UK: Don’t ‘decolonise’ my English degree

The student below is pretty on point but he misses out on the breadth of things that literary studies can contribute. Such studies are in fact one of the best time machines we have. The canon of English novels starts with Richardson and Fielding in the 1740s and has a wealth of contributions from then on.

And as the decades roll by we see an ever-changing world described.

The main interest in a novel is the story it tells. But to make the story as persuasive and engaging as possible, the novelist tends to make the setting of his novel as true to the times as he can. So the interest in literary studies tends to move from the story to its setting. We marvel at the different customs and beliefs of the times that the novel is set in. It is sociological history

It can be almost a laboratory for social ideas. We see how different beliefs about society play out. That is very explicit in the novel “Mr Midshipman Easy” an 1836 novel by Frederick Marryat — where socialist ideas are powerfully satirized and mocked.

So the novel introduces you to different social ideas in a vivid way — a way with far more impact than dry sociological statistics. And in any era there is a variety of novels so you get quite a survey of how the world looked directly from those who lived in that era.

There is much more that I could say about the value of classical litrature and its studies but I think I have made the case that it desrves respect for what it is in its own right. Studying novels originating in other cutures may have its own value but the value of the existing English canon is great and well worth experiencing and studying by and of itself

As we university students return to campus, we are bracing ourselves for the New Normal. For the majority, lectures will take place over laptops, tutorials will be reduced to sad, spaced-out affairs, and, for some, the academic day will end at eight in the evening to ensure adequate social distancing.

What we learn could soon change, too. I’m doing an English literature degree at the University of Edinburgh, which is not immune to the identitarian pressures facing other places of learning across Britain. The rallying cry that has been gaining mainstream traction is that of ‘decolonising the curriculum’.

The phrase ‘decolonise’ might make a bit more sense when applied to history courses, which deal with Britain’s colonial past and the atrocities committed in the name of Empire. I don’t imagine that university staff rooms are filled with rabid apologists for racial injustice, and the Atlantic slave trade was hardly portrayed in glowing terms when I learnt about it at school. But the less savoury aspects of our island story should never be brushed under the carpet.

It is more complicated with literature, however. Edinburgh’s English faculty recently received two letters from members of the student body, calling for the curriculum to be revamped to include more ethnic-minority voices. The suggestions offered illustrate why ‘decolonising’ English might not be so easy.

The first letter, calling for the diversification of first- and second-year core texts, suggests including The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois – undoubtedly a seminal work of sociology and American literature. But American is the key word here. The letter admits that the texts these students want included are ‘all written by American nationals’. And it is worth remembering that the subject in question is called ‘English literature’, not ‘literature in English’. While our course contains the odd novel, poem or play from the United States and the Commonwealth, the focus is on the British Isles.

While one can specialise in the honours years of an Edinburgh degree, the first two years are dedicated to grounding students in the English literary tradition, and that includes all the big hitters taking us up to the 20th century. Without this grounding, students would not understand the influences of today’s authors – of all backgrounds. Contemporary BAME writers take inspiration from Emily Brontë and John Donne as well as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano. We should avoid the patronising assumption that undergraduates from a minority background can only identify with figures who share their skin tone.

Ultimately, a survey of English literature can only accommodate a certain number of authors, and each work should be sufficiently influential and studied to justify its inclusion. The ‘whiteness’ of the canon stems from historic, rather than present, inequalities, and we should look at the history of literature in this context. But including historical black authors on the basis of race, rather than their influence on literature, is an act of tokenism, and a denial of how literature has progressed in Britain. Literature is often political, but the calls to decolonise the curriculum seek to make the discipline inseparable from contemporary debates about identity.

The other letter sent to the Edinburgh English department goes further, accusing it of being ‘racially and culturally exclusive’. It complains that there was an entire term in which no ethnic-minority writers were studied. The period covered in that term was 1300 to 1700 – not exactly a golden age for black writing. The letter decries ‘colonialist’ texts by Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) and Aphra Behn (Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave), assuming that their inclusion is somehow an endorsement of Empire. But English students can surely admire the craft of these works while condemning the attitudes they express, just as an art student can rate Caravaggio without supporting murder.

One of the letter’s most laughable claims is that the very concept of ‘books’ (its scare quotes, not mine) is indicative of a colonialist mindset. The letter demands that we study comic books, cartoons and other variants of media. As someone who came to university to learn about Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and TS Eliot, the thought fills me with horror.

The word ‘whitewashing’ is thrown around a lot in this debate, as if university curricula are part of some grand conspiracy – masterminded by racial supremacists, masquerading as educators, desperate to exclude Chaucer’s Afro-Caribbean contemporaries. In truth, the academic sphere is a remarkably progressive one.

