kids today are bad at milking cows

Interesting article about whether kids today should learn the canon all the time again. Here's a particularly misguided passage:

“What Americans yearn for in literature is self-recognition,” said Mark Lilla, a professor of political philosophy and religion who just left the University of Chicago for Columbia. “That’s where the conservatives went wrong. The case for the canon itself isn’t a case for book camp and becoming a citizen in the West.” Wrestling with difficult, often inaccessible works is “the most alienating experience possible,” he continued. “When you read Toni Morrison, there’s no alienation. It affirms your Americanism.”

Where to start?!

Reading, for everyone, at every stage in history, has always been about self-recognition. 19th century American students recognized themselves in stuff written by other primitive white males. Abe Lincoln lived in a log cabin, his neighbors owned slaves, and then he started a war. His life was a lot more similar to an Ancient Roman's than to a gay Rhode Islander's.

Lincoln was actually gay. But if he read my gay, American, only 150-years-removed from him blog, he'd feel a lot more alienated than he did around Plato.

Next. The Toni Morrison book I read in college was about ex-slaves in Utah. I did not immediately recognize myself in it. Oh, except for in the gender of the main characters. Should they have been male, to alienate me more and deny my Americanism?

Lilla's insanity lies in his overvaluation of "American" identity. This American identity is so strong that it gives us alternate motives for reading books than French and Chinese people have. We read for self-recognition; French people read in order to achieve orgasm. Considering ourselves American also psychologically connects us to every other person who is American. When we read about Lincoln walking 20 miles to borrow a book or MLK doing the kind of stuff that gets you assassinated, we think, "I am like that, too. Because I am American."

Oh no, some people probably do think that! Moving on...

I understand the temptation, if you are old, to glorify old people. But the truth is that yesterday's students read mostly powerful white guys because they were mostly powerful white guys. Now a wider range of people are being educated--and paying for it-- so the curriculum's mirroring that. It's got nothing to do with my generation being lazy or other people's generations liking hard things.

Plus, at this point in history it makes sense to cut certain things out of the curriculum. Technology's changing our lifestyles at a faster rate than ever before, rendering larger swaths of old writings obsolete. Reading about how to treat your slaves is like the third amendment. It's interesting to note that in colonial America you had to quarter soldiers in your house, but even a law professor isn't going to make you argue about it for a week.

And finally, a word from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "The literature of the past is a bore."