From: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 14:46:36 GMT

In article <65746@hydra.gatech.EDU> barclay@RAIL9000.gatech.edu (Barclay
Blanchard) writes:
> In article <14216@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca
> (Crawford Kilian) writes:
> >I'm also sorry but I don't accept "balance" as a reason for including people
> >who otherwise aren't likely to end up on college reading lists. One might as
> >well spend part of a math class studying Maya mathematics--which is brilliant,
> >and was far in advance of European and Asian mathematics 2000 years ago, but
> >became extinct with the Spanish Conquest. It certainly deserves study, but to
> >make real sense of it--to truly appreciate it--we would need heavy training in
> >anthropology, archaeology, and a host of other disciplines.
> 
> I was disappointed that we didn't study math history as part of the math 
> curriculum.  I think that it's important to know where a discipline has been
> (so to speak) when studying where it is (although usually we study where it
> was 40 years ago, it seems) or to help fashion where it is going.

As a mathematician, I disagree.  The history of mathematics is
interesting, but too many schools have substituted "history of science
and math" courses for science and math themselves.  In particular, these
courses count toward the already minimal science and math requirement with
the result that liberal arts students graduate from college with little or
no real math or science background.

> >Similarly with talented but (so far) uninfluential writers from ethnic
> >minorities and other groups, their work deserves attention. But it's not likely
> >to be very informed or perceptive attention if we have no context for it.
> 
> But there is a context for African American writers that goes back at least as
> far as 1899

I would think the slave narratives are even older than than.  But the
problem is that in an overview course, there is no time to provide the
context.  I am all in favor of a college offering a course on
"African-American Literature" or "Jewish Diaspora Literature" or
"Women's Voices in the 18th Century" or whatever.  But trying to
shoehorn all these and more into a two-semester overview of "world
literature" is hopeless--there is no time.

In high school, it's different.  A lot of what's read are short
stories; there are also some novels.  The problem is that there is (was
in my day, anyway) a fixed curriculum.  It would make sense to me to
have each class have some flexibility in what they read.  For example,
you might say that junior year students must read one Shakespeare
play.  But a class with a lot of black students might find racial
attitudes in OTHELLO more interesting than political intrigue in JULIUS
CAESAR.  Read some Borges short stories.  Read a Mafouz story.  (They're
certainly better and more important than some of the stuff we read.)
And the list of books that one could choose from for book reports (we
had to do some number each year) could certainly be expanded to include
a better variety.

Evelyn C. Leeper  |  +1 908 957 2070  |  att!mtgzy!ecl or  ecl@mtgzy.att.com
--
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
					 -- Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books