Reading Lynn Bloom's "The Essay Canon" in Norton is to take a walk down the memory lane of undergraduate English studies. Most English majors have likely read most of the essays Bloom discusses in her article, and many are memorable for shaping life or the way we read or write or for creating pedagogies. It is understandable why the "canon czars" (947) select the essays they do. Although Jonathan Swift wrote "A Modest Proposal" in 1729, his writing holds value today, evidenced by its inclusion in Readers as "the most widely reprinted essay" and is the "subject of thirty-eight critical or pedagogical works in the past twenty-five years" (947). Bloom delineates Readers as "anthologies intended for freshman composition" (945). "Modest Proposal" adheres to a canon czars' criteria of teachability (956), and the aesthetic qualities of form - "Is the essay a good rhetorical model" - and of "technique" (957). As far as to what is included in a canon, Bloom relates that "Teachers have more influence over the canon than they may realize" (947), but does that mean that teachers and canon czars are correct in their selections of essays?
While the powers who are responsible for selecting essays for inclusion in various works have good intentions to satisfy literary, political, rhetorical, multicultural, and gender-related representation, teachers are responsible for what students read. The results they hope to obtain, however, are not always achieved. Consider Barbara Schneider's "Uncommon Ground: Narcissistic Reading and Material Racism." Despite Schneider's best intentions to use essay models from bell hooks and Mike Rose as "entry points for a discussion" (about racism) (921), what the discussions resulted in was not what she had hoped. Her students divided themselves along color lines, and the essays created "affective barriers to learning" (924) instead of the bridge she had hoped to build.
What if students were to play a role in choosing what is read in a freshman composition course?
Teachers have traditionally been responsible for what is read in their composition courses. If the goal is to have enriching discourse that enhances or alters the ways students think about their world and critically reflect new ways of thinking in their writing, could they possibly have a say in at least a portion of their own reading? While there are variances in what students bring with them to a freshman composition course, most students have studied great literary works. The canon is not only for college anthologies and Readers. Students hear Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech in elementary school, and they read it and "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in middle or high school. They also read Emily Dickenson, Langston Hughes, e.e. cummings, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Frederick Douglass, Robert Frost, Thoreau, N. Scott Momaday, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Shakespeare to name a few. Secondary students now read many of the essays that are included in collegiate texts. Students are so well-versed in internet research by the time they get to college, they could very well be able to find texts that will foster the kinds of discourse composition teachers desire.
Peter Elbow, in "Being a Writer vs. Being an Academic: A Conflict in Goals," relates that he sometimes feels "a conflict about what we should read in the first year writing course" (489). Elbow's goal, of course, is to help students become writers and academics. Perhaps if students have a measure of authority in selecting some of their readings in a first-year composition course, teachers and students might attain their goals of useful discourse that will enhance student writing and eventually create academic writers.
There are enormous difficulties in determining the canon, and I don't imagine that will change. The idea of a canon is becoming archaic. There are too many viewpoints to satisfy every group and some will have to be excluded. It's an interesting idea to involve students in determining their own reading. I do think it's overly optimistic to think they have enough varied reading experience to be able to choose texts. Some certainly have been exposed to many authors, but not all, and not all who have been retained the information. However, if they were presented with topics or themes to choose from, the teacher could then select the author who bests presents that theme. Or the students could be presented with this author or that author choices. Having some choice in the matter may encourage students to be more invested in their academic life.
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