Impossible Study

The course covers such a diversity of texts that it is impossible either to make a detailed study of them or to make anything but a superficial connection between them. There is no attempt to make any sort of relevant link with any other course. Students feel that the more lime spent on English the more time consumed out of their worthwhile study. They find the solution is to spend as little time as possible on the course.

Of course, if the whole idea is to develop a critical faculty in the student modern books could be studied just as well, with far more relevance to the student's outlook on life and his attitude to the course. At school there is more excuse for clinging to lame and outdated volumes for study, as considerable capital outlay is required to equip a class with new books. Nevertheless most high schools I know have left the English Department far behind in the study of recent literature. If the course succeeded in developing a facility in critical thinking and expression it would be considered a boon by all disciplines. Indeed for a subject as remote as Legal System the first exercise is a critical assessment of a book to test just this faculty.