Hidden Intellectualism

yes, i stole the post title from a gerald graff article, but for those of you who didn't know that, I'll take all the credit for it...in response to the discussion between taryn and leo, i'd like to chime in with my two cents, as is my way, of course...leo, i hear ya, and agree with you in concept...yes, ideally we'd live in a world where students would enjoy the canon...however, realistically, we'd like to live in a world where students may not necessarily enjoy the canon, but wouldn't fuss about having to read it in school with the hopes that they'd get something out of it...yet, realistically, we'd like to live in a world where everyone can read...yet, realisitically, we'd like to live in a world and not get shot by a enraged student...realisitically, we'd all just like to live...point being, i agree with you in concept but as graff argues, often times as english teachers, we privilege certain areas of scholarship over others...for example, he argues in his article, that teachers inherently value shakespeare over car magazines, and i hear echoes of those same sentiments in your previous posts...you've expressed your concerns that anyone who watches nothing but MTV will eventually be a dumber person. my response is twofold: dumber than what? and why MTV? i have a colleague who is writing his dissertation on Youtube...another colleague of mine wrote his entire master's thesis on MTV's coverage of the 2004 presidential ecletion, and i myself wrote my master's thesis on YA Lit (as you know)...so, what's my point? my point is graff's point: that there really is nothing inherently "good" about the canon just as there is nothing inherently "bad" about car magazines...you use the word crap in your postings to describe that which, I can only assume, you don't consider academically viable...but "crap" is a value judgement. just like good, great, gay, sucky, awesome, or okay...you can't "prove" the crappiness of a text anymore than you can "prove" the existence of God...or lack thereof on both accounts...thus, you reflect the notion that society functions along a lines of dubbing opinions facts and in turn refuses to accept that perhaps by studying car magazines (as i often encourage my students to do) one can learn a great deal about gender bias, visual rhetoric, and classist assumptions...sure, MTV has a lot of crap on it, but in and of itself, watching it won't make people dumber...maybe they're dumb to begin with for watching nothing but MTV...or, maybe not...