High-flying discussions about what the challenge measures? Great, but not out of a flabby idea that if black kids aren't good at it yet it's Because Racism.
More from Prof. Paul Hamilton's comments on the point of _reading_ Shakespeare in an un-modernized form:
"Dr. Paul Hamilton, a Shakespeare scholar, offers a brilliant and concise statement which cuts through much of the current confusion concerning the value of reading Shakespeare and why, by the way, the recent temptation to modernize its language misses the point of bothering to read the works in the first place.
He writes (in the second of the two following comments) a clarifying reply to my own response to his comment (1) here :
"To savage the plays is not to root out bardolatry. It is to avoid the problem all together - which is that the issue is power. To read any complex work of art as a bland and unified expression of any "ism" is idiotic. That is a problem of appropriation. It is not an aesthetic problem.
To turn "bardolatry" into a denunciation of a particular Renaissance aesthetic is not going to affect those in power. They couldn't care less whether it is Shakespeare or Milton or Wordsworth who symbolizes the superiority of one class over another. The artists anyway are almost always on the side of the disenfranchised. What you need to do is isolate the fraud of the approbation (appropriation (?)) of works of art for purposes utterly opposed to the artwork itself."
this (2) follow-up:
...
"My point is that the real problem is that Shakespeare is appropriated for various ends - whether that is status, nationalism, etc. The cringe-worthy speeches and ceremonies on Shakespeare's birthday; the false notion that Shakespeare's views were identical with the interests of the state; the mobilization of Shakespeare as an implicit defense of the class structure, when, in reality, he continually undermines class assumptions, etc. All of that is execrable and demands a * cultural * critique.
THIS----> *** "The problem, though, is * not * the Renaissance aesthetic of the plays. The entire point of appreciating a work of art from a different historical period is that you will be estranged from your own assumptions - and have to encounter a view of language and life that is different. The demand that every work of art be easy to understand - as another poster observed - is simply an infantile wish to have one's own worldview always confirmed. <----- THIS ***
"As others have also pointed out, the author is clearly projecting his own tendency to use meaningless words to gain social status onto those who enjoy Shakespeare. I don't think I have, in recent years, * ever * seen such a binge on pseudo-hip argot "necro-obsequious evangelical proselytism"!
"Admittedly, the author proves his thesis - that he is incapable of understanding Shakespeare . . . because - as others have observed - he is totally unaware that his * one quote * from Shakespeare (from Richard II) is not meant to be taken at face value. The quote is profoundly ironic. He could have at least read the plot summary in Spark Notes™ to figure that one out . . . And, it also speaks to the mendacity of shomeone who savages the reputation of a writer without bothering to try to understand his work.
"And, as the * late * citation from the Shakespeare critic, Erin Sullivan, makes clear (did he really think this wouldn't be spotted?), he plagiarized a scholarly article about "bardolatry" without understanding a word of what was being said. Just look at the article and find the quotes he lifted from it . . . He has clearly never read Tolstoy on Shakespeare or Voltaire. He just blankly copied quotes from that essay, which he found online.
"All in all, this is a dreadful piece. And we could all have been spared the crude mixture of ignorance, nastiness, plagiarism, and misinformation if an editor from The Guardian - who wasn't sleeping on the job - had bothered to look at it carefully."
I see this problem differently, as a result of too much focus on practicality and a tendency to believe that education = job training.
Americans have always been practical people. This trait is a strength in many ways: it leads people here to start businesses, invent stuff, and generally get things done. A negative side of it is a tendency to devalue anything that's NOT perceived as practical. This tendency has increased in the last 25 or 30 years or so. Fevered efforts to push kids into STEM majors is an example of that. As is conventional wisdom about humanities degrees leading to jobs in fast food or coffee shops.
I suspect that a lot of people see studying ancient languages as being impractical. Well, beyond middle school worksheets for Greek and Latin root practice.
As for classics at Princeton in particular, if I interpreted the story on their website correctly, enrollment was suffering and they made this decision a while ago. Plus, you had to know some Greek and/or Latin just to enroll in the program. This does seem overly restrictive and counterproductive, given how rarely schools teach these languages these days. But that said, knowing these languages should still be required for a degree calling itself Classics.
