A friend sent me a link to this article by William Chace in the American Scholar, which laments what he sees as the gradual disintegration of English as a field of study. Certainly he's a conservative, yet I think he has a point. Also, interestingly (though maybe only to me), he's a Haverford graduate: 30 years before my time, it's true; but still, what he says about the vigor of that college's English department rings true to me . . . though decay was seeping in by the mid-1980s.

If nothing else, his article reminds me to be grateful that, as an undergraduate, I read great books and talked about them. Maybe I escaped from formal education just in time.

Update: I also posted this link on the Facebook page of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry & Teaching. It's garnered a fair number of comments, some of them quite detailed, most from English and language arts teachers. If you have Facebook access, you might want to take a look.