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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

It's the whole thread. People claiming Shakespeare is "racist." People freaking out at the suggestion that Biblical motifs and stories are appropriate to teach as literature. People making incoherent arguments repeatedly misspelling "canon."  People suggesting we read White Fragility in English Lit.  It's all ... ugh. [/quote]

It's all pointing to an incredibly narrow view of he goal of education. But at least for me, it's opening my eyes to what DCPS middle and high schoolers are (not) learning in their curriculum. The idea that English literature should focus only on the legacy of US racism is terrifying. [/quote]

Lady Cannon is just someone that mindlessly repeats what she heard within her social circle, twitter or faceboook, but these are not just a minority of fringe isolated extremists. Think about where these ideas originate and who is adopting and propagating them. These ideas find their cultural home in universities and their political home in the Democratic party. And it's not only Shakespeare, read the California math framework if you can stomach it, and it's not just the education.[/quote]

Unfortunately it is about narrowing the curriculum that is being taught. The quote from the English Department at the University of Chicago was to state that for that academic year [b]all English PhD students[/b] are required to focus their academics on Black Studies. Where’s the diversity in this?

What do you think students graduating from that department will teach at your child’s high school? Shakespeare? That’s akin to perpetuating white supremacy, as Lady Cannon suggested, albeit in a much less refined form.[/quote]

Do you think an English PhD candidate might have already read and studied a diverse sampling of material over their lives to contrast to that one academic year?[/quote]

Sure they would have sampled a diverse work, but you don’t find it odd at all?[/quote]

In past decades, whole classes of students were admitted who worked on the canon of dead white men. So us white people don't get ONE SINGLE class of Chicago lit PhDs and that's a problem?[/quote]

So the PhD's are given to us white people? No, the problem is the narowing on what passes on as acceptable scholarship.[/quote]

Okay you don't understand how this is a broadening. There will be like 20 more scholars who focus on AA literature on the job market in 7 years. Apparently that is too much for you.[/quote]

You are the one who is not understanding. I want people to be able to chose the topic of their PhD themselves as they always had and I think it's wrong for the English Department at a university to refer to English as an instrument of oppression.[/quote]

It's a good thing there are other schools and other years. And yeah, you're totally more knowledgeable about the social position of English literature than a bunch of faculty from Chicago. Why don't you go tell them? I'm sure they'd love to hear the opinion of a lady with a BA in business or something.[/quote]

FYI, MIT Physics PhD.[/quote]

Okay, so really, really unqualified to talk about literature. I'm going to pretend that you totally do have a very real physics PhD from MIT. Given that, you should be even more aware of extent of your expertise. Being the hardest thing you could think up at the moment really doesn't equate to knowledge about literature.[/quote]

And probably not qualified to talk about physics education either. Just because you do it doesn’t mean you understand what it took to make your education.

So many scientists who moan they never use algebra or calculus. [/quote]

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