Readers respond to a column by Pamela Paul about the value of English courses and majors.
To the Editor:
Re “How to Get Kids to Hate English,” by Pamela Paul (column, March 12):
Brava, Ms. Paul, for pointing out the disastrous effects of Common Core’s “English Language Arts.” As a longtime professor of English at a liberal arts college, I’ve had a ringside seat to the decline of reading, and discovered its roots in the Core’s reduction of reading and writing to drill, kill, bubble fill, which crushes students’ desire to read. But that curiosity can be rekindled if you show students the way literature relates to their lives.
And, yes, an English major is excellent preparation for a future that requires adaptability, versatility, flexibility — competencies that employers seek. When I interviewed alums for my book “Immeasurable Outcomes,” about the long-term benefits of studying literature, the words “communicate” and “connect” kept coming up.
“As long as you can read and write, synthesize information, communicate — all those things we did in our courses — you’ll find someone who wants to hire you,” one former student said.
Gayle Greene
Mendocino, Calif.
The writer is an emeritus professor at Scripps College.
To the Editor:
Pamela Paul argues that the path toward dreading literature begins in middle school. I would say that it begins much earlier.
All classrooms need to be a place where high-quality literature — and yes, it exists even at the picture book level — is enjoyed and meaningful discussions take place, way before the deep dive into literary analysis.
I agree with Ms. Paul’s idea that a love of literature must be cultivated and nurtured. When teachers only ask for “facts” or one-word answers about a book (e.g., “Who is the main character?” “What color shirt is she wearing?”) instead of asking open-ended questions (e.g., “Why do you think she acted that way?” “Do you agree with her choices?”), that is the beginning of the dread.
On long car drives, my husband and I always listened to audiobooks of the classics — “Frankenstein,” “The Portrait of Dorian Gray,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” — with our middle-school-age boys. Before they had much formal English education, we enjoyed these books as great stories.
Nancy Lubarsky
Cranford, N.J.
The writer is a former English teacher.
To the Editor:
In an otherwise excellent piece lamenting the decline of the English major, Pamela Paul repeats an all too common claim: that humanities degrees “don’t exactly lead to gainful employment.”
Although students with humanities, arts and soft social science degrees do earn less on average than those with STEM or business degrees, these generalizations obscure significant differences in outcomes. Political science majors, for example, earn more on average than math majors or civil engineers, and English majors more than majors in environmental science.
More important, as Ms. Paul implies at the end of her column, most students with bachelor’s degrees in the humanities earn more than enough to live well. About 90 percent of them report being satisfied with their lives, roughly the same percentage as STEM and business majors.
As Ms. Paul recognizes, well-taught courses in the humanities cultivate intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, aesthetic appreciation, civic literacy and a host of other attributes that money can’t buy — and, we would add, that are eminently useful in virtually every profession.
David Wippman
Glenn Altschuler
Mr. Wippman is the president of Hamilton College. Dr. Altschuler is a professor of American studies at Cornell University.
To the Editor:
I teach seventh- and eighth-grade English as well as eighth-grade civics. I have been using a Common Core approach in my classroom since it was introduced. Yes, it requires more nonfiction material, but classics and full-length novels are alive and well in my school district.
Students read one Shakespeare play per year starting in seventh grade. My eighth graders are reading “1984” and “Animal Farm,” by George Orwell. Yes, they also read “The Outsiders,” which you disparage as pop fiction. Well, the theme in this book is so meaningful that Shakespeare copped it from a medieval Italian love story, and Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins copped it from him for “West Side Story.”
We sit in group configurations so we can discuss and reflect. We use information literacy approaches to learn to comprehend, analyze, evaluate and synthesize what we read. My students acquire analytical skills that they can apply to any subject.
You claim in your article that the Common Core asks “little of students.” My seventh and eighth graders would beg to differ!
Jean Gilroy
Pleasantville, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Pamela Paul lauds the classic literature she read in school and writes that, when teachers assign commercial young adult novels, they “lowball student competence.”
But there is literary merit in everything. While yes, I would agree that James Joyce has more literary merit than say, J.K. Rowling, I would ask that my fellow readers remember that reading is about examination. Of a time, an author, a character, a theme — to read is to explore.
Any distaste for contemporary literature, especially young adult literature, highlights an unwillingness to explore, to chart the seas of pages, to find things you love and things you don’t. There are modern authors I don’t care for, who I think are indicative of the commercialization of literature that is becoming more and more concerning, but I would still love to read their work in a classroom setting. From an exploratory lens.
Are classics important? Of course! Is the present just as important? Yes.
Avery Hendrix
Chicago
The writer is an 11th grader.
To the Editor:
Pamela Paul is surely correct that English majors are exactly the kind of employees businesses need today. Some years ago, I taught legal writing in an undergraduate legal studies program at the University of Illinois. Most of the students majored in the subject and had taken several law courses.
One student was an English major. She already had her B.A., and was taking this one law course to see if she might want to attend law school. Not only was she the best writer in the class, but, despite having taken no other law courses, the best legal analyst — that is, the best thinker.
Literature teaches students to read, to write and to reason. Our educational system’s narrow focus on job-related subjects harms not only our students and our civic culture, but our employers as well.
Barry Bennett
Portland, Ore.
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