Iβve said this already, but American universities largely presuppose you have already read through much of the canon by the time you turn 18. In which case, theory is interesting and valuable. I suspect the only secondary schools still teaching the canon today are small, religious private schools (to date, the greatest education I ever received). Students entering college without a grounding in the canon are taught to deconstruct a civilization and literary corpus they barely understand. This is the cause of much frustration β see below.