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  • The Humanist Teaches Children's Literature:Some Considerations *
  • Francis J. Molson (bio)

In 1969 the National Council of Teachers of English released the report of its ad hoc committee on the teaching of children's literature in colleges and universities.1 Observers who have suspected that the teaching of children's literature, generally speaking, leaves much to be desired can find ample evidence in the report to confirm their suspicions. For instance, the report finds that about half of those teachers of children's literature who responded to the committee's survey indicated that they had not taken any undergraduate work in children's literature.2 Moreover, forty percent of the respondents had no graduate course work in the subject.3 Although the report does not state what percentage of those without undergraduate preparation is also included among those with no graduate preparation, still with the percentages in both categories so high, 50% and 40% respectively, the chances are good that the number of those with no formal preparation at both levels is significantly and distressingly high. Another provocative finding is that seventy-five percent of the respondents either majored or minored in English.4 Unfortunately, the report provides no unambiguous data that might indicate the number of English majors or minors included among those having no undergraduate course in children's literature. Thus, while there is no conclusive evidence that only English departments have ignored the importance of children's literature, still English departments, willy-nilly, the largest "provider" of children's literature instructors, must take the chief blame for the inadequacies in the preparation of those who go on to teach children's literature in colleges and universities.

The reasons for English departments' reluctance to take children's literature seriously as a legitimate object of scholarship and criticism are not now my prime concern. We all recognize that the reluctance has existed, and it has been responsible, to a large extent, for the humanist's slow involvement in children's literature. This reluctance has also contributed to the confusion and conflict swirling about the definition of children's literature as an academic discipline, and the assignment of responsibility for the design and control of courses in children's literature—in particular the introductory course—within the university. Even though John Rowe Townsend is speaking to the causes he finds for the near-chaotic state of assessing juvenile books, his remarks also apply to that confusion and conflict surrounding children's literature and its teaching: [End Page 73]

The second cause of confusion is that children's literature is a part of the field, or adjoins the field, of many different specialists; yet it is the major concern of relatively few, and those not the most highly placed in the professional or academic pecking-order. Furthermore, the few to whom children's literature is central cannot expect, within one working lifetime, to master sufficient knowledge of the related fields to meet the experts on their own ground and at their own level. And yet, while the children's literature person cannot operate at a professional level in all these various fields, the people operating in the various fields can and quite properly do take an interest in children's reading as it affects their own specialities, and are able to quite frequently pronounce upon it. But, understandably, such people are often unaware of or have not thought deeply about the aspects of children's literature that do not impinge upon their own field. The subject is one on which people are notoriously willing to pronounce with great confidence but rather little knowledge. Consequently, we have a flow of apparently authoritative comment by people who are undoubtedly experts but who are not actually experts on this.5

I submit that it will not lessen the confusion Townsend decries to have the humanist withdraw from or unduly compromise his stake in the teaching of children's literature. On the contrary, what is needed is a clear statement of the legitimacy of the humanist's claim and an acceptance, especially by the humanist himself, of the implications of that legitimacy. (In this paper the term humanist describes any one trained in literature...

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