ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: The New York Times
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY'S English department created controversy when it voted to change its requirements by not making majors read Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton.
A loosening of requirements by Georgetown University's English department will allow undergraduates to get an English degree without taking courses in Chaucer, Milton or Shakespeare.
Currently, English majors at Georgetown are required to take classes in at least two of those three masters. But a recently announced change, due to take effect next fall and intended to give students greater flexibility in designing their curriculums, does away with that standard in favor of letting them choose one of three concentrated areas of study: literature and history, culture and performance, or writing.
The new approach has provoked a modest furor on the campus, particularly among students who see it as a move away from a Eurocentric emphasis, resulting in a decline in standards. At a meeting among students and faculty last month, dissenting students presented a petition with 150 signatures - 50 of them from English majors, about one-sixth of the students in the department - protesting the change.
One student who opposes it is Alexander Hertzberg, 21-year-old editor of The Georgetown Review, a conservative student journal of opinion and satire. ``It's OK to have a progressive literature department,'' Hertzberg said, ``but then people would have to graduate from Georgetown with a degree in progressive literature and deal with the consequences of that.''
Supporters - including the faculty of the English department, who backed the change by a ratio of 4-1, - counter that the department's curriculum has not been altered for nearly two decades, while other schools have grown with the times.
At other colleges and universities in the Washington area, said Professor Bruce R. Smith, the department's director of undergraduate studies, English departments made such changes long ago. Five years ago, for example, the University of Maryland in College Park permitted English majors to graduate without having taken a course in Shakespeare. The same is true at George Washington University and at Howard University.
Critics have ``implied we were substituting trendiness for the traditional major,'' said Smith, ``and that is certainly not what we're doing. We're simply extending the major.
``I think that Shakespeare is in no danger of disappearing from the curriculum. Students have more integrity and seriousness about their own education than people give them credit for having.''
One junior English major, Marie Evans, said she disagreed with the changes because they would leave her unprepared for graduate school. ``It scares me to see the majority of classes being offered in the canon are diminishing,'' she said of the shifting focus.
Professor Dennis Todd, who will take over as director of undergraduate studies next semester, said he had heard similar worries from other students. But Todd said he feels that the new curriculum ultimately asks students to be more responsible.
``We did have a fairly restrictive major,'' he said. If students are uneasy now, he said, it's because ``they're uncertain they want to be let loose entirely.''
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