I hear people talking about the “canon.” This is not a military school, so whats going on?
Artillery is spelled cannon; the academic canon is a set of books, writers, and theories which we presume we should all understand. Decades ago, there was greater consensus about what should be in the canon – Shakespeare, Freud, European history, botany. Most (but not all) professors have come to realize that the old canon was Eurocentric, did not show much curiosity about the rest of the world, and failed to recognize the contributions of non-whites and women. The old canon also made some simplistic assumptions about the relationship between science and the humanities that are no longer tenable. But it is not a simple matter to simply cram more knowledge into the package we offer. Instead, most of us recognize that the old certainties about canonic knowledge are probably gone forever, and that we must engage in an ongoing discussion among ourselves, with our colleagues, and with our students, about what universities should teach.
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