decided to take To The Lighthouse off the syllabus for 3rd year undergraduates because it was too difficult.

Never mind what you think about Ms. Woolf's work, To The Lighthouse, or what this tells us about the educational standards in the UK, how can people teaching English at university (or school for that matter) deem any book too difficult to be read?  What are they there for?  What is a course in English Literature intended to be? 

There will be English graduates who have not read certain books because they are too difficult, and literature teachers who think they have done their job.  And supply and demand being what it is, now there is a publisher who will provide for them.   

 

Comments

[Ralf Heinritz]

It may be pampig, but: What is a strong advocat of left-wingism doing advocating higher standards of education? For example: the one and only success of the german labour party here in western Germany (NRW), where it had been in power for ever and ever was a maoist style destruction of the school system (Gymnasium) as far as any intellectual work or Bildung was concerned.

I sometimes like reading intelli voices from the left (nostalgia etc), but to me the true color of democratic socialism is a totalitarian reign of illiteracy and stupidity called Kreativität.

[Rohit Dudani]

I will be pursing Master's in Business Administration and if I will not be the master in one of the field in business by saying that "This is difficult" then I will not be gaining anything.It will just be a mere degree for me.

So I would say nothing is difficult, its just the way we think make things difficult.

Regards,

Rohit Dudani

[Jenny Bluefields]

I was in a literature class once with a mad group of undergraduate students who felt angry that they had to make sense of TTL. In the ensuing negotiation, my very lovely lecturer agreed she would accept either an essay or a painting of this particular lighthouse. What else can one do when classes now resemble battlefields?

[Joe Martin]

As a man whose entire commitment to English was refueled by a sophomore year double-shot of The Waves and Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler..., I'm terrified. There's something sinister about all of this - an air of 19th century traditionalism and 21st century anti-intellectualism slamming together into some crumpled new curriculum. And this is, honestly, why I push Barthelme, Barth, and Borges on freshmen. Why take an English course if you're not going to take it on?

[Robin Craig]

Having retired from univ life and now in eighties, I share despair at Univ dumbding down. A recent syllabus I had reason to look at had several pp on "how to write an essay. When I was operating I cannot recall anyone asking me what an essay was or how long it should be. My students had no problems in completing their tasks well or ill. Is it because teachers now are too bewildered and students less well advised at Sixth Form level. Have teachers begun to lose their enthusiasm and faith in their subjects capacity to do other than qualify for some dreary but lucrative job. What has happened to enthusiasm as well as learning.

[Steven Augustine]

Call it synchronicity but debates about this general topic (Art vs Profit; High Culture vs Convenience; The Canon vs The Fodder) seem to be all over the LitBloggerverse these days. Is some crisis coming to a head? And why is it that I keep wanting to lay blame on the unknown Hippie who first said "Do your own thing, man"?

[John Baker]

Much as I love the book, this kind of action is really an attack on education. And, ironically, one cannot imagine that the decision came from anywhere else but the teaching staff.

[Alexander Chee]

What's next? Is Eliot too hard also? If they can't read To The Lighthouse, can they get through Ulysses also?

Why don't they just keep out the students who can't get through To The Lighthouse?

[Mr. Waggish]

Yes, my sentiments are with Jenny. I was taught To the Lighthouse in 10th grade/4th form, and it was one of the fundamental texts in opening my mind up to what literature could be. The teacher was so passionate about the characters and the emotions (he had named his daughter Lily, in fact) that it inspired me to be a lit major (for a while, anyway, but that's another story). Far more inspiring than "A Separate Peace."

[Adrien Stewart]

Virginia Woolf is too difficult? For university students???!!!!

Mmmm..

Maybe they shoud be teaching Fox in Sox instead.

[Jenny Davidson]

Yes, I've taught "To the Lighthouse" in our required first-year course at Columbia (which everyone takes--you know, real mix of engineering students and pre-medical students and so forth, by no means all humanities/social science) and in my opinion it teaches remarkably well, whatever my personal reservations about Woolf...

I am a great believer in teaching difficult things. Hard things repay attention in a way that accessible do not!

I taught "Tom Jones" and chunks of "Tristram Shandy" this fall, for instance, and it was quite delightful to see initially skeptical students respond to them; and actually (I am still slightly amazed!) next year I'm going to do an undergraduate seminar where we'll read the whole of "Clarissa."

The fact is that if the teacher's passionate about the material, it will always be interesting to the students. You just need to persuade them it's worth their while to properly read, say, Thucydides, rather than skipping it because it's not as fun/accessible (oh dear, I realize these are perverse adjectives under the circumstances) as something like "Oedipus Rex."

My two cents...

[Anna]

That is ridiculous. To the Lighthouse was on the A-LEVEL English syllabus during the 1970s.