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09/16/2002: more on why I have issues with book lists
I started to reply to the comment by Jacquez on my last entry, and it was getting really long, so noticed that I have issues with such reading lists, which probably don't have much to do with the actual intention of those reading lists. Anyway, since it is my blog, my issues are at least sort-of on topic, so --
I am not against reading recommendations. I know I have looked for such lists, when I moved on from books for children and young adults to "literature." But I haven't found canonized lists of "those are the essential books to understand X" (with X being a country, culture, era, whatever) to be helpful.
And more often than not those lists are not multiracial or have women in them, though the one in question had. Also a lot of what is often mentioned on such lists here (here meaning my RL surroundings), had no relevance whatsoever to me. OTOH a lot of what had great relevance never made it onto any list I've seen.
However, these lists had a great relevance in my life with their effect of being snobbish and exclusive towards other kinds of reading, a good deal of which was my reading. That might not have been the original intention of those lists, but they had that effect, and I think they actually can discourage people from reading instead of guiding them to good stuff.
I think I just have personal issues with this kind of approach that are probably not close to what your list is intended to mean.
I have no clue how the idea of what culture is and what not is "enforced" in US high schools, I actually won't even generalize that my experiences with this kind of thing are representative for how it is here.
But I think the way the German education system is organized is very much a class system that disadvantages huge numbers of people. Here children are sorted at age 10 into categories that ultimately result in either being allowed entrance to college or not, since one kind of school will lead to college the others will not (it is a bit more complicated than that, but that is the gist of it). Also, for example in my year, from the people who started with me at age 10 maybe one third dropped out before gaining the right to go to college. There are ways to change schools later, but they are hard and not actually encouraged it seems. The only thing that happens is that people get moved from "higher" to "lower" school forms if they fail.
This system does not only disadvantage poor people, and people from minorities, which are known to be judged by teachers to be able to attend schools leading to higher education less often, it also leads to worse test results for all kinds of students, including those on the supposedly "higher" school forms, when compared internationally.
But nobody wants to change this failed system because there is this persistent thought, maybe a fixation even, that you have to separate students into groups to impart a higher, valued cultural education only on some because all those pesky future menial laborers (*dripping sarcasm*) won't have use for it anyway. Which might have been a "useful" oppressive concept when the system was first conceived, despite being wrong, but in a modern society it is also economically counterproductive.
The idea that those finishing the "higher" school forms should be in possession of a certain defined canon of cultural knowledge and education is IMO still very powerful here. And it is part of the justification of those school forms in opposition to the others, at least it seems that way to me.
Whether schools achieve this or not, the idea is there. Especially for children from upper class or upper middle class families. I went to a school that had a fair number of its students from a wealthier neighborhood, however since that area also bordered at poorer areas, it was quite mixed. The really status conscious parents of friends I had in elementary school often chose a different public school, in particular traditional ones teaching Latin as first foreign language, I lost maybe a third of my friends after elementary school through that. But there were enough of those parents who were aspiring for a classical education in my school that I saw the effects first hand with a fair number of my classmates, though the most extreme examples I met outside of my school. (Obviously the effects of all this on the privileged are still far better than on those who are disadvantaged by the system, still it affects both, and both not for the better, IMO.)
This "ideal" canon includes knowledge of three foreign languages with four being better (obviously Latin is important in that view, hence the aforementioned school changes), it includes playing at least one classical instrument (which is why so many in my class learned piano, violin, cello, clarinet etc., simple guitar or recorder will be not enough), knowledge of major important stuff in the humanities (that includes those canonized reading lists, (European) history, philosophy, the usual, not so much the more recent humanities like psychology, sociology etc. or sciences and math). There is still a lot of status connected to having a classical education, but obviously even here you can't make a lot of money with that and university is specialized early on, so that emphasizes the importance of school in that regard.
This "ideal" is the source why people who go to schools founded in the 16th century will make you feel that their school was founded then, when yours only exists since 1910, of course not openly disdaining, but there is status and arrogance attached to it. Theirs is a public school just like the rest, but it's the remnant of classical education of the bourgeoisie and as that it has status. That may be less of an issue today than 50 or even 20 years ago, but it's still there, IMO. And it shows later too, or the guys I went to lunch with as undergrad wouldn't have shown off their Latin conversation skills to each other in a sort of pissing contest (mind you, they were physics students, not archaeology or something). Or brought their violin to class, to subtly show off that they are part of an orchestra with performances.
But there is a flip side to valuing that kind of culture so much, which is that many devalue the rest, because the status distinction between "high culture" and "low/pop/mass culture" is so strong. That has gotten less extreme the last decades, and my parents were sympathetic to "low culture" since they had their own comics and pulp novels burned by their parents, but I've met people who were unable to understand/read a comic page I'd drawn and shown to them. Not only were they comic-illiterate because their parents had prohibited any comics, they claimed they didn't need to understand that either. They were certain that it couldn't really be anything good, because it wasn't on such lists. And that I should rather read XY from "list of important books" than what I liked to read.
This attitude leads to teachers who chide people for reading the wrong stuff (e.g. Stephen King, not Goethe), and devalues a lot of stuff, and to people not reading anything because saying "I don't like to read" can often lead to less disparaging remarks than to admit to reading "inferior" stuff.
That's why I have issues with these lists, I got them shoved in my face constantly, for reading comics, for liking tv, etc. And yes, it's probably just an arrogant minority who sees these list in that way, otherwise American movies wouldn't be hugely popular here, but it still grates on me.
I've just seen to many times that canonization leads to blissful ignorance to things that are outside the canon, and sometimes that leads to really extreme things. I mean I had conversations with intelligent seeming and well read people, who couldn't even conceive that I might find popular culture being worth my time, who insisted that I was some deluded pawn of an American cultural, imperialistic machinery or something for liking Star Wars or Batman, but had never read any Batman comic, nor in fact seen a Star Wars movie. Granted, those types are rare, but I think those lists are what makes them feel superior instead of deluded, because even those who do like popular culture will often agree that it shouldn't be on such lists, but the canonized culture is rightly on it.
I think what bugs me is the "authority" with which these lists tend to be proclaimed in the contexts where I've most often encountered them. And that in these contexts the "authority" (whether with real influence or based on wishful thinking) claims the right of definition to say what good culture is and what is not. So that's why I have a knee-jerk reaction to these lists -- I think.
