For centuries, poets and philosophers have debated who has the greater claim to certainty and truth. For the last century, philosophers have gained ground on the poets. In the West, Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare have fallen from grace and all but disappeared from the curriculum. Students no longer learn Latin and Greek as a matter of course. Why? Scientific advances and changes in education have diminished the poet's influence.
Over the last two centuries, the union of science and philosophy has changed our world in miraculous ways. Building on the foundational axioms of set theory, for example, the philosophy of mathematics has advanced our understanding of reality, generating miraculous technological advancements. Programming Languages, data structures, networking, cryptography, and AI all begin with the development of set theory, just to take one example. Unfortunately, treating concepts as logical sets rather than organic, divinely ordered truths, encouraged the mathematical framework for logical positivism and radical materialism to become culturally dominant. This shift stripped epic poets like Homer and Virgil of their educational primacy, replacing morally formative storytelling with mathematical logic.
Education itself changed. Inspired by engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor's "Taylorism" (the science of maximizing factory worker efficiency), University of Chicago professor Franklin Bobbitt published The Curriculum in 1918 arguing that schools should function like factories to shape raw materials, namely children, into specialized, quality-controlled products designed to meet specific adult workplace demands. Earlier thinkers such as Horace Mann, the "father of American public schools," had already laid the groundwork in the 19th-century by introducing the standardized, compulsory Prussian model to schools in the United States. The goal was tocreate an obedient, compliant, and bovine citizenry.
Philosophers such as John Dewey exploited society's love affair with these educational and scientific innovations to further dehumanize students as he promulgated his own decidedly non-abstract philosophy. Dewey crafted an experience-based educational regime devoid of the practice of religion and the contemplation of fictions. In the United States, an even more radical demystification and secularization of K-12 education followed to disastrous results.
Our current state of affairs is dismal. Language arts in American K-12 classrooms has by and large become a sterile and soul-crushing experience where students rarely fall in love with reading literature.
As present-day English teachers, it is our job to reclaim the helm of language arts pedagogy by rekindling a passion for stories in the hearts of our students. This requires a two-pronged attack: first, teachers must mount an unapologetic defense of poetry. English teachers should be writing philosophical arguments, opening schools, and advocating for the simple, easily reproduced teaching methods that reliably elevate souls, create a moral bedrock in pupils, and spark a lifelong love of reading.
Next, we need to work together to develop, document, and share ways to stir a frenzied ardor for our beloved Western Canon in our students hearts and minds. We must fight to teach enlivening works of classic literature in the classrooms where we currently teach, with no quarter given to the utterly spent, failed, and nonsensical practices of modern language arts education. As Shakespeare's King Henry exhorts: "the game's afoot: Follow your spirit and upon this charge / Cry 'God for England Harry, and Saint George!" (Henry V, 3.1.32-24).
Rallying cries are useless, however, if teachers remain isolated; no single individual can right this ship. Currently, most teachers in K-12 education are afraid to express an opinion or speak against the prevailing ideology. Consequently, renewing the debate over two points of contention is essential: We must convincingly show why reading works of real literature in their entirety is worthwhile. Additionally, we must hash out which stories should be considered central to the proper education of American students.
Doing so requires a place where teachers are able to talk freely. We therefore need to read, discuss, and demonstrate intellectually the centrality of literature in successful K-12 education through dispassionate, extended, and vigorous discussions. Unfortunately, from college campuses to the K-12 classroom, there is an embargo on freedom of speech in the West; fear of reprisal and authoritarian repression have silenced many voices and deadened many minds. Teachers truly need a forum to civilly, creatively, and safely share ideas.
At the very least, reading contemplatively should be the aim of K-12 reading education. We read "contemplatively" when reading becomes an immersive aesthetic experience. Words weave their magic around us and we find ourselves breathing the same air as the characters in the story. Readers who enter deeply into the world of a story are changed by their experience and they thereby become a living instantiation of the ideas manifested therein.
In the illustration (shown on the right) drawn by Hugh Thomson (1860–1920) for Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Edwin Bertram and Fanny Price are involved in a deep conversation while trees gently sway overhead and a dog lazily eyes a bird nearby. If we actually read Jane Austen's novel, we can enter this scene as any one of these creatures: Edmund, Fanny, the dog, or even the bird. This is so, for our imagination is a power by means of which we can do more than merely read the words "sitting under the trees with Fanny" or view the details of Thomson's picture; rather, we can vicariously experience what the beings present in the tableaux experience within the confines of the narrative.
It is important to note that Fanny Price herself is well worth knowing. Reading contemplatively should shape us in a way that leaves us better than we were before, and spending time with Miss Price will certainly do just that.
During the act of reading Mansfiield Park, we, like Edmund, are able to sit under the trees alongside Fanny sharing in her experiences and, ideally, growing in virtue and knowledge, as Fanny does. Through such contemplation, as literature occasions, we may redirect our senses to attend to musings generated via the artistry of the text before us. Such experiences form our moral imagination for good or for ill. We can disagree about whom we should encounter, but not that such encounters matter. Tell me what stories matter to you (from film, gaming, books, etc.), and I can tell you how they have changed you.
By meeting characters such as Fanny in their imagination, students learn to recognize truth, goodness, and beauty in our world. They themselves will become embodiments of those very transcendentals. To put it another way, any truly intellectual life requires time sitting under trees with Fanny.
Sitting under Trees with Fanny
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