Posted on 03/02/2019 6:44:17 AM PST by Ge0ffrey
I only wanted to make four very brief points, but I felt compelled to state at the beginning that we could not abandon the ancient languages because then we would have nothing left of our field—of all the egregiously shocking things I had just heard, that seemed to be the one that most cried out to be challenged. I then attempted to say the following:
1) It is important to stand up for Classics as a discipline, and promote it as the political, literary, historical, philosophical, rhetorical, and artistic foundation of Western Civilization, and the basis of European history, tradition, culture, and religion. It gave us the concepts of liberty, equality, and democracy, which we should teach and promote. We should not apologize for our field;
2) It is important to go back to teaching undergraduates about the great classical authors—Cicero, the Athenian dramatists, Homer, Demosthenes, the Greek and Roman historians, Plato, and Aristotle—in English translation in introductory courses;
3) One way of promoting Classics is to offer more survey courses that cover many subject areas (epic, tragedy, comedy, rhetoric, philosophy, history, political theory, and art history), or to concentrate on one area such as in Freshmen seminars, or through western civilization classes;
4) It should help with securing funding from administrators to argue that such survey courses are highly cost-effective: a student could learn a tremendous amount even if such a survey were the only Classics course taken. On the other hand, a seminar that concentrated on the close reading of a few texts would prove beneficial for all students.
Unfortunately, I was interrupted in the middle of my first point by Sarah Bond, who forcefully insisted: “We are not Western Civilization!”
(Excerpt) Read more at quillette.com ...
Well put... Thanks for that.
A eureka for Mary?
No, she knows that there is no such thing as hypocrisy in the left, only solidarity with the Accepted Beliefs of Today.
Dictatorial Left Wing political movements invariably set out to destroy the culture that they attempt to infest and especially their history. This has been going on for years in Academia and it is going to get worse.
This was a ton of reading, and painful at that. But I made it all the way through, and, with each paragraph, was treated to yet another way in which academia is imploding.
Again and again, as I watch what used to be the guardians and sustainers of what we used to call the Great Conversation (our schools), I returned to the thought-question: “When, where and how can we start up a college where the words ‘diversity’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘white-privilege’, ‘toxic masculinity’, ‘gender equity’ or ‘people of color’ are seldom, if ever, heard?”
I doubt it’s even possible unless, perhaps, on an island somewhere.
She has the eyes of a whack job ... SJW eyes, to be sure.
Padilla did not respond to my point directly. Instead, he let out a whoop of what sounded like triumph. He then made the following statement:
I did not interrupt you once, so you are going to let me talk. You are going to let someone who has been historically marginalized from the production of knowledge in the Classics, talk. And here’s what I have to say about the vision of classics that you’ve outlined: If that is in fact a vision that affirms you in your white supremacy, I want nothing to do with it. I hope the field dies, that you’ve outlined [sic], dies, and that it dies as swiftly as possible!
When conservatives bemoan the state of academia, I often wonder if they are just generalizing a few publicized incidents. This article demonstrates otherwise. The mindset of the “academics” depicted is comprehensively leftist and mordant. Group meetings are always a forum for the most radical jerks, and those who rise by politics instead of merit.
Since its members apparently reject the notion of the Classics as a medium for teaching values, social development, history, literature, (and the “Western Intellectual Tradition”, which the neo-Stalinists have buried as an vehicle of White Supremacy and Imperialist exploitation), the author should have asked the group for their views of the PURPOSE of Classics education. The answer: to destroy the Western Intellectual Tradition and the West’s sense of legitimacy. They are oblivious to the fact that this will end their own field in the process. They are well underway.
I would have asked.
Ah yes, the “Old dead white guy” syndrome/bias.
Classics is getting victimization-ized. We’re at the tipping point.
We’re good at pointing out these issues, but where are the solutions? It’s one of the most difficult to solve. They have struck very deeply at the intellectual roots.
Possibilities:
1) Stop fighting arguments with “the old ways” of the Classics and Enlightenment, which led to Marxism anyway. Use Christianity 100%.
2) Somehow call for ending all state and federal higher education funding, unless non-political STEM. Declare victimolgy a religion, and claim the need for separation of church and state? Somehow. But their funding is elusive and hidden, and includes tenure of junk professors.
But as a percent of total students, then vs now?
In the nineteen sixties the Ivy League led the way in eliminating departments of Geography. Gone with them were the broad survey courses of regions and nations that gave students an understanding of their political, economic and cultural aspects. There was nothing to take their place, and just as we now have ignorance of the Classics, we also have an ignorance of Geography, a field of study that has a history of more than two thousand years. What’s next? History departments are already sadly reduced from the past when all incoming freshmen were expected to take a survey course on both American and World history.
I’m sure Panini had some cultural beliefs that this group of libs would not tolerate but India isnt in any hurry to drop his studies, Classical Islamic scholars were not big tent people and China’s revered teachers were not socially colorblind. Convince all these groups first.
This will help understand how different modes of thought affect culture and cultural products throughout history. Once this is known, it becomes possible to create a rational society and culture which is the best for mass happiness.
academia is where non-productive, left-wing parasites go to hide, survive and breed.
The cultural Marxists have destroyed every other academic venue, creating “students” to invade non-conquered academic disciplines with their well indoctrinated minds, so that eventually all academic pursuits can perform some aspect of Marxist indoctrination.
Isnt 70 students now a much much lower percentage of students than 70 students in the 1700’s?
When our Founders were in college there were about 70 students in each college. The colleges then were quite small. They were all trained in the classics. The capstone class was moral philosophy. Roughly half of the Founders went to college. The only degree you could get was a bachelors in philosophy. After that a graduate would either enter the real world, go to divinity school or medical school, or read law.
In fact, the kind of education they received, if you were to study the content, would be equal to getting a PhD in philology today from Harvard University. The only exception is that our Founders were well-versed in moral philosophy. Today's philologists are not schooled in that discipline.
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