Why It Is We Require Literature IN Gen-Ed

 
     Catalytic Conversations.
        (Butter flies in Brazil
        Hurricanes in Kansas)
 
         Justifying My Love
 
Put in a plumb
Pull out a thumb.
Oh, what a good
boy am I. 
 
     generalized education
 
Why do you suppose we insist that
all students take “a literature” course
knowing full well that 12 years of lower
education saturated them in stories if not
earlier on Poppa’s lap or snuggled  against
a pillow with Mom & Mother Goose?
 
“Bears can’t talk, silly,” I assure  my daughter,.
 “no no no: just a rhetorical device. Make Believe
for crying out loud.; vehicle for the author to carry
courage & his convictions, beginnings, middles,
and endings: head stuck in a  honey jar and
wondering: now what?
 
       Don’t you want to know?
           That’s the trick!
 
So they can learn to see thru the appearances
is why we require them all to take a literature
course at some point in their  higher education,
noetic token-carriers, little  engines that could
convey deeper, more profound significances,
maps of the territories, legends of the maps so
they, like us, won’t be fooled by what appears.
 
Let BE be finale of seem.
The only Emperor is the
emperor of ice cream...
 
What other discipline aims at resurrecting
freeze-dried mind-on -a-page , putting  IT
in play among the revivalists, sending IT up
a flag  pole to see who salutes? Arguing
IT out, differentiating  between explicit  &
implicit,  literal & metaphorical, straight-out
sincerity & ironic ambiguity and (Eng Teachers
Delight):  uncovering hidden meanings,
cerebral truffles.
 
Did you think it’s American Literature  that
counts? or English? or even European? No:
let them take any literature course it  don’t
matter the token topic and particular subject-
object matter: it’s learning that Bears Don’t
Talk Except in Conventions Where They
Represent but are NOT  themselves the
represented  so children might not confuse
the signs with the signifier or with the signified,
know what I’m saying?
 
That’s the whole point of requiring every  student
to take yet again another literature course—but
this time:  a  college version--so that they might
become savvy.  Better  able to study sociology
and psychology, religion and philosophy, if not
points south, nether regions of Hamil and
Witherspoon where a literary sense might could
appropriately handicap them for  awhile, confuse
the issues and become stronger for it.

xxxooo. Sam