Worst Professor Ever

Dan says:

I found this site two weeks ago and on Tuesday left a post re what I, a social ecologist, suggest classists could do to preserve the future of classicist studies and actually contribute to the demythologizing and reformation of industrial civilization. The responses I got were typical internet snark without engaging with the social-empirical world. The problem of how to save the classics, I suggest, is bringing you into contact with the bigger ecological and economic picture –that’s why you’re asking how to save your discipline. If you view the study of classics as and activity supported by macro-level socioeconomic systems that are being forced to contract and shed complexity (this is the significance of 14-25 million un- and underemployed, post office closings, disbanded police forces, so-called “austerity” etc.), then the threat to the classics is clear.

Anthea says:

Rebranding disciplines, even classics, makes sense. I think that with some subjects, disciplines are unfortunately associated with unpleasant things. Indeed, the construction of disciplinary building walls has meant that disciplines have become far too compartmentalised …or associated with a horror/pain of learning by the student as expressed particularly well in this scene in the “Life of Brian”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8

I found that the Latin that I’d learned in secondary school was far more useful later in life where at the time that they had been associated with learning long lists of verbs and a seeming lack of a live culture. It wasn’t presented as something that might be useful. It was only at a much later date that I realised, as an undergraduate, that all the disciplines are connected to each other. Maybe the disciplinary boundaries ought not to be so rigid and perhaps it might make sense to take a holistic approach in teaching. This might mean that the perception of Classics as being stuff and dull…might dramatically change.
Just a thought.

Serge says:

Classics: It’s what happens after the future.

(If you want to know what will happen in the future, read science fiction – or go to MIT – if you want to know what will happen after that, read Thucydides. Who knows, it might pay to be one step ahead of collapsing civilization.)

Classics: Comprehensive, Rigorous, Twenty-two hundred years long. (Approx. 8th Cent. BC – 15th Century AD. Maybe longer.)

Classics: Learn to read for the first time. Never forget.

Classics: The only discipline on which nothing is lost.

(See Henry James’ quote…”Try to be one of the people on whom…”)

Classics: Worth your entire $200,000 loan. (I’m kidding about that one – but only a little.)

Classics: Ab ovo usque ad mala. (Predictable, I know.)

Classics: Parse sentences in two languages at a single glance. (Actually, that would be four languages, if all the commentary on Classical works in French and German is included. How’s that for rigor?)

Classics: Suffer and be wise. (Aeschylus: “I knew you were going to say that.”)

Classics: The oldest and greatest common denominator of the educated.

Classics: Well, Goethe says, “He who cannot draw on three thousand years, is living hand to mouth.”

Classics: At least you’ll know what’s coming.

Classics: Read Tacitus. You’ll never be surprised by politics again.

Ok, so these weren’t very good. I’ll try harder next time. Your blog is a lot of fun. I’m happy to have found it. I’ll try to read it more often.

One more thing. You write:

“The languages are tough that way, I think there’s no getting around a certain amount of tedious memorization and practice,…”

Good heavens, the memorization and drill are the fun parts! What’s tedious is to read yet another essay by the tired, post-modern baby-boomer about the unrecognized gender issues in the Classical world; or another snooty little screed about how Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. If Classics as a field is in trouble, it isn’t because of the subject matter; it’s the fault of the professorship disconnected from reality. Deconstruction has gone a long way to ruin Classics.

Another problem is that in the United States, most students don’t start Latin until university and that’s far too late. Latin (and Greek) really ought to begin in grade school. Perhaps it’s from grade and school high school that reform can be begin.

The problem is bigger than the university Classics department; it’s with education itself. If what’s unique about the West lies in its Classical past – education ought to be emphasizing that past.

Students at the university level should be reading everything in the original languages. That would mean more language training. That training would have to begin earlier, and thus, the lower levels would need to be brought up. Every student in every school is asked to learn more. Of course, that means putting Latin back into the schools. The grade schools.

I think that the humanities, English, History, and so on, ought to exist around a Classical core. It might mean smaller smaller departments and even smaller colleges and universities. Not a bad thing – how else to make that BA worth the 200,000?

Oh, I thought of one more.

Classics: Inner resources for people without money.

(One can’t complete a Classics program – a real one one that requires Latin and Greek – without effort. Making an effort develops inner resources. The degree cannot be bought. As you said,… the Navy SEALs of the humanities.)