Women and the School System

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
161

When I was a college freshman I had a class where we read a good portion of the entire Western canon. The Iliad and the Odyssey. The Aeneid. The Divine Comedy. the Confessions of St Augustine. Taught by professors who could read them in their original languages. I spent the following semester reading the Old and New Testaments, and everything written by Tolkien and Dickens. Shakespeare ad Dumas I read on my own as well for the sheer joy of it.

The one thing that literature teaches, that has value even today, is that the stories don’t change. The language we use to tell them might, but the stories themselves remain the same. It’s the same myths, the same human struggles for understanding, retold again and again and again. Doubtless the Hunger Games or Harry Potter or whatever has value, but how much more value would it have for someone who understands the context in which these modern stories are being told?

Not knowing old literature is like not knowing history, and more to the point not knowing your own ancestry. The old stories are who we are. And you cannot know who you are unless you know where you’ve been.

By all means teach the Bible, and Homer, and Xenophon, and Chaucer, and J.K. Rawling and Suzanne Collins. All are relevant.

If for nothing else, to teach the one truth of humanity: this has all happened before, and it will all happen again.

162

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
When I was a college freshman I had a class where we read a good portion of the entire Western canon. The Iliad and the Odyssey. The Aeneid. The Divine Comedy. the Confessions of St Augustine. Taught by professors who could read them in their original languages. I spent the following semester reading the Old and New Testaments, and everything written by Tolkien and Dickens. Shakespeare ad Dumas I read on my own as well for the sheer joy of it.
[/quote]
That’s the thing about the canon; if you are truly passionate about literature then you should want to read as much of it as possible. You shouldn’t feel like you are being forced to but really have a desire to. I took a class on the history of ancient Rome and was the only non-history major in it. You would think that history majors would be excited about ancient Rome but they were bored and didn’t really care. The prof, who was an older Greek man, loved me because I read all of the supplemental readings he recommended and he was quite disappointed when he found out I wasn’t a history major. For an English major to not feel some connection to and responsibility for the canon really makes no sense to me. What’s sad is that professors have become so used to student apathy they are shocked when a student shows genuine interest. The one thing I hated most was when someone would ask, “is this going to be on the test,” as if it had no other value.

163

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
When I was a college freshman I had a class where we read a good portion of the entire Western canon. The Iliad and the Odyssey. The Aeneid. The Divine Comedy. the Confessions of St Augustine. Taught by professors who could read them in their original languages. I spent the following semester reading the Old and New Testaments, and everything written by Tolkien and Dickens. Shakespeare ad Dumas I read on my own as well for the sheer joy of it.
[/quote]
That’s the thing about the canon; if you are truly passionate about literature then you should want to read as much of it as possible. You shouldn’t feel like you are being forced to but really have a desire to. I took a class on the history of ancient Rome and was the only non-history major in it. You would think that history majors would be excited about ancient Rome but they were bored and didn’t really care. The prof, who was an older Greek man, loved me because I read all of the supplemental readings he recommended and he was quite disappointed when he found out I wasn’t a history major. For an English major to not feel some connection to and responsibility for the canon really makes no sense to me. What’s sad is that professors have become so used to student apathy they are shocked when a student shows genuine interest. The one thing I hated most was when someone would ask, “is this going to be on the test,” as if it had no other value. [/quote]

Yes, I call this the “inoculation theory of education.”

Once you “take” a subject it somehow confers immunity from having to “take” it ever again.

I’ll never forget my professor reciting the first passages of the Iliad in perfectly metered Homeric Greek. Made the story come alive like nothing else could.

Same with learning Zamyatin from a professor who was fluent in Russian, and could impart to us all of the in-jokes and references that may have been lost in translation. I envy you your ability to read Thucydides and Homer in the original Greek almost as much as I envy your ability to read Dumas in French.

164

[quote]zecarlo wrote:
The one thing I hated most was when someone would ask, “is this going to be on the test,” as if it had no other value. [/quote]

x2

In my undergrad, MBA, and Mdiv (I did not complete this one) I hated hearing that question. Learning something completely will help you answer the questions on the test. Memorizing answers for a test question does not mean you learned the subject.

