Flannery O’Connor earned her undergraduate degree in social sciences at Georgia State College for Women, a teachers’ college. O’Connor considered that career, but was “rather glad things didn’t work out that way.” She entered the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the rest is literary history.
Although O’Connor admitted that she was “in a state of pristine innocence” when it came to teaching, she had many opinions about the profession. In “The Teaching of Literature,” an address to English teachers later collected into an essay, O’Connor assails the “utilitarian” approach of doctoral studies in English, where it is assumed that novels “must do something, rather than be something.” She expects more of English teachers, who are “a sort of middle-man” in the “standing dispute between the novelist and the public.” Aimee Bender says O’Connor’s voice “often has a scolding edge,” but teachers at all levels would do well to listen.
Read Full Article »