Though the English faculty could not publicly comment on the letters, except to acknowledge their receipt, a statement released by Edinburgh’s senior management in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death shows us which way the wind is blowing. The university vows to ‘interrogate the role of the university in slavery and colonialism’ and ‘embed culturally relevant pedagogy by critically examining our work from a decolonial perspective’. The decolonisation crew appear to have a receptive audience.

The canon should not be rigid, but it should be organic. Important new writers emerge all the time from a variety of backgrounds, and old ones can regain relevance after years out of favour. We can also view traditional writers through modern lenses: Shakespeare’s plays are ripe for postcolonial and queer interpretations, for instance.

Minority fiction is currently enjoying a purple patch, with four out of this year’s six Booker-shortlisted novels written by non-white authors. Years from now, we may be discussing the lasting importance of Zadie Smith and Bernardine Evaristo, and we would be doing so because they are among the most talented novelists of their time, not for purposes of diversity.

Decolonising the curriculum is, at its heart, a deeply authoritarian project, in which the past is twisted and reshaped to fit the present. Every individual, every item of knowledge, becomes racialised, which only serves to further ‘Other’ black students. This campaign is not simply a bugbear for conservative hacks – it is a worrying prospect for those who study and love literature. The decolonisers should leave our books alone.

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Classroom Indoctrination Alert: Mom Records Teacher Silencing 10-Year-Old Son Who Supports Trump

If you aren’t monitoring your child’s online classes, you’re nuts. A teacher at Perry G. Keithley Middle School in Tacoma, Washington, kicked a 10-year-old child off his classroom chat for answering the question, “Who do you admire and why?” with “Donald Trump.”

The child responded to the question with this statement:

I admire Donald J. Trump because he is making America great again and because he is the best president the United States of America could ever, ever have. And he built the wall so terrorists couldn’t come into in [sic] the U.S. Trump is the best person in the world. And that’s why I had admire him.

The teacher, Brendan Stanton, not only deleted the comment out of the chat but spent time berating the child for choosing Trump. “The example that was shared in the chat, which I went ahead and erased for us, was not appropriate, right?” Stanton said. “Especially as that individual has created so much division and hatred between people and specifically spoken hatred to many different individuals, OK?” Stanton went on to say Trump “has spoken hate to many individuals and I don’t think is an appropriate example for a role model that we should be admiring.”

Tucker Carlson had the story and played the recording.

When the child’s mother, Elsy Kusander, confronted the teacher, he tried to lie about it, not knowing she had a recording. Stanton tried to tell Kusander that the assignment was to name a computer programmer that the children admired. After he found out there was a recording showing that he lied, Stanton began to change his story, Fox News reported.

“I do apologize if my words were not perfect at the time,” he told her. “If I used … if I said that Trump was ‘hateful and divisive,’ that may have been what I used at the time, but my purpose was in bringing us back to the conversation of computer scientists and the positive role that they’ve played in our history.”

The school does not appear to have disciplined the teacher nor have they responded to requests for comment from the press. Administrators offered Kusander the option to have her son put in a different class.

“I don’t have anything personal against him [Stanton],” she told Fox News. “I just want my kid to understand that people can have different opinions, but that doesn’t mean we always fight, but we have to stand up for what we believe,” she said.

Fighting classroom indoctrination takes doing exactly what this mother did and getting it on tape. Without that, school officials will cover up and lie every time to protect their interests. Having recordings is the only way to catch them and hold them accountable.

The middle school’s phone is now disconnected and the superintendent’s office line is ringing busy. PJM reached out to the district for comment but as of publishing has not received a response. If we get one we will update.

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COVID and the College Scam/b>

The China Virus pandemic has impacted the way many industries do business. One industry that will most certainly be permanently changed is higher education. Many people don’t see colleges and universities as economic entities. Higher education doesn’t have magnates, nor does it exist on any stock exchange. But make no mistake: Higher education in America is a money-making proposition for administrators, professors, and grant managers, and they want to see profits just like the rest of us. And these days, they’re a nervous lot.

Until just a few years ago, college was an institution on the rise. Leftist demagogues like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, together with the ardent promoters and defenders of the ivory tower, insisted that a college degree was the only means to economic success and social stability. Being the isolated, out-of-touch, self-righteous lot that they are, university professors and administrators could never believe that a valuable education can be had in a machine shop, a vocational program, or anyplace outside of their hallowed halls.

Upstanding citizens always strive for our children to have a better life than our own, so we were willing to make whatever sacrifices necessary to get them into the best schools, come what may. Sacrifices consisting of second mortgages, foregoing vacations or even retirement, or pushing our kids into every extracurricular activity that could be crammed into a schedule with the hope of grabbing a college’s attention.

