By Julia Mericle
Assistant News Editor
This week in my English 321 class my professor announced that we will be reading “Paradise Lost” by John Milton. My classmate and I looked at each other and smiled because in another English class, English 203, that we take together we very recently finished reading the same poem.
Of course, at first I was thrilled at this. It means a few days of less reading and studying for that class. However, upon further reflection I realized how ridiculous it was students were being required to complete the same homework for two separate classes.
These two classes have been extremely similar throughout the year. During the course of the semester, seven of the same authors, including Shakespeare, John Donne and Ben Johnson, have been studied in both classes. Several of the same plays and poems have been taught twice. Not to mention a few of the works had already been taught in my high school.
I do not fault the professors for this, as I am sure they are just following curriculum. However, this means the curriculum needs to be reevaluated to ensure that students are not getting so much repetition between classes. In a university setting such as this, it is a waste of student’s time to have to sit through more than one class of learning the same material.
With all the time being spent on teaching texts that have already been studied and exhausted, students could be reading a greater amount of contemporary works and further readings on topics that spark their own personal interests.
While it is important to read literature from the past to understand the context of other times, it is equally as important to read current literature to stay informed and aware of the world around us right now. The ratio of historical to modern readings in classes is not in balance.
For example, the most recent literature being covered in my reading-intensive classes this semester is from 1800. The only exception to that is a book published in 2008, which is entirely about the English Renaissance. While these readings should not be eliminated from the curriculum, texts from more recent decades should be incorporated, as well.
Just as it is important for students to try to keep updated on current events by reading or watching the news, teaching modern texts in class would keep students aware of the changing and thriving literary world as well. Studying such literature would enable students to better connect and compare them to works of other time periods and be able to understand their surroundings in a new light.
If classes taught a greater variety of literature and included more contemporary themes, students would gain a greater and more applicable knowledge of the world.
Julia Mericle is the assistant news editor of The Bona Venture. Her email is mericlje13@bonaventure.edu
