Dear Antje,
 
HOW TO READ is not being particularly taught much at American universities--
maybe not anywhere anymore, I fear.  What is being taught in graduate
English studies at American universities is, first, an ideological
point of view to act as a filter in order to prejudge what you are
reading (even to the point of having an opinion BEFORE you read a text),
a filter which then enables you to find in any text whatsoever exactly
what you are expecting to praise or condemn, and which enables you to
ignore everything else--that is, everything of value in the text.  This
procedure guarantees that the student will save much time otherwise
needlessly wasted in unsponsored, undirected thinking--a process that,
in any case, might dangerously eventuate in the student's arriving at an
opinion that differs from that of his or her professor.  In addition,
we have imported all our filters from France (okay, a few from
Germany, maybe), so I can't figure out why the French are trashing
McDonalds and blaming *us* for cultural colonialism.
 
==Dan Pearlman
 
At 11:34 AM 9/2/99 +0200, you wrote:
>Dear professors,
>
>From my point of view as a student in the final stage of my master thesis
>(German Magisterarbeit) I have to tell you, that after I learned  _how_ to
>read, how to ask questions to a text, I've always liked primary texts
>better. The important thing is to teach how to read which I think is being
>done more at American universities than in most of Germany?!? It is always
>so much to be discovered in primary texts which other writers of secondary
>literature haven't found or didn't think of importance. It's never wrong to
>read secondary texts too, but never without the primary source. There is
>always a fashion or a certain point of view under which a secondary text is
>written, but I'd rather have my own point.
>
>Antje Pfannkuchen
>
>
>
>>Robert,
>>I could not agree with you more about the primacy of the texts and the
>>sources! But we might not hold the majority view in this regard. On a
>>medieval list to which I subscribe, a professor emeritus, referring to a
>>compendious work of literary history, opined that you could find out
>>"everything you need to know" about any poem written during the period from
>>that reference work.  Yikes.
>>Tim Romano
>>
>>
>>
>>Robert Kibler wrote:
>>[...]
>> I see his point, but at the same time, think that working over specific
>>texts not only allows students to acquire a sense of the work, its times,
>>but that doing so also develops critical skills that will be important to
>>them wherever they go. Second hand information is just not that conducive to
>>the development of critical thought. [...]
>
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