I know I’ve prattled on on previous occasions about the importance of reading as well as the general failure of the school education system to make a concerted effort not only to teach learners throughout how to read but also to teach teachers how to teach reading. But there’s an associated problem that is no less crucial in the struggle against illiteracy and illogical reasoning. Of course, I’m talking about spelling.
In the contemporary world, it would seem that spelling has become almost irrelevant, heading down the same slippery slope as punctuation and correct grammar. And part of the issue resides in our ever-increasing emphasis on specialisation. We no longer want commerce or law or journalism or psychology students to study literature. We want them to study wishy-washy watered-down courses on English for Commerce, English for Law, English for Journalism, English for Psychology. But never English for the sake of becoming literate, well-read human beings, able to think and argue about the larger issues in our society that do, and will continue to impact on the lives of their families, their colleagues, and those with whom they have to interact. Apparently, relevance is the deal-breaker.
I have no doubt that, in the past, some extraordinarily inappropriate works of literature have been prescribed. I confess that several Victorian novelists are not on my list of the 100 authors you should read before you die. Their periphrastic circumlocutory utterances leave me cold. But this is my personal list; I’m not prescribing reading materials for syllabuses. There are hundreds of titles offering impeccably-constructed, stylistically elegant contemporary tales permitting students to encounter characters and situations which may not be specifically dovetailed to their particular profession but which would enable them to learn a great deal about the human condition, the world where they will seek to earn a livelihood in their particular professions. Knowing about such works means being well-read, and there’s the rub.
Studying literature remains crucially relevant because it enables everyone to learn how to defend their intellectual integrity against what Malcolm Cowley calls “the jackals of the mind”.