all teachers of English know, as well as I do, how complete and dismal is the failure of liberal education in this country—at both high school and college level. I am sure that all weep, as much as I do, about the fact that few, if any, of their students can read better than sixth-grade children, or write well, or speak well, or listen well. They certainly do not know how to read a book, either for comprehension or for appreciation, either to receive instruction or to delight in beauty.
Instead of dwelling on these well-known and lamentable facts, instead of repeating the therapy I have described in How to Read a Book, I am going to try to explain why liberal education has fallen to such low estate, how it has happened, and what can be done about it. And central to my explanation is the peculiar status of the teacher of English. The history of the teaching of English reveals, I think, the gradual decay of the liberal arts and the progressive degradation of the curriculum to its present state.
On the other hand, the teacher of English is the most indispensable man on any faculty, for he is the only one left who is it all concerned with the liberal arts as the disciplines which train a mind for the most characteristic function of human life—communication. With the progressive decomposition of the curriculum under the shattering impact of the elective system and the insidious encroachment of the sciences, especially the social sciences, upon the field of humane letters, the English teacher has become the last defender of the faith that something can be learned from books. I mean books—not textbooks; I mean great literature—not current journalism about current events.
On the other hand, and paradoxical though it seems, the very reasons which make the English teacher the indispensable man are the reasons why English departments and English courses should be completely abolished as such. It is precisely because the English teacher is the last—and often a very frail—vestige of the liberal tradition in our education, it is precisely because he still cherishes literature and the liberal arts—though his devotion (under dire threats) is often secret and unconfessed—that the English teacher should commit academic suicide.
I am not recommending suicide as an empty gesture or as an expression of despair. I am thinking of militant martyrdom. My simple thesis is that English—its courses, teachers, and departments—should be abolished in favor of the restoration of a truly liberal curriculum in secondary and collegiate education. The English teacher should cease to be a separate academic entity, only on the condition, of course, that every other teacher would become a teacher of English, or, to say more precisely what I mean, a teacher of liberal arts; for my main point is that what the English teacher is now trying to do, often half-heartedly, often unwittingly, and almost always inadequately, should be done by the whole faculty in a curriculum which is not atomized into courses or made chaotic by departmental prerogatives. Only if it its thus done can what the English teacher is trying to do be well done.
Perhaps I have now explained my title, the question, What Is Basic About English? In asking this question I am not thinking about the tragic possibility that English may be the only language left in which civilized men can think and talk freely, even though that fact by itself would make it terribly basic. Nor am I thinking of the semantic invention known as basic English.
What I have in mind is simply this: That if one asks what functions the teaching of English performs in contemporary education the answer will show that these functions are so basic educationally that they cannot be performed well in a single course or series of courses which the natural and social sciences still permit to exist in an innocuous corner of the curriculum.