Twenty years ago, University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom achieved best-seller lists and fame with his book "The Closing of the American Mind." He dated the change in academic curricula from the 1960s when universities began to abandon the classic works of literature and instead adopt multicultural readings written by untalented, unimportant women and minorities.
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I would have to agree that Jane Eyre seems to have become much more popular with schools of late and it was written by an untalented woman. Her "foreshadowing" was like gutting you with a dull spoon. Seriously. A bridal veil being torn apart isn't foreshadowing that a marriage isn't going to last. It's outright telling you. I am dumber for having read that book in high school.
The book was, however, extremely important from a historical standpoint. I'm glad that we read about it and discussed the situation of its author.
Universities, on the other hand, tend to have much better literary programs that include works by far better authors.
If the book is good, I don't care if the author is man, woman, black or white. Phyllis Schlafly, apparently, can't use euphemisms.
We should put the whole thing here. She's saying that, just because the guy who did the Virginia Tech massacre HAPPENED to study English literature, English Literature, the way it's conceived today, is to blame. The worst non-sequitur ever.
If Phyllis Schafly said it, it must be total bullshit. She's been a sellout of women to the GOP since the sixties. Although I have to admit(outside of her intellectual step-child Ann Coulter)no women I can think of have gone further with less talent and nothing important to say. It speaks volumes for how desperate some women are for money and how desperate the right-wing is for female spokeswhores.
Not fundy, and there is a bit of truth to it. Some departments take it to far, and exclude great literature, research, etc, because it was done by a Dead White Guy. Academic works and literature should be taken on their own merit, regardless of who wrote it, they don't have more value just because they were written by someone who isn't a Dead White Guy. Of course, it's just another example of something good--realizing that things besides the 'classics' might have value-- taken way too far.
Something tells me, though, that's not exactly the spirit in which Phyllis wrote this.
Oh by the way, for anyone who doesn't know, one of Schlafly's sons founded Conservapedia, while another of here sons came out in 1992. So begs the question: is fundieness societal, or genetic?
I can't help but find it odd that someone from Christian Worldview Networks quotes approvingly from Professor Allan Bloom, a gay man who died of AIDS.
Ah, but he was a closeted and self-hating gay man, which is exactly the model that people like Schlafly think we should all (be forced to) follow.
Old Viking:
Why can't one have it both ways? There's a lot of knowledge out there, and only a moron could say that, say, a strictly Great Books curriculum is the only valid education for an American student. (FWIW, Great Books was not a bad idea, but its biggest proponent, Mortimer Adler, was a creationist Catholic fundie and an intellectually snobbish jerkoff. In other words, a stopped clock.)
Why yes, religious fundamentalism, misogyny, pig-ignorance and bigotry DO run hand in hand. Thanks for that demonstration there, Phyllis.
Not_You , I completely agree with you. Are you a Humanities/English major, by chance?
I was an English major. I have to agree, sometimes there are books I read that seemed to have been assigned more for the race of the author than their message. Those were the books I found mediocre or had issues with. I agree that Jane Eyre is not the best Victorian novel (hi Zimmie !); I much preferred the subtler symbolism in Wuthering Heights myself. And both authors were women.
However, that is not to say that ALL books by DWM are good and ALL books by minorites are mediocre. It depends on the professor and the class, but all the professors I had were fair. And if you didn't like the book, you could talk to them about it without being shut out of the conversation like conservative talk-radio shows seem to think you are: It was "Why do you think that?" not "YOU ARE A RACIST END OF DICUSSION!!!"
And there ARE still classes taught on Shakespeare and 19th-century American literature; I know because I took them and enjoyed them very much. And that was because of the beauty of the writing, not the authors gender/race/sexuality. College graduates are not a bunch of stupid easily brainwashed sheep as these very conservative people think we are.
Edit :
And thank you for finally getting Edit fixed!
And he graduated before the 1960's, I guess. Thing were always better "when I was young", it has been that way at least since the ancient Romans, probably was in "Lucy's"* time too.
When I went to school we still used the classic works of literature, and that was in the 80's. But that was in Sweden, maybe we stayed with them longer?
There are classic works done by women and minorities too. And lots and lots of multicultural readings by untalented, unimportant men and majorities. Three nordic women writers, who are anything but unimportant and untalented, are Selma Lagerlöf, Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson. All started writing before the 1960's.
*Lucy the Australopithecus fossilized skeleton
"He dated the change in academic curricula from the 1960s when universities began to abandon the classic works of literature and instead adopt multicultural readings written by untalented, unimportant women and minorities."
Jealous that JK Rowling's one of the richest authors on the planet, and you're not much, Phyllis, you dried-up & dessiccated old harpy?
How many of those "classic works of literature" have you read Phyllis?
Dickens was a paid-by-the-word hack. Steinbeck's work is nothing more than lurid exploitation literature. Most of Shakespere's tragedies are simply maudlin Elizabethan angsty teen drama. There's your classic literature Phyllis!
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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