Posted on 12/31/2020 9:45:15 AM PST by Kaslin
The woke left rejects Homer, and the rest of the Western canon, because they hate any art that doesn’t reinforce their narrow-minded ideology.
The woke are succeeding where Plato failed. In Plato’s most famous dialogue, the “Republic,” the character of Socrates argues the ideal polity will exclude Homer and the rest of the Greek poets and dramatists. But Plato, who loved the poets, leaves the door open for their return. As with much else in Plato’s work, the proposed ban on Homer should perhaps be taken seriously, not literally.
Today’s cultural radicals, however, have no such subtlety. When they say we should get rid of Homer, they mean we should get rid of Homer, ideally replacing the “Odyssey” with a new novel by a trans woman of color. As Meghan Cox Gurdon reports in the Wall Street Journal, their “demands for censorship appear to be getting results” as high school teachers boast of dumping the classics.
Writing in Quillette, Lona Manning provides further background on this movement, loosely organized around the hashtag slogan #DisruptTexts. Encouraged by the current mélange of intersectional ideology and critical theory that has captivated the left, it’s an intensification of the left’s efforts to cull “dead white males” from curricula.
To be sure, efforts to excise the classics from education have been underway for decades. Yet, this latest attempt, however, has far more of an ideological edge to it. Instead of seeing the classics as irrelevant to the modern world, classics are viewed as malevolent sources of oppression.
No great work of art or literature is safe from being declared problematic by the new far-left moralists, which provides the #DisruptTexts project its justification. Those looking for something wrong with a work of art will always be able to find something.
Of course, one shouldn’t be surprised that these modern leftists aren’t always honest about what they’re doing. As Rod Dreher notes, high school teacher Heather Levine boasted to her peers of getting rid of Homer, then started backtracking and lying about what she had done when the Wall Street Journal article brought attention to her actions. This combination of duplicity and leftist jargon is meant to obscure, but examining Plato’s original effort to cancel Homer may clarify what is at stake.
Plato, speaking through the character of Socrates, does not hide the ball. He loved Homer and the other poets, but he nonetheless excluded them from his ideal polity, with Socrates rhetorically asking: “shall we carelessly allow the children to hear any old stories, told by just anyone, and to take beliefs into their souls that are for the most part opposite to the ones we think they should hold when they are grown up?” The obvious conclusion is that “we must, first of all, it seems, supervise the storytellers.”
Control over stories is control over what people believe and who they are. Any such educators who would remake society must therefore remake or replace the narratives that define its people. Thus, the critiques that Plato made against Homer and other artists are echoed in the woke efforts to remake the curriculum — for instance, that it is corrupting to imitate, even for art’s sake, that which is ignoble or wicked.
Hence the instances of woke panic over some obviously negative depictions of racism. It is thought that reading such things, even to condemn them, may be harmful. For the champions of #DisruptTexts and its allies, there is nothing deeper than the desire to control, combined with moral panic over the impurity of art that is insufficiently leftist.
In contrast, Plato’s disavowal of the poets and playwrights of ancient Greece is a nuanced vindication of Socrates and philosophy. Through it, Plato rebuts the charges of impiety and corruption of the young that had been leveled against Socrates.
What is truly impious and corrupting, he suggests, is telling tales in which the gods are human, all too human — lustful, malicious, petty, and cruel. This critique also demonstrated the superiority of philosophic dialogue as a means of understanding the divine, compared to the mythical works of the poets. All of this was embedded within a discussion of an ideal city that was itself hypothesized in order to illuminate why it is better to live a just life than an unjust one.
Plato turned on Homer to make several sophisticated points, and at the end of the “Republic,” he encouraged his readers to defend the poets and present reasons they should not be exiled from the ideal city. In contrast, the woke have rejected Homer, and the rest of the Western canon, because they hate any art that doesn’t reinforce their parochial ideology and cannot stand those who are different from them. In reality, their celebration of diversity is confined to a narrow spectrum.