165

[quote]dmaddox wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:
The one thing I hated most was when someone would ask, “is this going to be on the test,” as if it had no other value. [/quote]

x2

In my undergrad, MBA, and Mdiv (I did not complete this one) I hated hearing that question. Learning something completely will help you answer the questions on the test. Memorizing answers for a test question does not mean you learned the subject.
[/quote]

It’s all kids care about today. I can’t hardly blame them it’s how they’ve been conditioned.

The same goes for, will there be a review?

Yes, it’s been going on the last 6 weeks, where have you been?

166

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I envy you your ability to read Thucydides and Homer in the original Greek almost as much as I envy your ability to read Dumas in French.
[/quote]

I can’t read Greek and if I gave you that impression it was unintentional. As far as French goes that’s not really a big deal since I grew up speaking two languages, one a Romance one, so learning another Romance language was not some great accomplishment.

If there’s one thing I regret it’s not making an effort to learn new languages when I was a kid. It’s not impossible or even that difficult to learn 2 or 3 languages at once. You have married immigrants from separate countries who have kids that grow up speaking their mother’s, father’s and birth nation’s languages. If you could learn 2 languages very 3 years and started at the age of ten (an “old” age to learn a language) you could know 7 languages by the time you started college. You could know 10 by the time you finished college.

For several years I’ve been sticking to the languages I know and haven’t tried learning any new ones but I decided to finally learn German and Arabic. I wish I had studied them earlier because I could use them now. I read the bios of some Renaissance writers and some of them, besides knowing Latin (obviously) and Greek, were taught or even taught themselves Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. In Italy, in the liceo classico (a type of high school) Latin and ancient Greek are mandatory as is English. I think at one point in this country Latin was pretty standard as my grandmother learned it. My grandfather knew Old English. I even found his flashcards in some of his papers from college.

167

I took several years worth of Latin, and of course it was beneficial in a nebulous, behind the scenes sort of way, but in hindsight I wish I’d just learned a real language that I could fucking speak. I’m jealous of people who can speak multiple languages.

168

[quote]csulli wrote:
I took several years worth of Latin, and of course it was beneficial in a nebulous, behind the scenes sort of way, but in hindsight I wish I’d just learned a real language that I could fucking speak. I’m jealous of people who can speak multiple languages.[/quote]
You still can. I don’t recommend Spanish, although it’s what Americans typically think of learning, unless you are planning on working with poor people. There are other reasons to learn it but when it comes to literature, philosophy, politics and economics, German and French are better choices if you are sticking with European languages.

169

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]csulli wrote:
I took several years worth of Latin, and of course it was beneficial in a nebulous, behind the scenes sort of way, but in hindsight I wish I’d just learned a real language that I could fucking speak. I’m jealous of people who can speak multiple languages.[/quote]
You still can. I don’t recommend Spanish, although it’s what Americans typically think of learning, unless you are planning on working with poor people. There are other reasons to learn it but when it comes to literature, philosophy, politics and economics, German and French are better choices if you are sticking with European languages. [/quote]
I was leaning heavily toward German.

170

[quote]csulli wrote:
I took several years worth of Latin, and of course it was beneficial in a nebulous, behind the scenes sort of way, but in hindsight I wish I’d just learned a real language that I could fucking speak. I’m jealous of people who can speak multiple languages.[/quote]

True, but doesn’t it help with English a ton? I have made sense of many a word I didn’t otherwise know because of having taken years of Latin courses.

171

[quote]csulli wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]csulli wrote:
I took several years worth of Latin, and of course it was beneficial in a nebulous, behind the scenes sort of way, but in hindsight I wish I’d just learned a real language that I could fucking speak. I’m jealous of people who can speak multiple languages.[/quote]
You still can. I don’t recommend Spanish, although it’s what Americans typically think of learning, unless you are planning on working with poor people. There are other reasons to learn it but when it comes to literature, philosophy, politics and economics, German and French are better choices if you are sticking with European languages. [/quote]
I was leaning heavily toward German.[/quote]

I have tried to learn German but didn’t devote enough time to it. My wife’s grandmother is German and I would actually like to have a conversation with her in German, and my wife really would like to go to Germany one day to meet some of her cousins that she has never met or only seen once.

