Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T21:55:05.458Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

You Can Always Teach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

Sometimes a question has been answered in so many creative ways that we overlook the assumptions underlying such responses. When students ask, “What can I do with a degree in literature?” the answers suggest that instructors hear a second, unasked part of the question: “-besides a career in teaching.” That PMLA has reserved space to address a related question-“Why major in literature-what do we tell our students?”-suggests a professional interest not merely in the careers available to literature majors but more broadly in testing what MLA members say about our profession. One answer is that literature majors, like other majors in the liberal arts and humanities, have a wide selection of career choices. The knowledge students gain from modern and classical languages, history, social and political sciences, philosophy, and literature serves graduates by giving them a breadth of experiences and ideas, by developing creative thinking, and by providing skills in communication that make BAs and MAs attractive to employers in business, technology, industry, government, and research, to name a few. But these options omit the one career, sometimes considered a clichéd choice, often left unsaid: literature majors make-or ought to make-excellent teachers.

Type
The Changing Profession
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Edison-Fareira High School.” The Penn-Edison Partnership. Dept. of English, U of Pennsylvania. 18 Jan. 2002 <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~edison/gen-descrip.html>..>Google Scholar
Kinzer, Stephen. “Chicagoans Are Reading the Same Book at the Same Time.” New York Times on the Web 28 Aug. 2001. 28 Aug. 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/books/28MOCK.html>.Google Scholar
Kolodny, Annette. Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kozol, Jonathan. Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope. New York: Perennial-Harper, 2000.Google Scholar
Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. New York: Perennial-Harper, 1991.Google Scholar