Posted on 11/27/2006 7:04:44 AM PST by meandog
Now, come on...the "trust me, I'm a professional" line isn't the one to take in this instance. It's what added so much heat to this eight-hundred-plus-replies-and-growing thread.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a canon, but I will say that the notion that Whitman (or any other author) is important shouldn't be taken at face value. Yes, Whitman was important to some writers, and less so to others. A nodding acquaintance with Whitman is probably required for cultural literacy at this late date (thank you, Academia), but the most relevant question I ask about Whitman is is Walt Whitman's poetry important to me.
The answer is no, not really. I once flabbergasted Virginia Tech's then-Playwright in Residence Jerry McGlown by telling him that my favorite poet was Robert Frost. A lefty like Jerry (R.I.P) couldn't imagine that that could be true.
Whitman is important, yes, but his work is most important within the particular version of the history of literature that the Academy has constructed for itself. That's fine, but if you don't mind, I'd prefer not to take the Academy's word for it. Give me some stacks full of primary sources and a thermos of coffee, and I'll form my own opinions, thanks.
That should be 'acquaintance'!
Well, I'm not so sure. You see, I don't know what poets I haven't read because our professors passed them over in favor of Whitman. To evaluate, I would need to undertake a survey of mid-19th-century poetry.
Which, frankly, sounds rather delicious. I've been away from the university library too long...and I've been Freeping too long, too, at least today. I'll have to put off any further replies 'til this evening, I think.
Thanks for the discussion.
I fully support homeschooling, and under different circumstances, I would probably be homeschooling my children, but the attitude of a large number of homeschoolers on this board is appalling.
It doesn't help the homeschooling cause when parents who have their children in public school are told they are child abusers, and that their children will be slaving for homeschooled overlords.
More respect for ALL parents' right to make decisions for their own children should be the outcome we all desire.
That's because good ol' Moby has more chapters about whales and whaling and whale oil than it does plot. Someone needed a good harsh editor. I like reading long, boring expository passages - Tolkien's "The Silmarillion" is one of my favorite books - and MD bored me to tears.
I know that many agree with you. I have found Nyquil more invigorating. My 11th Grade Humanities professor likening the fellow in the room rubbing the idol (or whatever) to self-abuse did not help me to appreciate Melville (although I liked Bartleby the Scrivener). David Allen White's portrayal of the book as an attack on Calvinism (the whale being the Calvinist God) is interesting when White discusses it. But frankly, I found Kruschev's five hour rant against Stalin and the Cult of Personality more readable and interesting.
What if the truth is appalling? There are several successful models of education, but today's government school system isn't among them....no need to respond - I'll just take care of it now: "But our public school is different." Now everyone can feel better ;-)
Sensible folks those Tsarists. The Colony of New Haven had the same law under the Rev. Mr. John Davenport. Exile would do as well. Countries like Andorra are quite libertarian while maintaining reasonable social order.
I understand that T. S. Eliot was a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism but I fail to see why that makes him anti-Semitic. In his times, anti-Semitism was unfortunately more tolerated than it has been post WWII until recently as the Left is now running in that direction.
Children are not adults. Parents and not the state have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and education of their kids (upon which we seem to agree). I cannot claim the right to choose the education of my own kids without allowing to virtually every other parent to do likewise as to their kids. Such freedoms are not facilitated by homogenized public schools in the ancient era of Horace Mann, the more recent (WWI) era of John Dewey or in the current age of truly active evil in which public schools may be generalized as PS 666 such as "fisting" classes in public schools at Lexington, MA, the requirement of blatant propaganda such as Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate (veritable literary catechisms of lesbianism and homosexuality) in NYC public schools, and other widely noted atrocities posing as "education." If the parents want this, they can buy the books to twist their own kids with their own money. They are not welcome to use my taxes to do so. If the parents want to have their kids instructed in "fisting", they ought to be jailed for child abuse.
When kids are eighteen, they ought to listen to their parents but, alas, it is the way of the world that they often do not. If my nineteen-year-old who generally shows better judgment should decide that she simply MUST know why controversy swirled around Lady Chatterley's Lover, that will now be her decision. I think she has sufficient moral foundation not to be interested by D. H. Lawrence but, if not, not. I take it that you are referencing the Tom Wolfe who wrote Look Homeward, Angel, and not the more recent Tom Wolfe of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and MauMauing the Flak Catchers and several great American novels. Either are acceptable to the best of my knowledge and the latter is close to essential especially MauMauing the Flak Catchers and also From Bauhaus to Our House. I am not aware of objections to Faulkner that would concern me.
I don't regard Whitman as necessary context but I also admit to having a general distaste for poetry not written by Virgil, Homer or W. H. von Dreele.
I bring up Mapplethorpe because the literati, the culturati and the glitterati went just ga-ga over his bullwhip photo (which placed the whip handle in the object of many of their affections---barf). I rank his photography well below poetry that was not written by the aforementioned three poets or those like them.