172

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I envy you your ability to read Thucydides and Homer in the original Greek almost as much as I envy your ability to read Dumas in French.
[/quote]

I can’t read Greek and if I gave you that impression it was unintentional. As far as French goes that’s not really a big deal since I grew up speaking two languages, one a Romance one, so learning another Romance language was not some great accomplishment.

If there’s one thing I regret it’s not making an effort to learn new languages when I was a kid. It’s not impossible or even that difficult to learn 2 or 3 languages at once. You have married immigrants from separate countries who have kids that grow up speaking their mother’s, father’s and birth nation’s languages. If you could learn 2 languages very 3 years and started at the age of ten (an “old” age to learn a language) you could know 7 languages by the time you started college. You could know 10 by the time you finished college.

For several years I’ve been sticking to the languages I know and haven’t tried learning any new ones but I decided to finally learn German and Arabic. I wish I had studied them earlier because I could use them now. I read the bios of some Renaissance writers and some of them, besides knowing Latin (obviously) and Greek, were taught or even taught themselves Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. In Italy, in the liceo classico (a type of high school) Latin and ancient Greek are mandatory as is English. I think at one point in this country Latin was pretty standard as my grandmother learned it. My grandfather knew Old English. I even found his flashcards in some of his papers from college. [/quote]

There is some pretty compelling evidence from neurobiology that indicates that I a child is exposed to multiple languages before the age of five, his Broca’s area (the part of the auditory cortex associated with language) becomes “hard wired” for learning multiple languages. I was lucky enough to have spent my early years in an neighborhood where I heard Spanish almost as often as English, so languages have always come relatively naturally to me. Unfortunately Japanese is the only one I can claim actual fluency in any more, but at one time I could converse quite freely in Indonesian, and to a lesser degree Russian, Spanish and German.

If I were a young man, I would spend a year in each country, learning the rudiments of a different language each year. I’d start at the Iberian peninsula and just work my way east, ending up in Vladivostok; then I’d take a right down toward Singapore, spend a little time in Indonesia, then double back through India and Africa, ending up around Gibraltar where I started.

I am no longer a young man, so I might not be able to do this, or at least not as much of it as I’d like. But if I wanted to learn a multitude of languages, this is how I’d do it.

173

Principal thinks bread is racist.

174

[quote]doogie wrote:

Principal thinks bread is racist.[/quote]

Only if it’s white bread.

Although the case could be made that Rainbo bread is both racist and gay.

175

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]doogie wrote:

Principal thinks bread is racist.[/quote]

Only if it’s white bread.

Although the case could be made that Rainbo bread is both racist and gay. [/quote]

That is why I don’t buy it…just kidding.

176

Before I was skeptical but lately I can’t help but feel there is a growing but subtle anti male sentiment in a lot of changes being made to schooling and early social programming.

177

Since I am sure most of you might not be aware you can all go out and see Catching Fire tonight. Keep up with the genre and all ;).

179

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
There is some pretty compelling evidence from neurobiology that indicates that I a child is exposed to multiple languages before the age of five, his Broca’s area (the part of the auditory cortex associated with language) becomes “hard wired” for learning multiple languages.
[/quote]

I learned about that in a linguistics class and I believe it. People who try learning a second language later in life, and with languages late in life could be the teen years, end up having a hard time thinking in the new language. They translate in their minds first. I will never understand why a second language is not mandatory in American schools starting in kindergarten. I know so many people who wanted to learn a second language and ended up giving up.

180

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
There is some pretty compelling evidence from neurobiology that indicates that I a child is exposed to multiple languages before the age of five, his Broca’s area (the part of the auditory cortex associated with language) becomes “hard wired” for learning multiple languages.
[/quote]
I learned about that in a linguistics class and I believe it. People who try learning a second language later in life, and with languages late in life could be the teen years, end up having a hard time thinking in the new language. They translate in their minds first. I will never understand why a second language is not mandatory in American schools starting in kindergarten. I know so many people who wanted to learn a second language and ended up giving up. [/quote]

I agree
By the age of 5 I was introduced and using 5 languages because my family’s and home place’s multicultural back ground. I find it rather easy (relatively) to learn new languages, as in high school I was able to pick up German quite fast and learning mandarin so far has been easier then most people’s experiences with the language. I find it easier to think in the language then my peers.