Sometimes I think there is no recognisable discipline of ‘English’, no genuine whole, but only a set of contrived frontiers and selected approaches which, for complicated historical and cultural reasons, have come to be known as a ‘subject’.
– Richard Hoggart
I love hypothetical scenarios. I love thinking about ‘what might be’ in most situations – world politics, technology, parallel universes – even if I have a cursory understanding of some of those subjects at best and even if my predictions are seriously flawed. The simple act of guessing makes my brain feel like the world’s most satisfied CPU as I crunch the numbers and weigh the options. This quote, by Richard Hoggart, made me wonder about a world without I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis, a world without English.
Firstly, despite what I’ve posted here regarding the subject of English, I’m very loyal to the subject. I love it to death, and it’s what I’d like to spend my life with if I’m lucky enough to be in an agreeable situation. If English weren’t a subject I still would have had my parents called into the school because I wouldn’t stop reading on a science day. I still would have walked the halls of my middle school tripping over things because I was too far into the latest teen fantasy novel to stop reading in between classes. I still would want to live the rest of my life this way.
But what if wasn’t allowed to study it? What if none of us were? I guess I’d end up filling my second major with philosophy, or another social science to pair nicely with economics (major #1). Literature would still be a scholastic staple, I think. Being denied disciplinarity and boundaries, borders, limits I think English would seep deep into the roots of education. I think most subjects would end up incorporating famous relevant works into their lessons – done easily for the humanities, though less so for sciences and maths – in part because the school would require some continuation of the reading and writing skills that followed quickly after walking and talking, and also because it’s an incredibly efficient method of passing on information from the past. Rather than learn about the concepts that the Founding Fathers based our democracy on, students could read Voltaire or John Locke. Rather than learn about evolution, students could read The Origin of Species.
But I don’t think it would be the same. I don’t think I would get good enough at reading to feel like a super sleuth when I pick up on a novel’s subtleties. I don’t think I’d read as much as I do now. I’d like to think that I would still discover a passion for writing even if there were no classes to develop that passion, but the truth is that I just don’t know. And I’m glad I’ll never have to find out.