Review: Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish

Cover of the Book

Fish, Stanley. Save the World on Your Own Time. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

This is an elegant and extremely enjoyable read that has the effect of really making me want to teach. The key chapters are "Do Your Job" and "Don't Try to Do Someone Else's Job," which confront the problem of liberal ideals in higher education.

In a surprising attack not just on multiculturalism but even the notion that the liberal arts should help produce good citizens, Fish avers, "No, no, no, and no. ....respecting the voices of others is not even a good idea. You shouldn't respect the voices of others simply because they are others...you should respect the voices of those others whose arguments and recommendations you find coherent and persuasive."

He spends a lot of time delineating what is distinctive about the liberal arts, and returns time and again that its all quite analogous to poems. Like poems, the liberal arts are only efforts at getting us to stretch our imaginations and ask pointed questions, and then to try to answer those questions. Nothing more. What a beautiful thought for the literature teacher to encounter!