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One of the most photocopied
essays on campuses during the last few years is said to be Mark Edmundson’s
Harper’s Magazine article, “On the Uses of the Liberal Arts.” Just released in
paperback, Why Read? is an extension of that essay, where Edmundson, a
professor at the University of Virginia, stresses the need for universities to
change from “training and entertaining” to sites of human transformation.
When students were asked to evaluate his class, he was rated as “enjoyable.”
They enjoyed the teacher. They enjoyed the reading. They enjoyed the course.
Edmundson began to ask himself why students hadn’t been changed by his course.
“More and more, we Americans like to watch (and not to do),” claims Edmundson.
“In fact watching is our ultimate addiction. My students were the progeny of two
hundred available cable channels and omnipresent Blockbuster outlets.” When TV
first arrived in our living rooms, it was perfectly okay to speculate on the
demise of our intellect. But now, with a TV in every living room, den, kitchen,
bedroom, car and wrist watch, a person takes himself far too seriously if he
objects to the overuse of the medium. But Edmundson maintains, “Like every
narcotic, it will, consumed in certain doses, produce something like a hangover,
the habitual watcher’s irritable languor that persists after the TV is off.”
Edmundson maintains that with the arrival of computers, the curriculum turned
toward research. “Professors don’t ask students to try to write as Dickens
would, experiment with thinking as he might, were he alive today,” he says.
“Rather, they research Dickens. They delve into his historical context; they
learn what the newspapers were gossiping about on the day that the first
installment of Bleak House hit the stands.”
To turn from these trends, Edmundson turned to Jerry Falwell. Don’t laugh.
Deciding to abolish the unspoken agreement between teachers and religious
dispensers - “They do their work, we do ours,” - Edmundson began asking his
students, “How do you imagine God?” He claims, “If you are going to indulge in
embarrassing behavior, if you’re going to make your students ‘uncomfortable,’
why not go all the way?” Touching on more subjects than religion, he asks about
what they hope to achieve in politics, in their jobs, in terms of family and
love. “Uncover central convictions about politics, love, money, the good life,”
says Edmundson. “It’s there that, as Socrates knew, real thinking starts.”
Recounting a story in which a great musician turned away a brilliant protégé
because the young man lacked inexperience, Edmundson claims that a true student
of literature will return to ignorance. He feels that a sense of hope when
beginning major works of literature is missing from current curricula, and he
believes that we should not learn to read books, but be read by them. “Reading
Homer can peel the cover back and allow us to see ourselves as we are.”
The author cites not only the influence of Homer, but that of Shakespeare,
Freud, Orwell, Dickens, and Proust. He writes that one of the truest examples of
literary criticism was when Ralph Waldo Emerson received a book of poetry from
an unknown Brooklyn carpenter. Printed by a vanity press, as commercial
publishers wouldn’t touch it, the author sold it door to door. Instead of
throwing it in the trash, Emerson read it and immediately felt its genius. He
gave praise to the unknown author and endorsed the book. Emerson had always
wanted to be a great poet, but didn’t resent it when someone else rose to the
task. “When Walt Whitman sent Emerson the first volume of Leaves of Grass,”
says Edmundson, “Emerson forgot himself and embraced a new hero.”
Thankfully, Emerson didn’t label Whitman’s writing as merely “enjoyable.”
Review by Beth Golay,
August 15, 2005
Related review- The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide
to the Classical Education You Never Had, by Susan Wise Bauer:
http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0803-006.html |