I completely agree that lowering standards for a particular group amounts to what GW Bush described as the soft bigotry of low expectations (which these days is cloaked in a mantle of progressive policies and practiced by people who are so blinded by their own emotional ideology, they don't even realize that they're undermining the people they claim to help).
You make some really spot on comments, particularly about pragmatism. Not sure how that changes until wealthy individuals begin to endow individuals to pursue education for the sake of the community, similar to what was once done in the arts and for ministers.
Regarding languages, I don’t see how a serious curriculum in classics cannot require proficiency in the languages any more than a serious curriculum of Biblical studies cannot require proficiency in relevant Greek, Hebrew and Latin. For those of us who took other career paths but want to supplement our education, we can be given a pass, but must accept that we will forever be taking someone else’s word for what the text means.
I read Faust in German freshman year of college (after two years of high school German). It was brutal. Every page was at least half footnotes explaining what he meant, the context of the times, words that not even modern German speakers use, etc.) I probably would have gotten more of the meta themes of Faust if I'd read it in English, but I would have missed the inside jokes, the double entendres, and a peak into the times in which Goethe wrote it. So I can see it both ways. I support getting more people into the classics so they can grapple with the ideas of the Greek and Roman philosophers, playwrights. But it you really want to go deep you'll need to learn the languages.
I know that's not as big a part of classics since European languages and culture weren't as heavily influenced by Egypt as by Latin and Greek, but Egypt, Rome, and Greece overlapped a lot, to the point where hieroglyphic literature could be considered part of classics. So should Black kids be exempted from learning that, too?
This is berserk. I imagine there are more than a few kids in poor schools who are itching to learn this stuff, and who would love the chance to actually learn this stuff, the serious mind-crunching, challenging stuff. To take that chance away from them is cruel and punishing.
Absolutely -- but the thing is, the wokesters are so ready to assume dark-skinned kids can't master Latin and Greek. Would they be so willing to assume they couldn't master a classical African language? I bet not. In fact, I imagine they'd be ready to call European teachers or students of it cultural appropriators.
It seems to me that part of getting a degree form an elite school means that you master things at a level beyond the local community college. Princeton should require the Greek and Latin for a degree but a lower tier school (which met my academic capabilities) should not. Also, I think we should not look at everything through the race prism. I would bet a white child who was born in the hollers of Kentucky would be at a similar disadvantage to a black kids raised in Baltimore.
2009 Classics major, summa cum laude. If your degree says Classics, it needs to be earned in the heavy lifting and battle scars of studying the Ancient Greek and Latin languages. What would a Classicist from even 50 years ago say to someone who earned a degree that says Classics and then when asked to parse or decline, the graduate doesn't know how?
I'm curious--and more than a bit envious--about your abilities in the classics. Can you explain briefly what it is about Greek or, for me, especially, Latin, which makes learning it so damn difficult? Is it mainly a matter of finding a talented instructor? I've gotten nowhere trying to teach myself from some of the supposed best texts. What, for you, were some of the "Aha!" moments where confusion gave way to clarity? Can you suggest some strategies for those who might like to try again to learn some on their own? For me, French was not terribly difficult. But I find German terribly difficult. Once upon a time, in the last year of middle-school, for lack of space, I and others were placed in a "study-hall" hour smack in the middle of a German language class. It was, I think, first-year German. After that experience I knew I didn't want to take up German as a main second-language.
" ... what it is about Greek or, for me, especially, Latin, which makes learning it so damn difficult?"
One word, and this is coming form a hobby language learner: declensions. It's the same reason why I opted not to bother with Icelandic. For most English speakers, they are damned weird and come across as absolutely unreasonable. You can definitely claw your way across the gasoline fire of declining nouns, but it does take some grit to do so.
I despise declensions, but then I learned Welsh for fun, which has the simplest verbs in the world but highly irregular plurals. I am currently picking Middle Egyptian back up again after years away from it, and that orthography will make most people's eyeballs knock together in their skulls. Every language has its pungee pits in different places, and the declension pit is particularly intimidating.
