The Dreamer: A Different Canon
**This is an unfinished research paper that I happen to adore. Disclaimer - Academic Language
Anderson .Paak’s 2016 song, titled The Dreamer, chronicles the struggles children face on a daily basis. Still, he offers hope by celebrating the aspirational child, or the dreamer. He offers advice to those who feel angered by their relegation as marginal and other.
This is the music that you gotta feel
Gave you the truth before I got a deal
No rabbit in a hat, it ain't no magic, ain't no Copperfield
More like a panther, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale
Word to the free lunch, who knew what we would become?
Who would be defunct? Which rumors would be debunked?
His lyrics show demand for educational policies that serve students who need their histories told to them in a system that rather silence the past. By acknowledging the history of the Black Panther’s involvement in free and reduced lunch programs, Paak further encourages achievement among black and brown children who face the greatest challenges in obtaining an adequate education. He also chronicles the importance of popular culture in a child’s life––especially television and music––and encourages educational pursuit through media.
Songs like The Dreamer deserve a place in the classroom because they engage and connect with students. An opening of the academic canon––that is, of the list of texts used in instruction––must reflect the demands of students in an ever-changing landscape of social media, television, and podcasts. Culturally relevant syllabi need to address the issues of inequity and representation to better serve the classroom.
Problem of Practice
High school syllabi do not meet students’ needs or interests, and the number of minority authors on the reading list remains low despite concerted efforts to provide multicultural education to students. The dominant literary canon seeps into classrooms and brings with it an authoritarian principle of ‘standard’ English art, poetry, and prose––namely Anglo-American, Judeo-Christian, and male. ‘Traditional’ art forms and conventions, cemented and adhered to by academic and state institutions, impose prevailing ideas of objective truth onto the public. They are ideas that do not correspond with many people’s lived experiences. In fact, the canon has become an outdated and inaccurate portrayal of life today. Namely, the early process of determining great literature disregarded the lived experiences of women and racial minorities; thus, many canonical texts perpetuate harmful ideas concerning race and gender by actively perpetuating misinformed stereotypes or ensuring an erasure of others’ history and perspective.
Such canonical texts are also rendered ineffective in classrooms; among students in the 12th grade, a twenty to thirty-point reading gap exists between African-American/Hispanic students and their White/Asian counterparts––proving the inadequacy of the current syllabus for students of color (NICS). Even among Asian students, representation in popular culture and literature often depicts them as nonexistent or exoticized. Caricaturized depictions of cultural minorities continue to plague required readings for students, and they have detrimental effects on their sense of self. Culturally relevant books, poetry, and films must be studied in an everchanging landscape––one that no longer caters to a predominantly white and affluent class.
Furthermore, the criteria used to judge the canonicity of a text must be reviewed, and the argument favoring the pure aesthetic value of literature must be reframed due to our politically precarious times. Presently, the country of the United States grows more and more diverse, populous, and innovative but remains in many ways segregated, narrow-minded, and troubling. Surely, addressing the disparate wealth and educational gaps among minority and white students begins in the classroom with the syllabus.
The Canon Wars: Political Debate
The word ‘canon’ comes from the Greek kanṓn which translates to rod or measurement. Over time, the works of prominent Greek artists and moral philosophers were deemed as standards by which all other works were measured; these works form a definitive ‘Canon.’ Though Ancient canons often served specific functions, the term canon––now applied to the books of the Bible or to major works of literature––serves as a monolith with broad applications. Due to the wide-reaching effects of the canon, any revision of its contents becomes a serious point of controversy among scholars. Some view modern canon formation as an endeavor that systematically excludes works of tradition over works of cultural or political value while others argue that the ‘opening’ of the canon merely seeks to diminish barriers to access for women and minorities.
The malleability of the canon through history must be acknowledged to understand the process of acquisition, exclusion, and revision of works now regarded as canonical. In Jan Gorak’s book, The Making of a Modern Canon, he chronicles the changes in the meaning, the function, and the modes of interpreting the canon through time. When the canon was first established in antiquity, prominent figures such as Aristotle championed its continual revision and renewal. Then the Aristotelian canon was replaced by the closed Augustinian canon––formed by the church in the early Renaissance––which was meant to determine the books of the Bible; however, the closed canon greatly influenced the study of literature. With a growing interest in maintaining authority, the canon became concrete and unrivaled in academic institutions. Because much of the canon remains fixed, the institutions that form literary study often reflect an elitist often homogenous demographic.
In Cultural Capital and The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, John Guillory discusses how the restructuring of the canon does not begin with simple changes in the syllabus, but with addressing larger sociopolitical barriers to access in educational institutions themselves. He posits that a text itself does not act as a representative body for people of color and women, but as a tool used in educational settings; he concludes that pedagogical approaches to literature must be reformed in order for a modernized canon to prove useful. Guillory understands this phenomenon by using Pierre Bourdieu’s term ‘cultural capital,’ defined as the material and behavioral advantages that enable social mobility. His discussion of the need for providing cultural capital to students through canon formation and pedagogical changes counters the arguments in staunch support of traditional aesthetics. Critics like Alan Bloom have often invoked tradition and aesthetics in defense of the literary canon, but they fail to address the intricate power struggles involved in obtaining an education.
Definite, inflexible, and totalizing assertions of a particular canon do not allow for innovation, critical thought, or careful consideration. In regard to secondary schools––a place in which important literacy skills fully develop––the canon fails students by discouraging the very qualities needed in higher education or the private sector. An ability to analyze, understand, and reflect upon information has been stifled by an emphasis on the classics. Due to the radically different approaches to scholarship provided by technology, textuality must be reimagined to include song, performance, and film. The easy dissemination of knowledge, the modes in which youth access knowledge and the pedagogical methods used to implement knowledge inevitably lead to an innovative canon where modern texts may be used as vehicles to the past. Through this method, complex material may be studied in a more accessible manner.
Further, the democratic need for understanding and representation for all students, regardless of race, gender, or orientation, underlies the creation of a new canon. The term ‘Pluribus Unum,’ appearing on the Great Seal, means out of many one. However, when the subgroups of the ‘many’ dissent, ever so slightly from the standard ‘one,’ they become subjects of a hegemonic force enforcing dominant ideologies. The growing alienation experienced by those who do not connect to the canon may be lessened by inclusion, adaptability, and social change.
