The Virginia Department of Education has approved a draft of new English Language Arts standards. They make for a dreary read. If you care about novels and poems, if you think Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are essential voices that every young American should hear, if you feel, as W. E. B. Du Bois did, that an hour with Shakespeare is a mighty inspiration that can relieve the dismal circumstances of life, this fresh version of ELA in the Old Dominion will only depress you.
The document is an expression of a utilitarian, 21st-century mindset. We have highfalutin talk of “multimodal literacies” and “media messages,” but nothing on Hawthorne or Robert Frost. Students are asked to acquire “the ability to problem solve and collaborate in and across teams,” not to memorize and recite classic poems and speeches.
It is true that in 12th grade, students are asked to examine “universal themes” in “British…
