Posted on 11/17/2021 7:31:15 AM PST by Brookhaven
France’s education minister has announced plans to boost the teaching of ancient Greek and Latin in an effort to fight the proliferation of wokeism and “develop the culture” of the country’s younger generations.
Speaking on Monday, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, a leading figure in France’s war on woke, said that ancient Greek and Latin would become available to sixth formers pursuing vocational courses next year, as well as middle school students.
Blanquer wants sixth formers to have the opportunity to “develop their culture” by reading ancient philosophers while gaining the technical qualifications that the economy demands.
Speaking at a charter signing, alongside counterparts from Italy, Greece, and Cyprus, the minister claimed their joint commitment to the promotion of the classics came at a time when ancient languages were being threatened by American wokeism.
The targeting of the dead languages has been most prominent in the US with Princeton University announcing this summer that it would no longer require classics students to study ancient Greek and Latin; the two vernaculars are often considered the core pillars of the discipline.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an associate professor of classics at Princeton, claimed the ancient languages had been used as a justification of slavery, colonialism, and fascism for 2,000 years.
In a similar move, a Massachusetts high school boasted that it had removed Homer’s Odyssey from the school curriculum as it conflicted with the anti-racist agenda it wanted to teach. “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year,” a teacher wrote on social media.
Blanquer told Le Point that such interpretations of the classics were “completely mind boggling.” “To stick categories and a contemporary world view on writings dating back two millennia is an abyssal absurdity,” he added, noting that these civilizations brought us “openness and a search for the universal.”
The minister believes that ancient languages are a common bond for contemporary European nations, noting that the “common linguistic fund” would help spread “common values.”
Blanquer also claimed the classics respond to a demand for logos (language as a tool for reason), in a world where “a lack of reason is spreading like wildfire.”
Last month, the education minister set up a think tank dedicated to President Emmanuel Macron’s war on wokeism.
The liberal or woke agenda, which some in France claim is an Anglo-Saxon import, is likely to be a major feature in the 2022 presidential election, where Macron’s main competitor is likely to hail from the far right of the political spectrum.
“I am Spartan. I call a ‘spade’ a ‘spade.’”
“Princeton University announcing this summer that it would no longer require classics students to study ancient Greek and Latin”
In other news, the math department will no longer require competence in algebra, geometry, trig or calculus.
Because solid learning from ancient times, the Trivium of Grammar (good literature), Logic (how, not what, to think) and Rhetoric (persuading others of the truth, and learning it yourself in greater depth in the process), protected students from exploitation by elite controllers of society, students had to be subjected to the fun-house world familiar in the school institution today.
This required laying the foundation for schooling, not on the basis of the classics of Western Civilization, the first among equals of nine great world civilizations–the free legacy of each citizen of the world–but upon planned disruption of them and opposition to them–the chimera of cultural appropriation as asserted by people with no appreciable education themselves–by vilification of the great and the good books (Dead White Males), and by an insidious control curriculum to thwart the acquisition of a solid academic foundation, to deliberately “crush the imagination” and stymie development of habits of independent thought immune to elite control.
Mirabile dictu!
What's "racist" about The Odyssey?
The Greek portion of the sign above Jesus at the cross saying "Jesus of Nazareth king of the Jews"
In my limited study of classical and Koine Greek I have yet to see the forest for the trees. That said, I have gained a desire to be precise with language and to think critically. Does not always work, however.
I had 8yrs of Latin and 1yr of Classical Greek, back in the 60s in HS and college, and it did wonders for my vocabulary and public speaking. I aced all courses, and enjoyed it immensely.
From what I have read, the Greek philosophers were a heavy influence on our Founding Fathers in crafting our government/ Constitution. This step is simply another step in the direction of erasing our history. Greek philosophers were NOT on the side of the Commies.
Ping.
You are behind the times. My sister is a middle- and high-school math teacher. She says we passed that point years ago.
Vive la France ! Vive la Republique !
Give credit where credit is due !
—”What’s “racist” about The Odyssey?”
NOTHING!
Long ago I read (skimmed?) The Odyssey for a class.
My son recommended the Emily Wilson translation, OH MY!
Some of the best fiction, ever.
I knew the ending but about a third of the way in, I could not stop reading! I read all night!
And Tennyson’s Ulysses is a nice denouement, Odysseus was not born to sit around... So he puts the band back together for a world tour.
“Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.”
“We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Things like this and a high birth rate are why France is a real country.
The Great Pyramid was built around 2,600 BC.
Alexander the Great (the high point of Greece) lived around 330 BC.
Egyptian civilization and culture predates Greece by at least 2,000 years, so he may have a point about the cultural appropriation.
As to black Egyptians, there is some evidence there were black rulers in Egypt from time to time (especially in the southern kingdom), but once the kingdoms were unified, the evidence points to the leaders being semitic—white Egyptians.
There is plenty of evidence that the Egyptians would routinely raid south of Egypt to capture people as slaves. Almost all of those people would have almost certainly have been black.
Speaking on Monday, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, a leading figure in France’s war on woke, said that ancient Greek and Latin would become available to sixth formers pursuing vocational courses next year, as well as middle school students.
“There’s nothing nobler than a man and wife, of one heart and mind in a house:
A bane to their enemies; and to their friends, great joy.
But their own hearts know it best.”
Aha! Kinda sexist and un-inclusive? /s
Loved The Odyssey. Shared it with my daughters whom I home-schooled, and I did get a bit misty when we read the above. We all got a great education. The quote above hung in our home thereafter.
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