The Editor's High Chair: Children's Literature and the Humanities (1973)

The Editor's High ChairChildren's Literature and the Humanities Francelia Butler (bio) Recently, a young English professor of a large university asked to teach children's literature. "You're much too bright for that, my dear," the chairman of the department said. "Let me give you a course in modern poetry or Renaissance drama." To many humanists (including department chairmen) in languages, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, or history, the most embarrassing literature to study is not autoeroticism or cunnilingus. On such works scholars pride themselves on their broadmindedness. What truly embarrasses them is literature for their own children—"Kiddy lit," they call it. If a state legislature forces a chairman of an English department to add children's literature to the curriculum, he generally looks about for someone whom he regards as too incompetent to teach any other course. And male chauvinism being what it is, this someone is most often a middle-aged woman ("fair, fat, fifty, female, finished" is the phrase in academia). Sometimes children's literature carries no credit toward a major. Seldom—virtually never—is it taught seriously on a graduate level. (For the most part it is regarded as a pragmatic teacher-training course to help future elementary school teachers and librarians learn how to deal with the kiddies.) Most colleges of liberal arts in fact refuse proposals for doctoral dissertations in the field or, in a few cases, accept them with great reluctance. Several doctoral candidates expressed their shock at this situation at the Children's Literature Seminar of the Modern Language Association last year in New York City. One young woman with a bachelor's degree from a large Midwestern university asked the audience of some 80 college teachers of children's literature where she could go for graduate study in the field. Not one participant could honestly recommend a school. The scorn for children's literature and for those who study it is equivalent to the scorn that black studies and women's literature encounter. The prejudice is oppressive against these three fields, both psychologically and financially, and tends to foster the lower standards that are often then used as condemnation by the established system. In children's literature there has been a tendency for pseudo-experts and commercial interests to dominate the field. Outside of specialized fields, such as library science or education, very few college teachers of children's literature actually have doctoral degrees in children's literature. Many arguments are advanced to justify this situation. The oft-repeated one is, "Children's literature is so simple and obvious that any fool can understand it. It doesn't need study." [End Page 8] True, children's literature is simple, but simple literature can be often surprisingly deep and rewarding. Scholars who have examined the style and grammar of the "Infancy" stories of Jesus in St. Luke's Gospel suggest that these stories, long considered adult reading, were originally children's stories. The Psalms of David, Christ's Parables and Blake's Songs are for the adult—and for the child. The late C. S. Lewis, religious philosopher at Oxford, recognized the power of simple statement when he wrote, "A children's story is the best art form for something you have to say." Possibly the reason behind the objection to the simplicity of children's literature is that most scholars don't know how to go about teaching something unless they can lean on intellectual crutches. For literature these crutches abound in the numerous books of exegesis and volumes of criticism of criticism. There are also complicated passages in the works being studied which afford delightful opportunities to display verbal and intellectual prowess—or at the least, excellent memories. A scholar likes to talk. Confronted by a children's book, he can't think of anything to say. The simplicity shocks, leaves him speechless. A second objection which many academics have against children's literature is that it is not in the established curriculum. When asked why his department did not teach the subject, the chairman of the English department of one of the leading Ivy-League universities replied that it was not "traditional" enough. (He nevertheless deplored...