Let's Cancel the Rutgers English Department

It should not come as a surprise. The elite pedagogues of America’s greatest academic institutions have long since given up on correct grammar. We are no longer allowed to use gendered pronouns, but are required to use the illiterate “they” to refer to one person, two persons or a multitude of persons. 

First, they came for the pronouns. Then they started out after your mind. They will do so by making literature courses into anti-racist propaganda mills. And they will cease teaching good grammar, because, you know, good grammar is white.

In the first place, this means that the graduates of these programs will be functionally illiterate. In the second place, it means that these programs will no longer attract even the most semi-intelligent students. They will become adjuncts of ethnic studies programs, the kind that were instituted when colleges and universities started admitting students who had grossly inferior test scores… and who thus could not do the work.

The problem with this stupidity is simple: will these courses still teach the great writers, writers who knew English grammar? And, by the way, when the graduates of these programs go out in the world they are going to have a rather rude awakening when they discover that they will be excluded from dinner parties, job opportunities and social activities because they speak like lumpen proles. No one can advance in our world if he cannot speak correct English.

The College Fix has the story from Rutgers University (via Maggie’s Farm):

The English Department at Rutgers University recently announced a list of “anti-racist” directives and initiatives for the upcoming fall and spring semesters, including an effort to deemphasize traditional grammar rules.

The initiatives were spelled out by Rebecca Walkowitz, the English Department chair at Rutgers University, and sent to faculty, staff and students in an email, a copy of which was obtained by The College Fix.

So, if you can’t speak English and can’t write English, the Rutgers English Department is going to let you wallow in ignorance. We recall wistfully the story about a charter school in New York’s Harlem where minority children are taught Latin. That is, correct conjugations, correct declensions, correct grammar. Guess what, they love it. And they are thrilled to learn how a language functions. They are even more thrilled to learn how to use correct English.

Under a so-called critical grammar pedagogy, “This approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage,” the email states.

“Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”

Of course, this is barely literate. In truth, it means that students who cannot speak English will still be able to receive good grades in English courses. Evidently, this will devalue their degrees and make the Rutgers English Department a laughing stock. 

Naturally, this will require the department to stop teaching the great English language writers. Students will be indoctrinated in black English, black sensibility, black culture and white police brutality:

In 2020-2021, we are running 14 courses in the fields of African-American literature, on subjects ranging from W.E.B. Dubois and His Afterlives to Afro-Futurism and Black Speculative Fiction.

Building on this commitment to African American Literature as a standalone requirement for the major, we are also implementing a new Global South requirement, the fruit of two years of curricular study and revision by the faculty. This will create more space in the curriculum for courses in the areas of post-colonial, ethnic American, and global Anglophone literatures and support future hiring in these fields.

Now, you are thinking that children in China are subjected to indoctrination and propaganda in their schoolwork. Yet, American children are indoctrinated, not with the great writers in the English language, but by being forced to read the lesser lights, the ones who can barely write or think:

We are developing modular [creative writing] assignments on a) identity issues and b) social change issues that all of our [creative writing] instructors will be invited to use; they will be expected to use one, or to craft their own. This curricular innovation will be part of the entire [creative writing] curriculum for next year – in every [creative writing] class.

We will design the reading for Rutgers Day 2021 to specifically address issues of anti-black racism and social justice. This is our annual reading-under-the-tent, which attracts students, faculty, administrators, and community members to the Rutgers campus.

So, the Rutgers English department has become an indoctrination mill to train social justice warriors. Isn’t it about time that it be canceled?