The Road Not Taken to Hell is Paved With Pretensions
There have been three main threads I've pursued in my academic career: math, music, and (French) literature. Of these, the third is the one where I met with the greatest success-highest GPA, best relationships with professors, honors thesis, etc. However, I never had any interest in pursuing a graduate degree in French literature (or comparative
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That really depends on what you think it should do (hoaxes, after all, are when some entity promises to do some action, but doesn't). if you want people to read the great Canonical works, then, yes, a lot of English has lost the thread. if you want people to learn to become better writers, well, truthfully we read a lot of important thinkers who aren't always the best writers, so that might interfere with that (though I do believe that in writing you can teach by example and teach by negative example -- i imagine negative examples don't come up too often in math). if you think english should teach critical thinking (a popular thought), well, good for you, but then you might have to answer why reading books can help that along best.
personally, i've always been torn by the notion of english as jargon-filled. did you see the movie "I, Robot"? there's a moment when Susan Calvin is asked what she does; she answers in high-level terms, and is asked to re-explain in english, which she does. Will smith says, "wasn't that easier?" calvin thinks and say, "no." at some point in high-level theory, abstractions become easier, and the curious thing is, no one would open up the academic journal on Math Theory and say, "this is so jargon-filled, it must be a hoax!" (i've looked at some journal on math theory and let me tell you, i didn't understand a thing.) and yet people feel justified in criticizing English for that same thing. now, there's some problems to address in the comparison of english to math; for at least one thing, high-level math theory may affect people's lives even without them knowing about it (thank you, encryption), whereas English seems, as Helena says, disconnected from life. so, if English at the high level research level doesn't affect and can't be read by the man on the street, what good is it?
that's a difficult question, and everyone who decides to go to grad school might choose a different answer. but to say, "there's no there there" doesn't really seem like a provable proposition for english. i mean, there is bullshit in english; but then again, as richard powers likes to write about in his novels, there's bullshit in science too. (which is why there's peer reviews and people arguing about things.)
now, that's what we'd have to say if we agreed that it is jargon-filled; but I'm not sure we can say that. there's a lot of professors out there teaching at institutions that aren't so abstracted as yale is from daily life. (i met a bunch of profs who teach out in community colleges out west, where the CC apparently fills a different role than back east.) also, there's some movements in having some english profs take on the old role of public intellectual -- Stanley Fish and Walter Benn Michaels both occasionally write op-ed pieces for the NYTimes, I think. so, even people who like theory and get away with it seem to be making some attempt to talk to a larger audience.
okay, too tired, stopping now, 2.41 am.
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