Why The Great Books Must Be Identified, Well-Taught, And Dominant In Our English Classrooms (Part One)

[Bill Maniotis]

How's that for a provocative title? If that doesn't earn me a charge of elitism--nothing will!

Let me first say that my opponents might just as easily have whacked me over the head with their own fightin' words:
Why ANY Book We Can Get Our Students To Read Is Just As Good as ANY Other!

Same tactic, huh? Or is it a strategy? :)

Let me first tell you what this post (or series of posts) is NOT about; I am not going to pretend that this whole debate is just the setting up of a "false dichotomy," and that if we just hold hands and try to get along everything will be all right. Call me a Chicken Little if you wish, but I think the stakes are far too high; the souls of our children are at stake, which, of course, threatens humanity itself (and the humanities).

And, for the sake of full disclosure (just in case you couldn't fully stereotype me after this auspicious opening!), here is a list of labels with which you may affix me to better identify the "worldview" from which I'm a' comin':

1) I am a reformed atheist, turned Catholic
2) I teach in a public high school
3) I believe teaching character through literature is of the utmost importance
4) I believe in Objective Truth, and that it exists outside of all of us whether we "know" it or not, and that ultimately it can be understood using both reason and faith
5) G.K Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft are some of my literary/philosophical heroes
6) Classics trump nearly all YA/commercial novels as texts for use in secondary English classrooms
7) I believe in the Socratic Method

It's that last one that perplexes my adversaries--mostly because they don't believe it to be true. How can an absolutist/dogmatist be Socratic? Well, that gets a little complicated. But I'll try to explain it this way:

1) There is a knowable "good" and "truth" out there which those of us leading examined lives seek
2) A legalistic understanding of the "good" or "true" is no understanding at all
3) We must know in our hearts what is "good" and "true"
4) Truth can be proposed, but not imposed
4) As Socrates knew, questions, more than answers, lead us to truth

Of course, I can hear the relativists now. "You see--questions are more important than answers. To proclaim you know the 'truth' is the ultimate arrogance. Socrates knew he didn't know, and all good teachers know the same."
Perhaps. But most teachers misunderstand Socrates the way students misunderstand Thoreau. Students love, for instance, Thoreau's famous call to conscience in CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (Resistance to Civil Government): "The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right." It is proof positive, they believe, of the relativity of all opinion. But that is not it at all. Thoreau's quote assumes a knowable right, just as Socrates always did. And while each of us may be striving mightly to find truth, we can only do so if there really is a truth worth striving for.

(As an aside--a student in my American Literature class who enthusiastically supports Barak Obama came in dejected the other day. He was upset that Obama said that Republicans needed to remember which party won the election as a sort of trump card for accepting his view of how to get the country back on the right track. The student sagely commented: "Shouldn't he have just said to accept his plan because it was the right one?" It's moments like that that give teachers of the monumentally challenging texts/ideas of Thoreau goosebumps for days!)

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with teaching The Great Books?

Everything.

But since I'm out of time right now, you'll have to wait for my next installment! (Assuming anyone cares!)

[Bill Maniotis]

Hey Luke,

I fell in love with Edmunson's book a few years ago, and he teaches with a passion that I admire and respect; however, he is ultimately a relativist whose basic philosophy leads to dead ends. We may, indeed, read books that will continue to shape our "final narratives," but we must ultimately come to a "final narrative." I think the more of the great books you read, the more you see that there really is a finite set of beliefs and arguments on which to rest. I spent most of my first 35 years on the planet ruminating about such beliefs and arguments, and there was nobody who was more apt to change my final narrative than me. But what I--and Edmundson--failed to take into account was that there is something that goes beyond just reason and evidence. There is an intuitive, non-rational part of our being that is equally (if not more) important, and secularists can't admit that. If you've ever had one genuinely intuitive moment in your life, you get this. Pascal basically said something like, "The heart has reasons that reason will never know." For years, I foolishly allowed my head to trump all else when it came to all my decisions/beliefs/actions. The day I started listening to that annoying little voice pounding out of my chest was the day things started going better for me, my family, my students, and my friends. Because Edmundson thinks that all Christians are essentially fundamentalists, he has impaired himself, and thus his vision. The beauty of the Catholic faith and Church (despite its many, many flaws, and the foolish and horrifying acts committed in it's name by very fallible humans entrusted with its earthly authority) is that it has always, always stood for the sythesis of faith and reason (John Paul II wrote a great book about the importance of faith and reason--it makes a great follow up to the Edmundson book, because it takes his argument one step further). So at the risk of sounding dogmatic, authoritative, arrogant/presumptuous, I would humbly ask you to beware of putting too much stock into even as brilliant a man as Edmundson. Just like Barak Obama, and me and you--he ain't the messiah!

[Luke Brekke]

As I am reading over all the comments on here, I keep thinking of Mark Edmundson's book Why Read? Edmundson's argument is that we as English teachers should teach texts as each author's version of truth and then ask students whether or not they see that truth as being true to their own experiences as humans. Remembering back to what first motivated him to become a reader and later a teacher, Edmundson says we should choose texts that call us to become better people, texts that expand our "circles" of perception, texts that ultimately shape what he calls our "final narratives"--the stories we tell ourselves about our world and our place in it.

