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Perhaps a contentious question, but why shouldn't an English university teach a western-dominated curriculum? I'm English, and that's my culture. I want to lear
by Veen 4y ago
Perhaps a contentious question, but why shouldn't an English university teach a western-dominated curriculum? I'm English, and that's my culture. I want to learn about it. I also want to learn about other cultures, but I see no issue with my culture being centered in the nation from which it originated. I don't imagine Chinese or Pakistani universities are terribly concerned about decentering their respective cultures.
- sergiomattei 4y agoThat’s not a problem! There’s nothing wrong with it. Perhaps you can switch professors or course. There are usually alternatives in these universities for going deeper in a topic. I’d expect a general literature course to give me a good overview of world literature, and to go deeper I’d choose a more specific class on the subject. There’s only so much time during the semester, and exposing the student to a breadth of information is the point.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoThere are classes in Elizabethan English literature. A broad creative writing class should be expected to cover more forms. It would be like learning the discoveries of only English chemists in chemistry class. The problem here is the wording the professor used to justify the change, but triggering outrage from the usual suspects by using the ancient "trolling" creative writing form and then "leaking" that justification seems like this could just be a kind of performance art.
- car_analogy 4y agoAnd it does cover more forms. But, until now, it focused on (not excluded all others, just focused on) traditional English forms. I.e. teaching young writers the styles of their culture, just as a university in Japan might require of their students proficiency in haikus. That does not mean they are not taught anything other than haikus, and I'm not sure where you got that impression.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoFrom the article: "Students of poetry no longer have to write traditional forms as part of their assessment.... Examples of such traditional forms given in the slideshow include sonnets and “sestinas” - a complex verse form used by figures like the Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sindey." I don't care enough about creative writing to have read a lot of modern creative writing, but I have never seen a sestina. I have seen plenty of haikus. Again, the change itself seems perfectly reasonable. The "products of white western culture" wording of the slideshow seems suspiciously flame-baity (or taken out of context), triggering the War on Christmas outrage culture fanatics.
- cuteboy19 4y agoI swear, modern day white people who have nothing to do with colonialism seem to be far more obsessed with it than those who experienced it (it's 70 years in the past and we can no longer blame our problems on it). I don't think this nonsense behaviour should be tolerated. A white person should not be any more ashamed of their culture than an Indian or Chinese person.
- sergiomattei 4y agoI don’t understand — having the option to write a sestina or a haiku is nonsense behavior? You’re just looking for something to be mad at.
- bt0pher 4y agoWe should be more vocal about this messaging. It's gotten too far and we need to push back that colonisation is a part of life. If you are in a western country, you should not have to be indoctrinated and debased into caring about the cultures that lost.