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The Daily Tar Heel

Letter: ​College gen eds are becoming too easy

TO THE EDITOR:

You carried a front-page tab (April 20) headed, “Defeated by Chickens,” and offering the information that “a chanticleer is a rooster.”

I noted the item with mixed feelings. When I became a UNC freshman in the autumn of 1952, everyone, without exception, was required to pass English 21, a course in Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare: substantial passages of Chaucer, six books of “Paradise Lost” and six Shakespeare plays.

I had never knowingly read a line of Chaucer, but I had the good luck to have Lyman A. Cotten as my instructor in English 21. Not only was he a superb teacher, among other benefits, he required us to memorize the 13 opening lines of the “Canterbury Tales” in middle English and recite them to him. The result is indelible. I can still recite them 63 years later. My point is that we mandatory readers of Chaucer know who Chanticleer is — indeed, a rooster and a character in one of Chaucer’s more amusing tales.

I mourn the passing of the rigorous general college requirements of my day (Western history, three hard sciences, English composition, two units of a foreign language and other demanding courses).

For those who survived them — and even for some who did not — these courses laid the groundwork of a classic education: something to build upon and enjoy throughout life. Those who designed the curriculum of that day knew and honored the distinction between education and training.

Now, I gather that most have vanished – I don’t know why unless many tenured faculty deem it beneath them to teach them. I often hear complaints from friends of my vintage that they do not understand Shakespearian language, or Milton’s, to say nothing of middle English.

You are aware that former UNC athletes are attempting to sue the University on the grounds that they were steered toward crip courses and “cheated” of an education. I doubt that this question-begging contention will prosper in the courts. Surely, no one forced them to study what they studied. 

But the larger issue is this: How many tens of thousands of UNC undergraduates have passed through without a grounding in the old general college requirements and wish, frequently, that they had met them? Or as the title of a recent book has it, “Who Killed Homer?”

Edwin M. Yoder Jr.

Editor, The Daily Tar Heel 1955-56

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