My son ran into the same problems concerning the skewing of the liberal arts in universities today when he majored in philosophy years ago. Interestingly, some of the pressure seemed to come from the students themselves. For example, in a class on Greek philosophy, the professor was harangued by some of the students for not including prominent female philosophers in the curriculum!
In another class my son attended on the early American novel, the first piece of literature studied was a diary by a colonial woman–not even a work of fiction at all. It is thus easy to see how the two speakers in the video could claim that it is easy to get a degree in English today and never read Shakespeare.
I feel his pain. I was at Stanford in the 80s during the famous chants of “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Western Civ. got to go…”
Certainly, a good education includes exposure to all kinds of cultures, but to say all cultures have contributed equally is problematic to the history of ideas.
My son ran into the same problems concerning the skewing of the liberal arts in universities today when he majored in philosophy years ago. Interestingly, some of the pressure seemed to come from the students themselves. For example, in a class on Greek philosophy, the professor was harangued by some of the students for not including prominent female philosophers in the curriculum!
In another class my son attended on the early American novel, the first piece of literature studied was a diary by a colonial woman–not even a work of fiction at all. It is thus easy to see how the two speakers in the video could claim that it is easy to get a degree in English today and never read Shakespeare.
I feel his pain. I was at Stanford in the 80s during the famous chants of “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Western Civ. got to go…”
Certainly, a good education includes exposure to all kinds of cultures, but to say all cultures have contributed equally is problematic to the history of ideas.