Yale students demand professors STOP teaching this classic subject

by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | June 5, 2016 2:56 pm

Well, there goes Yale.[1] The numskulls that pass for students there are demanding that the English Department do away with whole sections of the English curriculum… specifically those that deal with so many ‘English poets who were straight, white, wealthy and male’. Since most of English literature came from white people, avoiding all that ‘whiteness’ is going to be very hard. Here’s an idea… why don’t they just quit Yale and go do something more diverse? Like jump off a cliff, for instance? Because racism, y’all.

Poet[2]

From Progressives Today:

When students are made to feel so alienated that they get up and leave the room, or get up and leave the major, something is wrong. The English department loses out when talented students engaged in literary and cultural analysis are driven away from the major. Students who continue on after taking the introductory sequence are ill-prepared to take higher-level courses relating to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, ability, or even to engage with critical theory or secondary scholarship. We ask that Major English Poets be abolished, and that the pre-1800/1900 requirements be refocused to deliberately include literatures relating to gender, race, sexuality, ableism, and ethnicity.

It’s time for the English major to decolonize — not diversify — its course offerings. A 21st century education is a diverse education: we write to you today inspired by student activism across the university, and to make sure that you know that the English department is not immune from the collective call to action.

These students are demanding that professors do as they say. Gee, I thought it was the other way around. “It is your responsibility as educators to listen to student voices,” the students wrote in a petition to the faculty. “We have spoken. We are speaking. Pay attention.” If I were a professor there, I’d pay attention alright… right where I planted my boot up their butt. The “Major English Poets” sequence, a mandatory two-course commitment for English majors, is particularly problematic, according to the students. These classes cover Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot. It’s not the most diverse line up, to be sure, but it’s the one that best reflects history the way it actually happened. Coincidentally, these are the most influential poets in the English language. If they feel alienated, by all means, leave. Go to a college that caters to your brand of diversity. But you don’t have the right to tell Yale or individual professors what they can or can’t teach.

Endnotes:
  1. Well, there goes Yale.: http://www.progressivestoday.com/yale-students-demand-english-department-stop-teaching-white-male-poets/
  2. [Image]: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Poet.jpg

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