华东理工大学高级英语阅读作业5

A Review of Who Ruined the Humanities

第一组Y45150064 赵晨曦（作业五）

This article is written by Lee Siegel, who is the author of four books, including Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture and Commerce—and Why It Matters and Are You Serious: How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly. He also writes essays and reviews for many publications, and received the National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism. He starts this essay with a survey report which reveals a “disheartening”phenomenon, the number of college students majoring in the humanities is plummeting. That sounds sad and provokes lots of laments regarding the development as a symptom and portent of American decline. But the author has totally different angel to regard this problem. He thinks there is a bright side that the destruction of the humanities by the humanities is, finally, coming to a halt. The author criticizes the education which takes literature learning into college classroom and turns them into the competition, hierarchy and information-accumulation that are these works’ mortal enemies. Then he tells us the development history of humanities and give some reasons why humanities extincts gradually. One reason is making literature as a part of an academic curriculum which lets students feel bored and tired, another reason is we are experiencing a new modern times, and the ubiquity of social networks that redefine the pure solitude once required for reading a demanding book. All in all, the author is inspiring by this tendency, because the literature masterworks will be read more voluntarily and freely.

For pointing out the mistakes of literature education, he tells us about his own experience. A lot of masterworks made him strong, filled him with a beauty that protected him from his parents’divorce. But college classroom ruined it. Right or wrong answers change reading into occasions of drudgery and toil. Another example is the critic and professor Lionel Trilling, he is very disappointed at presenting imaginative writing in the classroom. Now we face the chief problem, do we really need the literature curriculum? I think we need. Cause in this busy world, few people

still remember to read literature books, curriculum is a reminder and prompt. And I notice there are still some excellent professors who can make Shakespeare and Lawrence come alive, so change our teaching mode may be a good solution. Our most literature professors should not only be a researcher, but also a good teacher, doing so maybe save this major.

From my point of view, though reading in the course of life will have better effect, we don’t have enough time. We have lots of energy and patience in university campus, this is the best chance for learning literature. So it’s not just the professors’and curriculums’problems, anyone with no inner motivation would never learn literature well. If someone really loves literature, reading must be a custom, but not drudgery and toil.