Response to Parker’s “Where do English Departments Come From?”

William Riley Parker’s critical 1967 essay examines and critiques the history of the English Department through its earliest incarnations and while he does the examination rather successfully, albeit without any supporting research, he eventually comes to the conclusion that the “modern” study and teaching of English is failing. He begins his tirade stating with a quote from Cicero, “Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child,” and he uses this to do several things: first, to start on his history lesson of the English department, and second and more importantly, to critique the current state of English teaching. Ignoring Parker’s silly diatribe on the origins of English from the parents of oratory and linguistics, he begins his history lesson, as I said rather successfully.

He traces the beginnings of English study through the early literature reviews of the 16^th century, to the start of the professorships of Rhetoric and Literature at notable British and American universities. However, breaking away from the history lesson to a critique, Parker begins his critique by stating that, “As scholars we have matured; as teachers we-the same people- are still children in our ignorance or innocence, still fumbling and lacking well defined goals,” and while he realizes these are “strong statements” he does not fully understand the failings of them. Parker criticizes the now current English department as we know it as a fumbling child that has forgotten about its history; about its mother and father and from whence it came. He states his feelings clearly by saying, “…it seems to me that English departments have cared much less about liberal education and their own integrity than they have about their administrative power and prosperity,” and while this does hold some merit, it does not hold very much. Parker’s feelings are held in a firmly rooted belief that if we don’t teach from where we came, i.e. oratory and elocution, then we will forever be lost and ignorant in the teaching of English and while I do share the same sentiment I don’t feel that anything has been lost. Parker fails to recognize the changes in teaching and public discourse and instead focus on terms like elocution and oratory and claims that we in the English department are losing sight of the real teaching of English. These are indeed noble pursuits, however I don’t feel that we have lost sight of anything; we’ve merely changed and adapted the teaching of English to the students of today and even though we’ve dropped the titles of elocution and oratory the methods are still the same.

It will be interesting to see where we progress and end up in both our teaching and scholarship of English in the future, however I am confident that rhetoric and linguistics will still play a huge part in the methodology of English. I wonder what Parker's opinions and views on teaching English would be in 20 years from now or even 50? Would he still hold his views that we are slipping away from the true purpose of teaching English? Perhaps there will be a regression to teaching the classics more formally and the use of technology and modern ideas of teaching will be cast aside? I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Works Cited

Parker, William Riley. "Where Do English Departments Come From?" College English 28.5 (1967): 339-351.