Teaching Literature for General Education

Abstract

There are, I suppose, few of us now engaged in t aching who do not recall the dismay we felt when, young and eager for knowledge, we examined the course offerings of alma mater and found presented in her name not a straight way to learning but a labyrinth called distribu tion. We were solemnly advised that, if we were to become learned, we had to choose one course each from several areas or groups. Beneath the verbiage lay the simple injunction : take one course in English, one in science, one in a foreign language, one in history, and if you haven't had enough math, take College Algebra now. Al though the builders of these educational laby rinths were inspired by the worthy motive of providing the student with an acquaintance with several and, at the same time, per mitting him a free choice (thus countering the unpleasant connotation of disciplines), the re sult was generally to deny the student access to many fields of knowledge. If the student, for in stance, wanted to take philosophy and literature and history, he was barred from one of these because he could take only two courses in any one area, and so on. Or if he wanted to know something about physics and chemistry and bio logy, he could again take only one?or wait until he had a chance in Junior year to grasp an elective. The distribution actually forbade his imbibing more than teaspoon fuis from the springs of knowledge. The basic fault of the area requirement scheme for the first two years of college was its artifi cial compartmentalization of knowledge. In this it unwittingly adopted the same fallacy that has beset education since the time of the trivium and quadrivium, the ancient incubus of a divisive theory of education. From medieval times on education has suffered from the ravages of the bellum intestinum in which the realization that knowledge is one has been pitted against the belief that knowledge can be divided into disci plines. In practice, the former belief has had only lip service, and the latter, rather than being properly regarded as an expedient merely, has been followed as the true faith. It is time, ac cording to those who believe in General Edu cation, to restate the fact that learning springs from one source, not many. With this as the first article of faith, the division of knowledge into courses or disciplines may be tolerated for what it is, in the same way that the academic quadrennium is accepted for the sake of exped iency. The problem, then, is how to keep this exped iency within bounds, how to keep it from becom ing the end in itself that it has often managed to make of itself. A case in point is the question of what to do with literature, the subject most often required (usually under the label of Fresh man English or Sophomore Survey) in the area system. We must begin by asserting that an ac quaintance with literature is obligatory if Gen eral Education is to succeed in demonstrating to students what it is to be a human being. In General Education programs literature is usually incorporated in humanities courses, organ ized either historically or according to subject matter, that also include philosophy, art, music, and religion. Of the two types of organization the historical is the better option for literature, for it sets literature free to operate as it should. As the successive cultures that have been parts of the making of modern man are presented to the stu dent, literature is seen in the ambiance of the ideas and ideals it embodies and transmits. It be comes a part of that culture. The student who en counters Oedipus the King as part of his investi gation of the Hellenic world brings to his read ing of the play some knowledge of Greek philoso phy, art, and religion; his reading of the play in turn illuminates the other aspects of Greek cul ture. Or, to take an equally compelling example, when a student comes to the reading of Paradise Lost, he knows something of the original doc trines of Christianity and its Protestant formula tions. Compare this with what happens in the survey course of the area system where a fifteen minute pause is made in the dash through the centuries so that the student can be informed on the doctrines of original sin and redemption, thus being enabled to understand Milton's epic. 49