Far from being genuinely multicultural, the woke are an insular subculture that replicates many of the worst traits of other such subcultures, including an insistence on didactic art. Yet, their overrepresentation in media and education (among other institutions) means that they wield real power, which they can use to mold children to transform society as a whole.
In this case, recalling Plato’s hypothetical cancellation of Homer illuminates the totalitarian control that woke educators seek as they attempt to radically remake society. The traditional texts of the Western canon are valuable for many reasons, which is why they’ve been treasured for hundreds — even thousands — of years.
It seems to me that most Literature Classes were designed by people who hate their students.
The assignments in those classes are dreadful stories and books that successfully discourage students from reading in the future.
Picking trash for lit courses because the author checks off boxes for perversion and mental illness will only make this worse.
• One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
The woke left rejects Homer, and the rest of the Western canon, because they hate any art that doesn’t reinforce their narrow-minded ideology.
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The woke rejects Jesus . . . that’s why we are in this mess. We are heading toward the finish line. Be ready. https://www.patburt.com/
There must be foundational morals involved.
Plato is an old bull male who was racist and owned slaves - nobody should listen to that old smelly fart.
“Control over stories is control over what people believe and who they are.”
Western nations didn’t have a right to their own culture.
Only Africa and China had a right to their own culture.
Students—and adults—need to know the classics to help form their minds and their hearts!!!!
Then there are the Divine Liturgy and other prayers of the Church, the Bible, and the Fathers and the other Saints!!!!
People without such formation might well be stupid and perverse enough to vote for the serial cheater biden and the immoral communist harris! PHOOEY!!!!
Jackson - “Kill ’em. Kill ’em all.”
That headline is more than a bit misleading. Teachers don’t have the power to “dump” any course of study. That’s all decided by school boards and state Departments of Education.
So if a school board wants Classic Literature to be taught, it will be taught. But if the board doesn’t want Classic Literature to be taught, it will not be taught.
Quick story: I taught high school physics for many years. And one year - for some unfathomable reason - the board decided that torque was no longer to be taught in physics class.
But torque is a central concept in mechanics. So I snuck it in anyway. But trust me when I say this. If I had been caught doing that, I would have been in trouble. Get caught once, get written up. Get caught again, and it’s a firing offense.
I never read Plato until I was well into adulthood. I bought my set of “Great Books” and started working my way through them during my lunch hours. I didn’t get far, but I got through Plato and a few others; too many other books intruded into my reading list. I’m going back to the basics, now, working my way through the Harvard Classics which you can get for $1.99 from Kindle.
I have often said that the best education in the world was four years in the Navy and a set of Harvard Classics ($300 from ebay)... but then I found you can get the entire set plus twenty volumes more from Kindle for 2 bucks.
I never served, but in my working life I noticed that some of the best trained people I encountered had got their training in the Navy. The military in general, and maybe the Navy in particular, have some of the best schools anywhere.
I would support a more classic based education, but really that hasn’t been around for a long time. Things get worse year by year. Maybe a classics based home schooling would be the best answer.
Going right to the root of Western Civilization.
They mean to erase us.
I agree. The teaching of Virtue is sorely missed.
“It seems to me that most Literature Classes were designed by people who hate their students.
The assignments in those classes are dreadful stories and books that successfully discourage students from reading in the future.”
Like what?
“Heather Has Two Mommies” will be the standard in the future.
I remember being forced to read “A Tale of Two Cities” when in high school. Dreadful assignment!
I was also forced to read some garbage written by Elie Wiesel, who was later revealed to be a pathological liar and narcissist.
Kids should be reading things that are interesting and unique, not things that are dreadful or based on garbage lies.
Fahrenheit 451 come to life....................
Most of it.
I only remember one story in a lit book that I actually enjoyed, The Most Dangerous Game.
The vast majority were painful to read. For instance, what a great story to read for kid - The Red Pony by Steinbeck.
Or what about Jimmy has two daddies?
Actually China got rid of virtually all of their "Chinese" culture. To see Chinese culture today you have to go to Taiwan. Its just what communist totalitarian dictators have to do to make their surfs good and pliable.
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