Required Literature Course: why? why? why?

          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 literature 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,
his 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, 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
course. So that they might become savvy.  Better able to
study sociology and psychology, religion and philosophy,
if not points south, the offerings of Hamill & Witherspoon:
nether regions where a literary sense might could handicap
them down  there for  awhile, confuse the issues, but become
stronger for it.