socionomix

  We've all laced up for it. The starting gun fires – a colleague's sigh, a partner's unspoken wish, a parent's subtle expectation, a friend's casual request. And we're off. The Marathon of Making Everyone Happy. It’s the grueling, lifelong endurance event we never consciously signed up for, yet find ourselves panting through daily, mile after exhausting mile. The initial stretch feels noble, even exhilarating. A well-placed compliment here, a favor granted there. We get the cheers – the smiles, the "thank you’s," the temporary warmth of perceived approval. We mistake this fleeting validation for the finish line tape. But it’s just the first water station. The Terrain Gets Rough: Soon, the course reveals its brutal topography.  The Impossible Gradient:  Human desires are fractal, infinitely complex and often contradictory. Pleasing Person A inevitably means disappointing Person B. Trying to smooth over conflicting expectations is like running up...

  Let’s be honest: The crisis in literature isn’t about the death of the novel, the rise of TikTok, or even the latest AI chatbot spitting out essays in seconds. The real problem? It’s how we teach literature—and what we’re teaching for. The curriculum is a fossil, the canon a walled garden, and both are pushing students away from the very skills they’ll need to survive in a world where thinking for yourself is a revolutionary act. Why Your Syllabus Pushes Students Away Educators, I’m talking to you. You love books. You want your students to love them, too. But here’s the gut punch: Most syllabi are graveyards of memorization, not playgrounds for ideas. We’ve all seen it—students hunched over, reciting plot points and critical terms, but missing the thrill of wrestling with big, messy questions. The canon, that sacred list of “important” works, is a walled garden that keeps out voices who don’t fit the mold. Whose stories are we ignoring? Whose lives are we erasing? If you’re still...

  You’ve probably seen the headlines: BA English enrollments are plummeting. Some are calling it the death of a “soft” subject in a world that worships STEM and hustle. But this isn’t about English becoming irrelevant — it’s about the way we teach it becoming outdated.      The problem isn’t with literature itself. It's with how we're still teaching it like it’s stuck in a dusty old time capsule. The typical English degree often feels like an endless archaeological dig through a very specific, very British slice of history. Students are trained to catalog authors, memorize dates, and rattle off literary “-isms” (Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism…) only to regurgitate them in high-pressure exams. It's less about thinking critically and more about playing literary trivia under stress. That’s not just unhelpful — it actively discourages original thought. And here’s the thing: we live in a world overflowing with information but starving for meaning. Complex narrativ...