This perfectly admirable trait of the American character was exploited by the stewards of higher education so they could keep the diploma mill churning along. Once the populace was convinced that college was essential, colleges had a captive audience that could be manipulated economically and socially.

But three things happened in recent years that have loosened the stranglehold of colleges and universities. First, tuition rates skyrocketed. In many ways, we have Obama’s reorientation of the financial aid system to thank for that, because he greatly accelerated an already growing problem. Under the guise of making college more accessible, more families were given access to federalized aid and loans to put their kids through school. Just like with the housing bubble years before, when families who did not have the financial means to own a home were given loans they could never hope to be able to pay back, low- and middle-income families were tricked into believing they could send their kids to schools with exorbitant yearly tuitions.

These relaxed standards forced families to overextend themselves financially. Institutions could raise tuition without end. If taxpayers are subsidizing higher education, then colleges can charge whatever they choose. The ivory tower doesn’t care who’s picking up the tab as long as it gets paid. And it was of little consequence to academia if after the degree was earned, students and their families were saddled with crushing debt.

Then parents across the country began to get a whiff of just what’s being taught on college campuses. Where young people used to go to college to learn skills to obtain highly paid white-collar jobs, now colleges are little more than indoctrination centers of leftist ideologies. Courses and even entire degree tracks are dedicated to the deconstruction of American values and the capitalist system, and the vilification of white males. Higher education has mutated from being a stepping stone to a more affluent lifestyle to a reeducation camp dedicated to “fundamentally transform America.”

At a point when many parents have begun to question the cost and value of a college education for their children, along comes COVID-19. As economist Stephen Moore has asked, why are parents paying full freight to send their children to college when they have to take all their classes online and aren’t even allowed to leave their dorm rooms or congregate? In some cases, they’re not even allowed on campus. Many traditional schools have refused to refund or discount their fees to accommodate the new remote learning paradigm.

Higher education was already facing serious problems pre-COVID. The astronomical tuition and the toxic political and social environment on campus have become more than many parents and their children are willing to bear. There have been numerous college closures across the country in the last five years due to declining enrollments and over-leveraged institutions. Many more colleges are facing dire financial straits due to declining enrollment and shrinking state government support. Enrollment will now decline even further as students elect to wait out COVID rather than attend a virus hotbed at full price.

The China Virus may prove to be the incident that spurs a major course correction for higher education. Like any industry, when organizations are over-leveraged, when there is a glut of product and a sharp decline in consumer confidence, things will get messy. Expect more institutions to close because fewer people choose higher education, opting instead to pursue other paths. Then perhaps higher education will come back down to reality and become again what it was originally meant to be.

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Australian parents say children’s education should be put first, not assessment ban

Queensland’s peak body for state school parents has hit out at the NAPLAN boycott, saying they’re disappointed the dispute over the controversial test has led to the ban and children’s education should be put first.

The Courier-Mail yesterday revealed that the Queensland Teachers’ Union would boycott any work associated with preparing for and administering NAPLAN in 2021.

P&Cs Qld chief executive Scott Wiseman said the organisation was disappointed the dispute over NAPLAN had reached this loggerhead, and hopes that all parties continue to put the children’s interests first.

“Every child deserves every chance at the best education possible and we hope the matter can be worked through and resolved constructively,” he said.

Mr Wiseman said P&Cs Qld held the view that NAPLAN provides useful information to parents about how their child performs in line with other students on a broader measure.

“P&Cs Qld feel parents should have as much information made available to them as possible to actively participate in their child’s education,” Mr Wiseman said.

“Our position is that parents must continue to have the ultimate say in their child’s involvement in the NAPLAN or not, and that it needs to be used as intended and not as a school versus school score sheet.”

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy program has been subject to numerous reviews and has been contentious since it was first introduced in 2008.

Queensland Teachers’ Union President Kevin Bates said the industrial action followed reviews which had shown “NAPLAN was broken” so governments needed to introduce an alternative replacement.

“We have a national review by four jurisdictions, the state review from the Queensland government, all saying the same thing, we now have widespread acceptance that the NAPLAN test is broken,” he said.

“You can’t keep having reviews that say it’s bad and then keep doing it.”

It comes as the Catholic sector and Independent schools continue to prepare for the testing to resume next year, ramping-up its online delivery.

Queensland Catholic Education Commission executive director Dr Lee-Anne Perry said NAPLAN provided teachers with important information for planning and to discuss each student’s progress with families.

“NAPLAN is an important part of a large array of data gathered by teachers to determine how students are learning,” she said.

“No one test can provide all the data needed to form a comprehensive picture of each student but what NAPLAN provides is a national benchmark in the key areas of literacy and numeracy with a test that’s based on the curriculum.”

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