According to Harold Bloom, professor of English at Yale University,

More than ever in this time of economic troubles and societal change, entering upon an undergraduate education should be a voyage away from visual overstimulation into deep, sustained reading of what is most worth absorbing and understanding:  the books that survive all ideological fashions.  New York Times

Sounds like something a good English professor would say, and the cornerstones of the so-called Western canon  he lists have been read and reread by the college-bound for generations.  But why?  Why must we read Shakespeare, Chaucer, Yeats, Emerson,Thoreau or Frost?

Students want an answer, and teachers are trained to give one.  But those answers are frequently all too pragmatic.  At least the answers my teachers gave were.  Pragmatic to the absurd, actually, because there is not one thing I have accomplished in my adult life that couldn’t have been accomplished without the help of the “dead white males” or their tokenary female counterparts.

The fundamental question we must wrestle with in this time of trouble and change is not “Why Chaucer?” but “Why school?”  “Why do we educate?”  Education writer Deb Meier begins to wrestle with this a little in her letter to Diane Ravitch.  Once she finally gets through her rationale for what to teach (or why what we are teaching maybe isn’t all we make it out to be), she bounces right off the top of the real question she has set out to address.

I believe strongly that we shouldn’t give up; but, meanwhile, we should rethink what is “essential.” Because, more serious than students not having read Dante, is when they haven’t been exposed to any tough examination about the wherefores of the world they live in, nor any understanding of a strong reason to care about the survival of the democratic process. They haven’t experienced or practiced democracy—through literature or life. They haven’t learned to argue in ways essential to a democracy—which requires empathy, respect, reasoning power, AND a half-way open mind to other possibilities—on matters hard to dismiss with, “Well, I have my opinion, you have yours.” Politics remains a dirty word.  EdWeek (emphasis mine)

And maybe they haven’t had the opportunity, through real-life experience, or selected readings to recognize the dangers inherent in democracy.

Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.  James Madison, Federalist Number 10

Education is not just about preparing our children for a future we cannot anticipate, but also about creating that future.  We can generally agree on certain essentials needed to function in our society, but at the same time differ greatly on what we want that society to look like.  We are a nation deeply divided along political, religious and even cultural lines.  Education stands in the crossfire because it is the tangible expression of our core values and we all have at least a vague understanding that whoever shapes education shapes our society, our future and our place in it.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

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The Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Heart of the Matter!

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