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 ...
There seems to be no end to the attack on western civilization. It’s like we’re heading into a new Dark Age.
Where was she?
Remember the 60’s? “hey hey ho ho western civ’s got to go!”
Nothing has changed. The left is obsessed with hatred for Western Civilization because it’s based on Christian/Jewish values and values the individual over the collectivity.
What they want is a totalitarian oppressive state that controls everything, and that suppresses the individual in favor of the collectivity and the ruling elite.
People who cared about Classics had known Victor Davis Hanson for quite some time, but in terms of concern for political correctness and state of our society, I think this is the book that first put him on the map, so to speak. They've been trying to kill Western Civilization for quite some time.
QFT: “What they want is a totalitarian oppressive state that controls everything, and that suppresses the individual in favor of the collectivity and the ruling elite.”
IMO, rigorous study and proper understanding of The Enlightenment as it led to the American Revolution should convince any honest person that without the study of the Classics as the basis for their education, the Founders would have been unprepared to organize the effort to write the two greatest documents of Western Civilization: the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
Do you know why classics is "not in growth mode"? Because, in any university there are going to be only about 70 students studying classics. That is it. And, that number has remained the same at almost any time in history since the 1700s.
I have looked at the numbers of students studying the classics in the early American colonial colleges and compared them to the numbers of students studying the classics today. Right now, at Harvard University, there are today about 70 students in the Philology PhD program. That is roughly same number of students who studied the same subject throughout the 1700s.
So, what really needs to happen is that more universities need to emphasize Western Civilization in general. But these ladies don't think that teaching about dead white men is important.
My daughter had to take a intro poly sci this term to complete her degree requirements; I thought it might be interesting, as she went through the course, to discuss some of the basics of Aristotle’s Politics vs. Plato’s Republic etc. No such luck: her teacher (adjunct, middle aged woman of color) spends each weekly session beating one lame idea to death—this past week it was the canard that people who are pro-life should be against the death penalty. Daughter has learned more from 15 minutes with Dad than she will in 48 hours with this lady. The one gratifying piece of information is that it seems the majority of the class recognizes the lameness of the course; we may have a future yet.
More than enough examples of that in Western Civilization from Sparta where most of the residents were slaves and even the citizens were tyrannically regulated to the 2016 Democratic national convention.
(gushy stuff I am pasting below, from Univ of Iowa)
/snip
We particularly admire Prof. Bond’s ability to relate classical culture to pressing contemporary issues. For example, as her nominator points out, “Dr. Bond regularly uses her platform at Forbes to tackle ethical issues, particularly with the misuse of history” and mentions her article “A Short History of Regulating Female Dress”, in which burkini bans in the French Riviera serve as an entrée into a longer history the subject that runs from Athens through Rome, the Codex Justinianus, and the Middle Ages. Along the same lines, we could cite Prof. Bond’s articles on “What [Iowa Representative] Steve King Gets Wrong About the Dark Ages—And Western Civilization”; “Redrawing the Margins: Debating the Legalization of Prostitution”; and “Yes, Ancient Athletes Had Sponsorship Deals, Too”, among many others. We should also mention Prof. Bond’s well-known piece in Hyperallergic, “Why We Need to Start Seeing the Classical World in Color”, which became a target of white supremist attacks and a flashpoint in the current culture wars.
Prof. Bond has made several public calls for greater justice and equity in academe; for example, in her Forbes article, “Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account at Academia.edu”, which has received 350,000+ views. Prof. Bond also created the website Women of Ancient History (WOAH), a crowd-sourced digital map and catalog of women who specialize in classical and biblical history. The website serves both as a public testament to the presence of women in this field and as a corrective to a tendency to overlook women when filling academic panels and selecting keynote speakers.
In gratitude for her enormous efforts to bring classical culture to the general public in lively, engaging, and relevant ways, and for her powerful moral compass and strong sense of social justice, we are, again, delighted to award the 2018 SCS Outreach Prize to Prof. Sarah Bond.
Don’t forget that at least the people of the ‘Dark Ages’ copied and preserved the works of ancient civilization.
It is said that Sparta is an army that has a state attached to it, while most places are a state with an army attached.
SCS meeting in San Diego.
She seems like a decent sort of person. There was a time before my time when “liberal studies” wasn’t the detestable thing of which we think today.
Sad, sad, sad. She could very well say, “...then they came for the classicists and there was no one left (to defend me, as we had all been picked off one by one)
Once again this should be a warning about how and where our own children are educated.
And Civil War 2 continues.
When the wisdom of the ages is prohibited, the emotional simplicity of adolescence will masquerade in its place.
Watching civilization die...
Did your daughter ask her what about those who believe in abortion? Do they believe in the death penalty?
But that is why colleges began to teach more topics like accounting and nursing. Originally, you could only get a bachelors in philosophy, but as time went on more degrees were added. Some degrees are more popular than others, but the classics are the basic reason for the teaching.
But the abandonment of philology, the heart of our discipline, means that there can be no true research in the field. We can have no new editions of texts, no new translations, no work on ancient history, no scholarly work on ancient authors, without knowledge of the languages. What Connolly seemed to be advocating is that classicists should discard the heart and soul of their discipline to make it more popular.
Connolly needs to get out of the classics if she is that unhappy.
No, I will not be driving traffic to Quillette. But thanks to all who have suggested I throw up a link to an article attempting to defame me for interrupting a racist at a conference. Have a nice day.
1 day ago · Twitter
...racist? 'curiouser and curiouser.'"
another article but she is not the Georgia democrat of the same name.
The barbarians are already inside the gates as the author discovered. The city has fallen. Every man (woman, cisgender, Lesbian, Gay) for his/her/whatever’s self!
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