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In Albert Jay Nock's 1931 article, "The Theory of Education in the United States," he touches upon the state of English courses in our American universities over 75 years ago, and shows how important it is today (even more so!) to have a complete understanding and knowledge of English and its literature before sending your children to the university of their choice:

With regard to "courses in English," I suspect that if you have not already done some such thing, there is a surprise in store for you when you make an estimate of the number of them that our institutions offer annually. I suggest that you look into the matter, and meanwhile I shall not anticipate your findings, being desirous that they should make their own impression on you and carry their own intimations. I therefore say only that there are a great many such courses, whereas forty years ago no such thing was known. Why should this be so? Forty years ago, our English-speaking students learned English quite informally; it was our own tongue, we were bred to a native idiomatic use of it, such a use as none but a native can ever possibly acquire. To say that English was not taught in our higher institutions means merely that everybody taught it. No matter what the stated subject under discussion might be, if we expressed ourselves inaccurately, loosely, unidiomatically, we heard about it at once and on the spot, and in terms that forcibly suggested a greater carefulness in the future.

As for English literature, it was our literature, our concern with it was proprietary, everything in it was open to us, and the critical judgment, the standards of taste and discrimination that we applied to it, were such as had been bred in us by our long acquaintance with the literatures of Greece and Rome. No one dreamed of teaching English literature; indeed, I do not see how it can be effectively taught in any formal fashion, how a really competent acquaintance with it can be brought about in any other way than the way by which it was brought about in us.

Why, then, is it that "courses in English" should hold so large a place in the newest type of institutional organization? They do so. for a very simple reason. Under the conditions that we have been describing, great masses of ineducable people come into our institutions. They must be kept there, and must nominally be busy with something or other as a pro forma justification for keeping them. Therefore something has to be found for them, to do that they can do, and this is a hard matter because they can do almost nothing. One thing they can do, albeit after a very poor fashion, is to read; that is to say, they can make their way more or less uncertainly down a printed page; and therefore "courses in English" have come into their present extraordinary vogue. Well, here is a small garland of windflowers culled by an instructor from the work, not of primary-school children, but of university students, chiefly upperclassmen, who were busy with "courses in English":

"Being a tough hunk of meat, I passed up the steak."

"Lincoln's mind growed as his country kneaded it."

"The camel carries a water tank with him; he is also a rough rider and has four gates."

"As soon as music starts silence rains, but as soon as it stops it get worse than ever."

"College students, as a general rule, like such readings that will take the least mental inertia."

"Modern dress is extreme and ought to be checked."

"Although the Irish are usually content with small jobs they have won a niche in the backbone of the country."

The instructor who reported these efforts went on to show how Shakespeare fared at the hands of their authors:

Edmund in King Lear "committed a base act and allowed his illegitimate father to see a forged letter."

Cordelia's death "was the straw that broke the camel's back and killed the king."

Lear's fool "was prostrated on the neck of the king."

"Hotspur," averred a sophomore, "was a wild, irresolute man. He loved honor above all. He would go out and kill twenty Scotchmen before breakfast."

Kate was "a woman who had something to do with hot spurs."

Also Milton:

"Diabetes was Milton's Italian friend," one student explained.

Another said: "Satan had all the emotions of a woman and was a sort of trustee in heaven, so to speak."

The theme of Comus was given as "purity protestriate."

Mammon in Paradise Lost suggests that the best way "to endure hell is to raise hell and build a pavilion."

The newest type of institutional organization has obliterated the lines that formerly marked off the units of our system and bounded their respective bailiwicks. Each unit is doing a little of everything, a little secondary-school work, a little college work, a little vocational work, and what not. Certain new units also have been knaved up out of this hodgepodge to do likewise a little of everything; the "junior college," for example.

Some years ago I visited an old acquaintance in the Middle West, who was teaching English in a huge swollen institution that went by the name of a state university. I looked in on one of my friend's classes in "English composition," and found him engaged on a kind of thing that by the very handsomest concession was only eighth-grade work; and his students were dealing with it in a manner that an educable eighth-grade pupil would regard as disgraceful. These students were not eighth-grade pupils; they were adult persons, ranking bona fide as part of a university population, and eligible for a degree authorized by a university.

The outcome of our theory in this particular may be clearly seen by another reference to the undergraduate college, as occupying a middle ground among our institutions. Not long ago I visited an undergraduate college — not one of those connected with Columbia University — and on casually looking into matters there, I told the president that I was surprised to see the college doing so much work that belonged far back in the grade school. He said it was unfortunate, but it could not be helped; students came there with these holes in their preparation that had to be filled up. I observed that the undergraduate college was perhaps hardly in a position to afford these diversions from its proper business, and that it seemed likely to suffer from them. "Yes," he said, "but don't you think we ought to do something for these poor fellows who come to us so imperfectly prepared?"

"Certainly I do," I said. "Fire them."

"Ah, yes," he replied, "but then, you see, we should not have any students and would have to shut up shop."

I hinted as delicately as I could that this might not be in the long run an absolute misfortune; as I remember, I may have quoted Homer's pertinent line on the death of Patroclus. He admitted the force of this, but said, "We are doing a poor job, I know, but we are doing something as best we can, and I think a little better than most institutions of our kind; so we hope it is worthwhile."

At the other end of the line, this college was doing quite a thriving business in preprofessional and prevocational training. Having asked about this, I was told that the lads were in a hurry to get on with their vocations and did not feel like spending time on any work that had not a direct vocational bearing; if such work were insisted on, they would simply leave, and go to some other place where the requirements were more generous. Here you may quite see what it is that obliterates the lines between the units of our system, and also where the responsibility for that obliteration and its consequences really lies. If you will permit the expression, the college passes the buck to the secondary school; and there is a measure of justice in that. The school, also with a measure of justice, replies, "If you are not satisfied with the way these men are prepared, why do you admit them? We cannot consider your requirements alone; we have very many diverse demands made on us, and must do the best we can to meet all of them." The vocational or technical school, the office or the factory — postcollegiate conditions generally — say to the college, "We cannot altogether accommodate ourselves to your ideas; if these young men are in such a pucker to get on in the world, it is your business to start them right, according to the conditions that actually exist"; and there is a measure of justice in that, too. Responsibility, clearly, lies nowhere in the order of our institutions; it runs back to the acceptance of an erroneous theory. All this ludicrous state of things that we have been examining is the inevitable result of trying to translate a bad theory into good practice.