[J. D. Wilson, Jr.]

I grew up in the sixties and everything in the sixties had to be relevant. That often meant that artistry but itself was not enough and I think artistry by itself is enough, but I also think that to become art that thing, whatever it is, a text, a painting, a movie, must be relevant to the human condition. So I think I agree. But the relevance is often subtle and sometimes covert. I think sometimes trying to imagine ourselves in the world of the characters in a story even if the situations do not speak directly to our culture has value and can help students imagine themselves in the place of others they do not understand. In some ways medieval culture is as foreign to our students, perhaps more foreign, than Asian culture and the exercise of imagining oneself in a medieval culture can help students project themselves into an Asian culture, it certainly helps them to recognize that their view of the world is not the only view.

But I agree that the teacher must see how the world of the book touches the world of the student and help the student to see and understand that as well.

Cordially,
J. D.

[Michael Umphrey]

J.D.--I agree. It's about purpose. I also think it's about relevance. I do believe in relevance as a criterion in selecting literature--and a more important criterion than whether this or that work is a "classic" though I also think agreeing on some classics is a powerfully useful move.

For me, something is relevant that touches on an interest or concern that a person actually has. Some venerable literature such as Romeo and Juliet tends to have perpetual relevance, since the reality-ignoring passion of young romantic love seems to abide--though I'm beginning to wonder whether even that is true. Is the experience of "being in love" as R&J were a possibility to kids raised in hook-up culture? I don't know.

In any case, I think the most important old works are those that offer the richest sense of problems that are still problems. That's why I recommend The Republic at a time when foolish notions of democracy and justice seem to threaten our survival. The book is very relevant. Though as I said, more to adults than to most teenagers.

I sort of think that "whatever book a kid likes to read" is no more useful than advice would be from a nutritionist who said "whatever food you enjoy eating." No doubt there's a level at which that's true. My reading in middle school consisted mostly of Hot Rod magazine and series novels. I developed fluency, which later I put to other use.

But I wouldn't think the teachers should have used Hot Rod as the main fare in class.

Of course, if there are no better and worse answers, or no better and worse opinions, and no better and worse books, we really don't need teachers or books.

Are people who read better off than those who don't? In what ways, exactly? What virtues are readers developing that nonreaders are not? Can we magnify those identified virtues by careful selection and teaching? Can we have a conversation that gets farther than a shrug and a "whatever" and that leads to some clarity about what young people need to learn from their elders?

We should teach reading as a means to what end? For what purpose? My suspicion is that people who do not think that question matters or who cannot answer it clearly will be replaced by people who do have clear answers.

Unfortunately, they need not be good answers. A strong story trumps a "whatever," even if the story is neither good nor true.

[J. D. Wilson, Jr.]

I think the sub text to these discussions is "What is the purpose of English Class" and how we answer that question determines what we teach. I understand that teaching the classical literature, the canon, the great books, whatever you want to call them, is difficult and that it is especially difficult for those that do not really like them. But personally I think if a thing is not difficult it is probably not worth doing.

I believe there is value to teaching the "classics" as art and that that is justification enough. I think there is justification for teaching them because of what we can learn about ourselves in the process and that that is justification enough. I think there is justification in teaching them because of what they teach us about others and about human character and personality and that is justification enough. I think they train the imagination and the ability to empathize with others (I like what Faye Weldon said "You can practice the art of empathy very well on Pride and Prejudice and on all the works of Jane Austen and it is this daily practice that we all need, or we will never be good at living, as without practice we will never be good at playing the piano." From Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen.

Many of these things can be gotten from other places but I do not think all of these things can be gotten from literature that has not been around awhile. But I think the teacher must like the classic literature first or the books will end up more likely than not as objects of ridicule.

Let me just say about teaching in the inner city. I taught in the inner city and I taught classic literature. Students struggled with it but most understood the value of it for their futures. They were very smart kids whose skills needed some development. These students knew that the students they would be competing with in college would know how to read difficult books and pluck meaning out of them. Not all inner city students are alike just all suburban students are not alike, but I do not think it fair to suggest that inner city students cannot get meaning from books that have been around awhile, nor that they will refuse to get meaning out of these books, but they will, like most students, push back when they find they have to read a "classic". But the teacher really must believe that it is worth the effort to teach them or the teacher will have really unpleasant experience.

Cordially,
J.D.

[Steve Coulter]

I know the Greatest Book in the Entire History of Literature and it's the one that my student chose and couldn't stop reading.

[Dan Holden]

The best books are being written everyday. I wrote one yesterday. My students will write one tomorrow.

[Michael Umphrey]

James, you probably don't have convenient internet access for all your kids either, but the best books were written before 1910 and they're nearly all free online. I've tried to use some online texts but honestly haven't made it work great yet, but there has to be a way.

[Michael Umphrey]

Owene: The Republic, for starts. Not for kids. For their teachers.

[James Miscavish]

Philosophy aside, I really only get to teach what our school has class sets of. We have about 300 copies of The Once and Future King and Lonesome Dove and 30 copies of various books like Something Wicked this Way Comes and Things Fall Apart. These are all just cast-offs from past teachers.

I'd say the souls of my students will live if our department can't afford 200+ copies of books deemed 'great.' Whoever gets the grant gets to decide what books to buy...