Why Bother With Literature? Students And Teachers And Writing In China


After I was educating literature and writing programs at a personal liberal arts faculty in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, members of the school had been requested to arrange a press release justifying the existence of their main packages. Our vice-president on the time (there was an unimaginable turn-over in presidents and vice-presidents at that faculty) gave the impression to be critical about training* and directed the school to reply particular questions relating to the significance of what we had been doing. Since I used to be the coordinator of the English program (a program located within the Humanities Division which included literature, philosophy, faith, speech, movie research, and media communications), I offered solutions which I felt underscored the significance of what we had been doing.

I nonetheless really feel that these are necessary points for an English program, whether or not standing individually as a person division in a big college or as part of a humanities division in a small faculty. I’ve taught writing and literature in two non-public faculties, two neighborhood faculties, and one main college within the USA. Time has not, regardless of the present and trendy curiosity in expertise, eroded the significance of concentrating in writing, literature, and language research. This perception, due to this fact, precipitated me to congratulate my college students in at a level-two technological college in Anshan, China– and in Ningbo, China, at a level-three technological college, which is related to a level-one college in Hangzhou–for majoring in English and for taking literature programs. The explanations I’ve completed so might be discovered within the solutions to the questions put to me under. I’ve, the place vital, generalized the solutions to incorporate a scale that’s extra international.

A. When college students end an English Language and Literature program, they may be capable to do what?

1. These college students will be capable to understand that literature, like every artwork, isn’t created in a vacuum however displays the tradition and occasions wherein it was created. This may trigger them not solely to appreciate, however to point out the significance of having the ability to talk ideas and concepts in a cogent type in order that the authors’ messages and emotions might be understood and appreciated for hundreds of years.

2. These college students will be capable to write and to talk in a scholarly method about necessary points that not solely exist as we speak however have existed for hundreds of years, from earlier than the time of Homer to the current. They are going to be capable to argue successfully as a result of they may have discovered again up opinion with analysis findings, which they’ve discovered to, quote and doc appropriately. They are going to have discovered talk clearly and successfully in order that their very own concepts don’t turn out to be misplaced or ignored.

3. These college students will be capable to conduct analysis in lots of fields as a result of they’ve discovered the proper strategies of researching, documenting, and incorporating findings in analysis papers. Those that have studied inventive writing can even be capable to create their very own literature; that is daring and necessary as a result of it entails digging deeply into themselves and fashioning into artwork one thing that didn’t exist earlier than.

B. Why ought to college students examine with you as a professor?

1. College students ought to examine with me as a professor provided that they’ve a thirst for information and an curiosity in increasing their horizons, which is what training is meant to be about.

2. College students shouldn’t be caught up within the look of studying, trapped solely within the superficial rhetoric however ought to, as an alternative, pay attention to the onerous work that’s wanted to take cost of, and take accountability for, their very own training. They need to pay attention to the truth that training is about life-long studying and life-skills, that it’s greater than mere job coaching and that it’s not finite.

3. If college students examine writing with me, they need to be prepared to face the likelihood that writing and publishing is a troublesome, painful course of, and that inventive writing requires digging into the ache and struggling of our recollections as a result of that’s often the supply of the vitality required to be inventive. It’s an uncomfortable however vital a part of the inventive course of, and this takes not solely honesty but in addition nice braveness.

C. Why ought to college students examine in an English Language and Literature Program? [or Department of Foreign Languages]

1. College students ought to examine in an English Language and Literature Program as a result of it’s important, significantly in areas of the world the place writing abilities are reportedly the weakest, that they be capable to talk clearly, appropriately, and successfully on the extent of clever college college students and, finally, the extent of college graduates who’re in a position to compete with graduates from universities worldwide. They might turn out to be conscious of the world-wide significance of the language or vocabulary with which they convey.

2. They need to examine literature in addition to language with the intention to understand that literature displays the occasions, mores, and philosophies of the authors — that its topic might be as diverse because the a number of factors of on a regular basis life, with which it’s related, not as speak present matters between covers however as critical evaluation of human endeavors and foibles.

