Schools of Fiction: Literature and the Making of the American Educational System

Teachers often enthusiastically teach literary works that criticize school, such as Ishmael's claim that a whale-ship was his Yale College and Harvard in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and the unnamed narrator's expulsion from his southern college in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. This anti-scholasticism is preferred by educators over the didacticism of sentimentalists, and African American literature is organized around texts that despair of the post-Reconstruction institutional system. Literature in class is a paradoxical undertaking that has enabled the school to claim access to a social world external to itself, challenging our core assumptions about cultural administration and the place of English in the curriculum.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 09 January 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Schools of Fiction, a book by Morgan Day Frank, delves into a peculiar yet significant aspect of modern education: the enthusiastic teaching of literary works that critique the school system. From Ishmael's assertion in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick that a whale-ship was his Yale College and his Harvard, to the unnamed narrator's expulsion from his southern college in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the most commonly taught books in the English curriculum often portray the school as a stultifying and inhumane social institution.

Why have educators favored the anti-scholasticism of the American romance tradition over the didacticism of sentimentalists? Why have they organized African American literature as a discursive category centered around texts that despair of the post-Reconstruction institutional system? Why have they begun teaching novels, a literary form whose very nature, as Mikhail Bakhtin states, is not canonical?

Reading literature in class presents a paradoxical endeavor, as Day Frank argues, that has played a fundamental role in shaping American formal education over the past two centuries. It enables the school to claim access to a social world beyond its boundaries. By highlighting the transformative impact of literature on the school, Schools of Fiction challenges some of our fundamental assumptions about cultural administration and the place of English in the curriculum.

Day Frank contends that the educational system has historically relied on the cultural objects whose existence it is commonly believed to govern and the academic subject it is commonly believed to have marginalized. This perspective challenges the traditional understanding of the relationship between culture and education and suggests that there are more complex and nuanced dynamics at play.

In conclusion, Schools of Fiction offers a thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between literature, education, and society. By challenging our assumptions and highlighting the transformative power of literature, Frank's book contributes to our understanding of the educational landscape and the role of English in shaping our cultural and intellectual heritage.

Weight: 694g
Dimension: 240 x 163 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192867506