I question everything Stanley Fish says because he likes to be of the devil’s party, as Blake said of Milton, more or less. We want the arts and humanities to be taught because we want to give the best that has been thought and said in our civilization and culture to our young people. Their lives will be the richer for it and they will understand themselves as part of a great tradition and a great civilization, and also be poised to understand other cultures as well. Many times I have spoken to people with little education who recalled fondly the play by Shakespeare, the verses by Milton, the rhythmic rhyming poem of Longfellow’s, or the quirky lines of Dickinson that they read in school. Or the reproductions of great paintings they were shown, or the classic songs they sang in assembly. It was clear that even the little bit that they had received was precious to them. We should do all we can to teach the arts and humanities in both lower and higher education. The arts and humanities have been discredited largely due to the kind of criticism to which they have been subject, in which Fish and his fellow postmodernists have made them appear meaningless.