On English majors (Updates at bottom):

Keckler has posted a defense of English majors. Not, you know, being an English major myself, I don't have the same view on it that she does.

I agree that it is possible for English majors to be able to think analytically/logically, use proper grammar, keep large amounts of information in my head, and I have a lot of respect for several English majors that I know. But I don't think it requires that you be able to do this to get a degree in English, which is I think why English majors don't get much respect.

The problem has to do with a lack of a required sequence, I think. You can't get through a math degree without knowing some analysis and algebra. You can't get through a bio degree without knowing some bio and chem. But you can get through an English degree at many schools without reading Shakespeare. And that just seems wrong. English seems to lack the weed-out classes that other majors have, so more untalented people fall through the cracks and get degrees. So of course it's a misconception that getting an English major is automatically easy, but it's also a misconception to say that it can't be easy, assuming you choose your electives accordingly.

The other reason that English majors don't get much respect is a bit less defensible, though. Most people believe that they can think analytically, use basic grammar, disect plots of books/movies. See the imdb boards if you don't believe me. Now, clearly this isn't a true statement, as evidenced by the imdb boards among other things. However, when they see people majoring in something, they kind of think "well, damn, I can read a book and talk about it. What a stupid course of study." Most people who can't do math are convinced that they can't do math (and sometime I would like to post about that misconception), so when they see someone who does math, they think, "I can't do that. That person must be really smart." So this lack of respect stems from common misjudgement of talent.

The thing seems to me that English majors are either very smart or very dumb. This may not be true at all. I've never taken an English class. Not one. But I definitely know some very smart English majors and some very dumb ones, and really no one in the middle.

And, for what it's worth, most science majors think that anyone who doesn't do science is kind of dumb, not just the English majors. Even social scientists are suspect. And the people I know at least spend far more time making fun of Fundamentals/Gender Studies/Econ majors than English ones.

Updated 19/4/04 at 6pm: OK, a couple of responses. First in the comments, I don't know much about math degree programs at other universities, but from what friends have told me, the MIT program is a bit unusual. Most programs seem to require at least a couple of basic sequences. At Chicago, the requirements are: math 203-4-5 or 207-8-9 (analysis or honors analysis), which gives you both the background in multivariate calculus and some background in basic analysis (and of course a lot more for honors algebra) and math 254-55 or Math 257-8 (basic algebra or honors basic algebra), which does a fair amount of modern group theory/ring theory, and most math majors take the third quarter as well, covering fields and a little Galois theory. There is at least some shared knowledge among math majors.

As to Amanda's points, I agree with her that every school of lit crit (or as far as I'm concerned, any school of lit crit) needn't be covered in an undergraduate English curriculum. But I disagree with her characterisation of my analogy here: "Yes, you can graduate from Chicago with a degree in English literature without having ever read Shakespeare. So what? That's not analagous to getting a bio degree without knowing biology. Shakespeare is a big part of the literature of the English language, but he's not essential." I wasn't comparing an English major not knowing Shakespeare with a Bio major not knowing any bio. Daniel compared it to graduating with a degree in physics and not knowing any relativity. I agree with his basic idea, but I would go a bit further; in many ways at least, the theory of relativity is a sort of side road in physics, while Shakespeare is definitely not a little escursion off the beaten path in English. I see graduating with a degree in English without knowing Shakespeare as graduating with a degree in math and not knowing any modern algebra or graduating with a degree in physics and not knowing any quantum mechanics. Like scientific fields, to a certain extent literature builds up on itself, and I'm not sure you can really understand at least most of 17th-18th century English lit, and I would argue even modern English lit, without knowing something about what Shakespeare did. Just like I can't understand geometry, number theory, and topology without understanding algebra, or like I can't understand the physics of the last, God almost a hundred years now, without understanding quantum.

I agree that an English major can encourage analytical thinking, though again, I think it's entirely possible to get an English degree without learning this, and I think there are plenty of other places to get a logical way of thinking. I've known some English majors who couldn't analyse their way out of a paper bag, if you know what I mean.

There are certain basic common ideas that you get out of a math degree or a physics degree that isn't necessarily there in an English degree. Whether you think that is important, is, of course, a matter of opinion, but to me the most important part of knowledge is that it's shared. Who cares whether I can read archaic Irish or know lots of minor heresies of the Eastern Empire if there aren't other people I can discuss them with. When you deny a common core, even a small one, you lose this common ground, and knowledge becomes more individual and less communal, and I think this is a bad thing.