My reading in the Year of Our Lord 2018 was marked by some fairly deliberate attempts (emphasis on attempts) at slow reading as a counter to my long-standing tradition of attempting to speed read. Hilariously, I am but a poor example of either discipline.
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Have you ever quarreled about something (that you later realized was insignificant), and in so doing, lost sight of what was truly important? Have you ever been waylaid by something distracting, and lost your way as a result? Well, if you haven’t experienced this in a while, you may recall a similar gist in one of Aesop’s fables, “The Ass and His Shadow.” (If not, read on!)
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“Do we have to do Latin?” Students gloomily contemplate its grammar charts, teachers of other subjects wonder what it’s doing in the curriculum, and homeschooling parents find it a constant thorn in their sides. Do we study Latin as a mental exercise, like math? To improve our English? To get a higher SAT score? Many of us aren’t sure, and we wish we could do something useful instead of studying a dead language.
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What is Homer’s Odyssey about?
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Occasionally, academics need a good lampooning. Perhaps often.
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“There’s no magic in this series.”
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The medieval trivium has been central to the American classical education movement of the past three decades. For many of us it is our defining concept, our method against public school madness, even our child psychology. And so it may surprise us to discover that in a book subtitled An Introduction to the History of Classical Education, the trivium is not once mentioned. The title of this book may also surprise us: Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Don’t worry, this isn’t the secular, atheistic humanism of our own day.
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Have you ever seen football players fool around after losing a game—playing catch, running routes, general horseplay? Probably not. Such a thing is a sure sign they did not give everything they had during the game. It is a coach’s job to train his players through practice and virtue to leave everything on the field. The game is too important and demands such a level of respect that a player simply must give his best.
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All educators (who aren’t chatbots) know weakness. Disorganization, stage fright, incompetence in a subject matter, pedagogical clumsiness. These things inhibit our effectiveness and confidence. One day we discover—surprise!—we are not the John Keatings and William Forresters we hope to be.
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In a recent essay, “Harkness Cautions: You Need a Sage on a Stage,” Joshua Gibbs explains why he has abandoned his Harkness table and returned to a more conventional classroom seating arrangement. He goes on to explain that the changes in the physical setup of his classroom reflect his uneasiness with one pedagogy—Socratic inquiry—and his endorsement of another: the sage on the stage.
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