Why I don't like English literature

There's an article on the PBS website that's making the rounds. It's by Wendy Thomas Russell and the bottom line is admirable. She's proud of the fact that her husband is getting their daughter interested in science by telling stories [Skip the fairy tales, and tell your daughter science bedtime stories].

That's not the part that's attracting the attention of science bloggers. What bothers us is the opening part of the article where Wendy Thomas Russell explains why she never liked science.

I decided to re-write those opening paragraphs with a slight twist. Hopefully you will see what's wrong.

I was never very good at English. Mostly because it was taught to me the same way history was taught to me: It wasn’t. I mean it was, technically. But not in a way that inspired me or held my interest for very long.

In elementary school, English literature was something contained in a much-too-heavy textbook adorned with things I didn’t care about: sonnets, Shakespeare in a funny collar, grammar, the elements of style, pathetic fallacy. (I hated pathetic!) Not even the occasional picture of Jane Austen could save English literature for me. As much as I would have loved to meet James Joyce, learning in school about his drinking habits or various abodes just made him seem more distant from me.

In high school, most of my English teachers were middle-aged women who seemed to aim their instruction right over my head. Everything struck me as dry and unemotional. I always felt I was missing something — some basic brain function. I learned things as though they were random pieces of information to be memorized and quickly forgotten, rather than stacks of wisdom neatly piled on a solid foundation of understanding.

Later, at the University of Nebraska, I was able to avoid English and the humanities for the most part (the biology department was kind to me). I did take one history class — and was pretty excited about it! — until I realized that the teacher was a very old Japanese man whose heavy accent destroyed any chance I had at making sense of the universe.

He pronounced “war” like this: “wah-waaaah.” I barely scraped by with a C-.

Most people would react negatively to something like that. They would quickly recognize that the problem was me, and not my teachers. After all, what kind of person can't manage to learn English literature? I must be very stupid.

Why is it socially acceptable for a woman to write those things about her inability to appreciate science?

Note: I really don't hate English literature.

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