The Irrelevant English Teacher"When I argue that we should not let our English classes degenerate into bull sessions, whether about large metaphysical generalities or about war, civil rights, pollution, our national priorities, etc., and that we should not grade themes and term papers on the basis of their moral, social, or political commitment, it is not because I think such matters are unimportant but because I know that the problems they force upon us will never be solved by people whose muddled language prevents their thinking coherently and consecutively. Black English is demoralized language, an idiom of fettered minds, the shuffling speech of slavery. It served its bad purposes well. It cannot serve the purposes of free men and women. Those who would perpetuate it are romanticists clinging to corruption. Joy is a value we undervalue at our political peril. Once we have experienced joy we are less satisfied with dullness; once we have joined in the joyful play of a lively mind, we are much less easily impressed by the stencils and stereotypes of a Presidential commercial." -- Excerpt. |
Contents
The Case for Irrelevance | 3 |
Social Relevance Literary Judgment and the New Right | 22 |
Our Linguistic Servility | 40 |
Copyright | |
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arguments Arthur Hailey avant-garde Ayn Rand believe Black English black students C. S. Lewis clearly College English Confessions of Nat consciousness Copyright correct course culture Darkness at Noon enemy English teachers enjoy example expression fact feeling Finnegans Wake French George Wallace graduate assistant grammar Grove Press edition guilty Heinrich Böll Hoother human ideas idiom innocence intellectual irrelevant James Joyce Jarl jiminy Joyce Joyce's kind less relevant liberal linguistic literature lives mean moral Nat Turner nature never novel nuances P. T. Barnum passage person poem poetry political prankquean precision problems prose racism readers Reprinted by permission Saint Samuel Beckett sensitivity sentence serious Shaun Shem social society speak speech standard English style Styron syntax tell things Thorstein Veblen thought Tin Drum translation Ulysses University vocabulary William Styron word writing wrong