Counterrevolution in the Classroom.

• Author: Damon, William
• Position: Brief Article

Those of us who dwell on campuses and read the Chronicle of Higher Education have noticed a recent counterrevolution in the teaching of college humanities. The winds have shifted away from the "deconstructionist" criticism that uncovered hidden themes of race, class, and gender to the more direct "teaching of the text." Aesthetics have become popular again. Instructors have once again taken up the charge of showing students why and how people can perceive beauty in a Shakespearian sonnet or a Rembrandt portrait. Back in style are the profound lessons of truth and meaning.

Why the change? It seems that market forces do work. Students were checking out from obscure, agenda-driven, negative courses dominated by critical theory, finding little reason to sit through the lectures or read the assignments. If the classic texts were seen as neither beautiful nor true, but were taught simply as indications of exploitations long past, why bother with them? The return of appreciation for the texts is reawakening student interest.

A similar counterrevolution is needed in teaching historical and civic understanding to elementary and secondary school students. The rage among trendsetters is "cosmopolitan education," a notion that sets itself in opposition to traditional values such as patriotism. One leading educator, for example, urges schools to avoid instilling "irrational" patriotism "full of color and intensity and passion," claiming that the notion of national belonging "reinforces this kind of irrationality, by lending to what is an accident of history a false air of moral weight and glory." Combined with a teaching of history that emphasizes our country's sins rather than its achievements, the message that students are receiving is negative. My high school...