Whatever Wagner believed, his beliefs were not the reason for Third Reich ideology against the Jews or otherwise. Hitler, Goebbels, Goering and the rest were substantially sui generis and just dreadfully more efficient than comparable figures. I have always regarded those who worship themselves such as Hitler, Goebbels and Goering as sorely limited in their imaginations. Wagner was merely a composer and apparently a composer with racial delusions.
Before exposing my children of tender years and impressionable minds to the works of practicing sexual perverts, I would feel it necessary to read those works in their entirety and that does not seem a very attractive idea. One of my kids aspires to be a nurse and has a very practical career path in mind. She is the one absolutely most interested in literature as a hobby but a good-paying job in significant service to others as a foundation for a financially secure life. Daughter #2 is likely on her way to Yale as a chemistry major. Daughter #3 aspires to reaching the age of 13 in spite of her absolutely inconsistent desire to major in Hannah Montana and That's So Raven. It will be reaching age 13 or abandoning Disneytrash or but not both. We are currently experimenting with televisionectomy. If necessary, before resorting to execution, we will consider putting her up for adoption by a dismally cloistered convent without television, without internet and without shopping experiences at malls.
If, at some point along the way, you should encounter my children in what is termed the great ongoing conversation of mankind (in which we encourage them to engage), you might, with great effort, convince one or more of them that Whitman is essential by bringing your evidence to the conversation with them but they may fight back. No man is a prophet in his own household. Sometimes they may even disagree with me (I know how hard that will be for many to believe but it is true nonetheless) and we have taught them to accept unquestioningly only the Teaching Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.
As to the value of opinions, God and I make a voting and binding majority. In the event of disagreement (shudder) between me and God, God makes a binding and voting majority.
BTW, don't mistake enthusiasm for anger. I am always enthusiastic but seldom angry. I must work on that transparency thing since I have had to actually articulate this paragraph.
Finally, the original subject of this thread was an essay by a school janitor shilling for the National "Education" Association and Gummint Skeweling generally. Since you and I agree that parents should be the decisionmakers on the education of their respective kids, we should find ourselves in agreement that tax money should not be utilized for gummint skewels much less to so weight the scales in favor of homogenized leftist indoctrination as to make those schools the norm in our society. Whitman, Lawrence, Tchaikovsky, T.S. Eliot, Tennyson, Browning, Wagner, Wolfe, Faulkner, et al., are strictly side issues. If we are in agreement on abolishing public schools, then we have agreed on the critical issue. Then, as Chairman Mao used to say: Let a thousand flowers bloom!
St. Thomas Aquinas was certainly a scholar of more than middling note. He apparently was possessed of the error that female infants in utero were ensouled only after ninety days of mom's pregnancy. If he were back for a reprise performance in our times and were told authoritatively that a pope (any pope) said that ensoulment for all infants takes place at conception, St. Thomas would likely slap his forehead and say in medieval Italian: "Of course, why didn't I realize that?"
Footnote: [Black Elk, FreeRepublic, Home Schools Run by Well-Meaning Amateurs, 12/4/06, 11:32 AM God's Time CST]
Of course, the justifiable exception is that all children should be required to read, research, study on the history of Lakota Nation and to recognize that Custer died for his sins.
You don't know ANYTHING about my situation, yet you sit in judgement.
A parent's right to make educational decisions does not entail a right go have others make believe that such decisions do not have consequences. If the decision is public schooling by theft of the resources of others, the consequences cannot very well be good.
Education is a sword and a shield. Homeschooled children and most privately schooled children are better armed and better defended by far than are the denizens of gummint skewels. Is it polite or something to lie to parents who make the choice to abandon their children to gummint skewels???
We are developing in this society a very sloppy habit of confusing actual rights with the right to be comforted in our errors. If I say a speaker is a fool for advocating Marxism, I am NOT denying the speaker's freedom of speech. Likewise, if I say that a parent is making a bad decision to abandon his/her kids to gummint skewels, I am not denying the parent's right to do exactly that (at least so long as the tax thievery in support of amoral incompetence that is PS 666 is still allowed to exist). I would only deny a right to gummint skeweling in the same sense that I would deny your right to have your household pets receive hideously expensive veterinary care at taxpayer expense instead of your own. That you may choose to have others pay your bills is not an equivalent to your having a moral right to force others to pay your bills. Let gummint skewels (not that they are a legitimate function of government in any event) support themselves by bake sales, bingo and car washes and NOT by taxing citizens at the point of a gun to support such a failed exercise.
To summarize, I fully respect the RIGHT of any parent to keep his/her children in ignorance. I do not respect either the ignorance or the parent who does so. Such parents don't have to respect me either. Their children will probably be ruled by better educated children, however. That has always been the way of our world and always will be.
What is really appalling is taxing people to support idjit excuses for ideas that they despise. At least that is what Jefferson taught.
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