Books Of The Canon :: Education Learning Teaching Essays

Books Of The Canon It is my contention that students do not read enough. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on reading at all levels of education, especially at the secondary and college level. Many authors from the text, The Presence of Others, discuss the importance of what has been labeled the canon. In this essay I will discuss some of their thoughts and feelings regarding the subject, and will propose a variation of how to change the curriculum. In addition to that, I will examine how I feel the intellectual level of the United States' populace needs expanding. Allan Bloom, Professor at the University of Chicago, claims in his book, The Student and the University, that what is lacking in education is that there is no vision of what an educated human being is. His solution centers around a college curriculum based on the Great Books. "In which a liberal education means reading certain generally recognized classic texts, . . . not forcing them into categories we make up, . . . but trying to read them as their authors wished them to be read."i He then goes on to state that he is aware of many of the objections to the Great Books cult. Some such stated arguments include, "If one only reads Great Books, one can never know what a great, as opposed to an ordinary, book is; and that there is no way of determining who is to decide what a Great Book or what the canon is."ii Although, he states that he agrees with these arguments, he concludes that the curriculum should be centered on the canon, in order to make the university a place of distinction. A professor of Education at UCLA, Mike Rose, argues against a curriculum based on the canon due to exclusionary tendencies. He states that many of his students, and many of the people described in his book, Lives on the Boundary, would not find their lives represented in such books. He Continues to state that ". . . if we move beyond content to consider basic assumptions about teaching and learning, a further problem arises, one that involves the very nature of the canonical orientation itself. The canonical orientation Encourages a narrowing of focus from learning to that which must be learned."iii If the sole agenda is that of a curriculum centered on the Great Books, Rose's point is well founded.