Literature
Since the 1960’s, professors have been abandoning the great books curriculum. The classics, by authors such as Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Cyrus, Theseus, Moses, Romulus, Rousseau have been replaced with third-rate Marxist hogwash, justified by the assertion that the societies that produced the great texts were racist and sexist. What the professors fail to mention is no great literary work was produced during the 1960’s, one of the saddest times for the American Academy.In high school, students are flooded with transcendentalism, self-reliance, Thoreau, Whitman, Angelou, Kwanza, Japanese internment camp memoirs, etc. Absent, with the exception of the Odyssey and perhaps selections from the Theban trilogy, are the great texts of western civilization. Many students realize that if Maya Angelou is great literature, there is nothing to be learned from literature. Unimpressed by what they are told are the “best of books,” they shy away from reading at a very early age. The Bible, being the foundation for many cultures, and containing numerous literary forms, is all that’s left, and the conservative culture is trying very hard not to let go. (This could be a partial motivation for the Bible thumpers in the South and parts of the Midwest).
NJO: Originally printed in the September 2005 issue of The Centurion.
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