The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline

Part history of the college English department, part polemic for rethinking high school--and higher--education, this witty, engaging tract should earn Brown professor Scholes (Protocols of Reading) new friends and enemies inside and outside the academy. Unthinkable until well into the 19th century, the study of English literature quickly rose out of the study of Rhetoric and soon replaced the classics as the keystone of a liberal arts education. Scholes emphasizes the combination of ""Romantic notions of genius and imagination"" with a Victorian ""high seriousness,"" that gave the study of English a sense of quasi-religious moral betterment. Until now, students read the little-c classics, from Beowulf to Baldwin, as morally improving stories. It is time, Scholes argues, to shift the emphasis of English education from canons to the more pragmatic discipline of reading and writing about books, pictures, movies, TV, etc.--an argument he makes largely in reference to the canon (most visibly Hegel, Buber, Derrida), not Beverly Hills 90210. While Scholes's specific suggestions, which have been incorporated into an experimental high-school course known as Pacesetter English, will seem heretical to those with a vestigial, democratic faith in the contemplative life, these readers may find his critique of that faith difficult to ignore. If his proposals stray occasionally into goofiness (how many students now need to be coached to notice race and gender in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?), educators will be indebted to Scholes for addressing the problems and doubts they face. (Mar.)