Concerned Mom
Your son will follow his enthusiasm and ambition and find some good teachers and that will lead him off in directions unknown. I think the Department of English is one of the worst places to go since it's been so thoroughly politicized and demented, and the pleasure of language has been completely leached out. Mortuary Science is a celebration compared to the English Dept. Take notice of what he's reading and read the works for yourself and maybe start up a conversation. If he insists on majoring in English, offer to pay him for two years to sit in a rented room in a small town and read all the classics from Chaucer to Cheever and Jane Austen and Dickens and not skip Henry James and the Brontës and Twain and do Shakespeare, of course, and Shelley and Hardy, but no criticism — keep him away from the teachers. During those two years, he'll likely find a lover and if, as odds favor, she's a woman, then a family is likely, and they'll need to think about income. Best-selling authors don't come out of the English Department: it is there to kill their interest, so English grads tend to become English teachers, and this is perilous work. You can be the greatest Shakespeare scholar in the land but if two students accuse you of insensitivity to people with freckles and brown eyes, you're likely to be thrown in the ditch. This sort of nonsense doesn't go on in engineering or math because in those fields, there is a clear demarcation of competence, unlike in the humanities where it is entirely a beauty contest. Good luck to you both and if you've been neglecting prayer in your life, now is the time to resume. -GKeillor
Charles Darwin (
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