Ranting Ahead...

Dot Mobile, a company that offers mobile phones to students has hired Professor John Sutherland, professor emeritus of English Literature at University College London and this year's chair of judges for the Booker, to provide text message summaries and quotes from literature to subscribers. Condensing literature down to a text message they hope "will help make great literature more accessible." In Dot Mobile's press release they explain, "We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy." There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. I think one of the things that bothers me most is the idea that the study of literature is all about remembering "key plots and quotes." Has education sunk so low that this is what gets taught these days? Are there no discussions of theme, metaphor, symbolism? Are kids not encouraged to think about meaning? Or encouraged to just think? Then there is the whole making "great literature more accessible" thing. Summing up Pride and Prejudice as "Evry1GtsMaryd" is accessible and meaningful in some way? What do students gain by this? What does anyone gain by this? (Aside from Dot Mobile and Sutherland making money?) It doesn't increase levels of literacy or education, it makes a mockery of it. To narrow literature down to a text message encourages kids to make their own thoughts small. I am a believer in a liberal arts education. I think you cannot have scientists who know nothing about literature. Nor can you have artists who know nothing of science. If you want children who will become leaders who solve problems and thinkers who imagine better ways of doing things, then you can't get there with "2B? NT2B?=???" Shame on Dot Mobile. Shame on Professor Sutherland.