Why can you get a degree in fiction appreciation?

[Slawbug]

your words are both pejorative and fuzzy, so you're both insulting people on the other side of the discussion and confusing people at the same time

That's like complaining that your sparring partner hit you. I'm not wielding any authority on this issue; I'm just a guy on a board. I think it's seriously important to be able to cope with fuzzy terms, and with pejorative ones.

 

1. There's a big difference between a term that is essentially blank but maybe unflattering, and a term that is actually pejorative. Google says: "expressing contempt or disapproval." There are times, even in intellectual argument, when the emotional force of a pejorative may be helpful to what you are trying to communicate. I'm not sure how this could be one of those times. The fact that you hold English departments in contempt, or don't approve of them, has basically zero relevance to the topic you brought up, and to the other topics it has touched upon. It's provocative, and, to people who have spent years dedicated to the study of English, it's potentially deeply insulting. Either explain how your contempt and disapproval is relevant, or deal with the fact that the rest of us have negative reactions when you use pejoratives in a way we feel is undeserved.

 

2. Coping with fuzzy terms means clarifying them. In a discussion that 2 or more people are participating in, that doesn't just mean we all pick the terms we think are clearest and we each use our own terms, it means we try to communicate about what we actually mean, and we start using terms that are less fuzzy and better for communicating about the subject at hand. If you agree that your terms were fuzzy, great, switch terms. If you think they aren't, argue for them. If you hold a nuanced middle position on that question as is often reasonable, also great. But complaining about the fact that other people don't like your terms? Not sure how that contributes to anybody's understanding of anything.

[nikki.]

Probably because the works considered typically fine art and classic literature tend to be most relevant to the wealthy.

 

Hmm. I don't know that 'relevant' is the right word here. Absolutely some of the classics require more thought than The Hunger Games, but I wouldn't argue that's necessarily the case all the time. And certainly, they're 'relevant' to a wide array of people, even if they're not as accessible as the Harry Potter series.

 

I mean, I agree with your general point, but yeah. 'Relevant' and 'accessible', and even 'of interest to' are all different things.

[Edgwyn]

For human society in general, I would say that science is more necessary to the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and literature/stories more important to the top part of the hierarchy. With archimedes screw, I can irrigate my fields better, produce more food and survive the winter better. With literature/stories, the winter is less dreary and I am happy that I survived. I am not particularly interested in trying to survive without either.

 

Dikiyoba added well to my point that I did not state particularly well. There is tons of art and literature that I can enjoy without training. There is however, some art and literature that I would need training to enjoy (Faulkner, James Joyce, Modern Art, etc). Acquiring that training is a luxury, when you consider that I only need it to appreciate 10% of the total art and literature that are available, the other 90% is accessible at the level of training that I received in grade school. I do believe that many classics are accessible such as Shakespeare, Homer, Sir Walter Scott, though obviously putting them in modern english helps.

 

There are lots of people who society considers brilliant, that I believe are incapable of communicating. Some of them are artists, some writers, some directors, some physicists. My idea of a brilliant writer is someone that makes their book accessible enough that I want to read it, while still making me think.

[Dikiyoba]

English majors aren't really about training people to enjoy certain forms of literature, though. It's not about liking or not liking. English majors are about learning to understand and analyze literature. Often times that means reading and analyzing literature you don't care for or actively despise because you will learn something from it. Sometimes it means rereading an old favorite and discovering that it's actually terribly written and/or full of unfortunate tropes and reduces the amount of enjoyment you get from certain literature.

 

Why do we need people who can understand literature? Because stories are one way to spread and debate ideas, usually subconsciously and often in ways the author never intended. We need people who can communicate these ideas clearly and intentionally. We need people who can figure out what ideas are being spread and how stories spread them. We need to document the impact these ideas have on people and society. We need people to create new stories, to update the ideas that are good for people and society and debunk the ideas that are bad for people and society. (Usually, though, no one is sure which ideas are good or bad, or disagree about which category an idea falls into.) Each story is another rejoinder in the debate about human nature and society that's been under way for thousands and thousands of years and inspiration for its readers in how to create the best possible future.

 

That's an awfully vague and grandiose reason, Dikiyoba knows, but it is undeniable that literature (and other forms of fiction) changes society and how people perceive the world. The Jungle led to the creation of the US FDA. The western genre obscures the actual history of the American West and cowboys. Stories are powerful, so it's worth being able to understand them.

[Kelandon]

That's like complaining that your sparring partner hit you.

I don't see the analogy. Asking to spar with someone is equivalent to asking that person to hit you. Chatting with somebody is not in any sense a request for them to use pejorative and confusing terms. If anything, a good-faith effort to engage in conversation ought to be premised on an attempt to be as clear and open-minded as possible

 

I think it's seriously important to be able to cope with fuzzy terms, and with pejorative ones.

I don't. The right approach in a discussion that seeks further understanding is to be clear and not hostile; to the extent that you're failing to do that, you're not engaging in a conversation in good faith, and you do not deserve good-faith responses. The way I cope with someone who's being deliberately hostile and confusing is usually to stop talking with that person. I am not doing that here because I have respect for you based on your past posts.

 

Defenses of English that take the form of rejections of the question only serve to sharpen my suspicions that English falls too close to the unworthy end.

You surely must know that this is a poor line of reasoning. Questions embed assumptions. Those assumptions can be wrong. Rejecting a question can be simply admitting that its answer reveals something that the answerer would rather not acknowledge, but — and I think you'll find this true of the answers in this thread — rejecting a question can also be rejecting the assumptions embedded in the question.

 

If you don't believe me, answer me this: When did you stop cheating on your wife? And don't reject the question, because if you do, then your rejection only serves to sharpen my suspicions that my completely unwarranted assumptions fall too close to the truth.

 

And now, as the lawyers say, to the merits.

In my previous life I've always been quick to deny that the essential purpose of education is economic, but now I'm trying to say, Hang on — there's a grain of truth in there.

A grain, yes. Part of the purpose of education is to train the workforce. But workforce training is not the sole purpose of education, nor should it be. I'd point you to virtually anything in the education literature that talks about the purpose of schooling; the question is highly controverted, but the position that education is workforce training, pure and simple, would be quite extreme in contemporary thought.

 

If schools avoided training students in anything that could ever be economically useful, then your grain of truth might be relevant. But that is patently not so today in American — or, I imagine, Canadian or European — education.

 

Imagine, however, a better market. It would still want something. It wouldn't want everything. Education should supply training in delivering the things an ideal market would want.

Why on Earth do you think this (see previous point), and how on Earth do you propose to know what an "ideal" market would want?

 

As an initial difficulty, market structures embed values, and unless you claim to know the correct values for society, you can't describe what the ideal market would want.

[Slawbug]

Bang, zoom: Kelandon knocks it out of the park.