3. They might acknowledge and respect the extent of the contributions of literary figures corresponding to William Shakespeare who utilized or created phrases with a genius unknown earlier than or since his time, whose vocabulary was the biggest of any recognized English author, and whose First Folio of his performs gave to all audio system of English extra new phrases than another single supply**. With this recognition and appreciation they might, hopefully, construct a bridge between the previous and the longer term in order that the monumental achievements of the previous aren’t misplaced within the glitz and glitter of a expertise that continues to be within the service of a transitory, materialistic world however are maintained as a basis for a future wealthy with aesthetic and mental prospects.

“Among the many most necessary developments in modern international tradition is the arrival of Western literary criticism and literary idea in China.” This assertion is made by W. J. T. Mitchell in his preface to the chinese tuition singapore version of A HANDBOOK OF CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE, printed for China by the International Language Educating and Analysis Press – a textual content I’m now utilizing for seniors in Analysis Strategies in Ningbo. He provides: “There may be arguably no larger drive in producing understanding between peoples than the transmission of literary traditions – the nice heritage of narrative, lyric, and prose types that give cultures their distinctive character.” This is the reason, I imagine, that extra literature programs are wanted in sure universities in China, not just one semester of British literature and one semester of American however two semesters of every. Extra necessary, college students in all areas of research must be uncovered to world literature and mythology. After I taught literature in Anshan, I needed to cram two semesters of knowledge and small snippets from the first literature into one semester. I complained about this, however to no avail. I attempted to vary textbooks however was not allowed to take action. This was once I was nonetheless naive sufficient to imagine that college students had been attending the college to obtain an training. Many college students right here in Ningbo have referred to me as a critical professor. Since I usually make jokes at school, I assumed that they weren’t referring to a scarcity of humorousness. You see, I had taken it without any consideration that every one professors, overseas or home (Chinese language), had been critical about educating within the classroom. Boy, was I naive.

After I was an undergraduate again in a small faculty in Illinois (my residence state or, as I prefer to name it, God’s Nation), I heard our teacher state {that a} faculty diploma must be handed out with a delivery certificates. I by no means forgot his comment. What I wish to advocate as we speak, due to this fact, is that these universities on each side of the Pacific who’re extra involved with maximizing earnings than they’re with offering an actual training — who intimidate professors who attempt to keep mental requirements –to take this straightforward step: eradicate all course work for college students, cost the scholars and/or their beleaguered dad and mom tuition for the equal of 4 years tuition, and hand to them the diploma. No pretenses. No false claims. Then these universities sincerely fascinated with educating college students with actual requirements can rent the very best professors and recruit solely the intense college students who actually. . . actually. . . actually wish to study for the sake of data. Then information. . . not solely advantage. . . turns into its personal reward.

A lot of literature, and a lot of life, relies on the foundations of world mythology and the best literature that the geniuses of the mighty phrase have produced. That is what it means to be educated for the sake of being educated, not simply educated for employment. As soon as we settle for this, we would get again to what training and the educating of literature is admittedly presupposed to be about.

We will then get critical.

* This “critical” vice-president later allowed college students who had failed programs (one male had failed 4 programs in our English division and one feminine had failed two of mine alone) to stroll throughout the commencement stage as a result of, as he admitted to the school the following day in a gathering, he was intimidated by their dad and mom.

**[See THE STORY OF ENGLISH: 3rd Revised Edition by

Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil

New York: Penguin Book, 2002]

Charles J. Garard is a PhD in literature and movie now residing in Ningbo, China, the place he teaches literature and writing. He taught for 17 years at a small liberal arts faculty in Atlanta and for 2 years at a college in Anshan, China. He writes about movies (for EzineArticle.com and for Amazon.com) and mythology (corresponding to his current article about creatures in Indonesia revealed in a magical journal) and works on his novels about time-travel, vampires, and mainstream matters. He’s now engaged on a fictionalization of his educating experiences in China.


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