I can't speak for classicist Higgins (with whom I completely agree), but for me, probably the main thing that makes Latin harder than modern Romance languages is the word order that is so different from ours. I find that with a modern Romance language, the ideas just seem to flow in a way that feels natural, whereas with Latin, there's almost always a struggle to figure what words go with what other words. A lot of people who can read Latin never get past the "decoding" stage to the stage of just reading the language as you would read anything else. (I know I haven't.)
While it's true that I'm opposed to anyone being forced to enter into in-depth studies of Shakespeare, I do think that when English is one's _native tongue_, students ought to be encouraged near the end of their formal schooling to keep open and ahead of them as adults, whatever their courses in life, at least a trial of some of his plays and poetry _as_ the _author_ wrote them, in his own (as far as we have them) renderings; and these students ought to be given very clear and straightforward arguments on why they should think that it's worth their time and trouble (all these could, and, I believe _do_, apply to Latin and Greek language study. Here are my reasons:
The study of Shakespeare is not part of some grand effort to "save a great author and his work from oblivion." Rather, in studying Shakespeare--as native English-speakers-- we undertake a valuable, and, I'd say, essential task by which we "save" _ourselves_ and essential parts of our culture, without which we're going to have a greatly impoverished idea of who we are and were we "came from"--the "passage" by which we got to this state. We don't rescue Shakespeare-- his works and all that he left us, rescue _us_ from a fate which he well understood was otherwise a dreadful one-- because he so revolutionized the scope and capacity of his language and did so much to create ours, yes, he recognized his works' virtues and cultural value and, as is often the case with geniuses, he felt no need to indulge in false modesty or apologize for the accident of having been born brilliant.
This is not a flight of theoretical fancy, It's submitting to the hard realities of what culture is and what it means to have one and to care for and about it.
Spoken language is the primordial aspect of human culture and, while communication in the simplest forms is not unique to our species, language, and, especially, _written_ language is a late and inestimably precious part of what _is_ unique about us as. For English speakers, to live without Shakespeare's art is to live a life in which one is, however slightly, hobbled, in which one has but one "ear", but one "eye". We do not and we cannot understand _ourselves_--let alone each other-- as well without Shakespeare as we _might_ _with_ his work. Who, understanding that, would choose to do without?
those are both interesting and welcome responses. One of my impressions about Latin is that word-order is nearly entirely arbitrary--something which means that, in practice, a gifted artist of the language can do things with it which are surprising, beautiful and unexpected but still entirely grammatically correct. And that describes "Shakespeare's" mastery and uses of English.
Two other things hinder my capacity to persevere: virtually everything of the classics has been translated and is easily available in English. No new "great literature" is being written in classic Greek or Latin. (It's still true, though, that the old great literature's beauty and meanings aren't as well and clearly expressed in translations. (So people continue to learn the language for that (great) advantage.)
But even accomplished scholars in Latin are prone to making seriously bad errors in their translations. I read Martin Irvine's "The Making of Textual Culture: 'Grammatica'and Literary Theory 350-1100" (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (series)) for what was, in effect, a linguistic and grammatical history of the world into which "Shakespeare" was born (450 years later). I thought it was a great study--but, nearing the end of it, I turned to and read some reviews of it and learned that Irvine had made some really embarrassingly bad mistranslations of Latin in the course of it. I had no way of spotting these on my own and had simply taken all his translations at face-value.
This has happened where Shakespeare's English is concerned and, if it's "modernized," It'll happen more and more as scholars who aren't very talented misconstrue the original intent and meanings in their modernization of them.
A now notorious example concerns Ben Jonson's "To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us" (from the First Folio)
By Ben Jonson (1572–1637) which appeared in the frontispiece of the first folios of the then-collected work. (This elaborate homage is full of inside jokes and puns--so fitting in a tribute to the author.)
... "And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so my brain excuses,— 25
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses;
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line. 30
And
***though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,***
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names, but call forth thund’ring Æschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 35
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for a comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 40
those words marked out with asterisks are the point here. To every reader of that time, they meant unambiguously what today we'd express this way:
"even _if_ you _had_ had 'small Latin and less Greek (learning) I should, just the same not lack for great names to compare with yours, Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova " ... etc,
that is, in other words, "your erudition in Latin and Greek being so great, even if it hadn't been, I'd still class you with these greats--but it _wasn't_ small Latin and lesse Greek that you commanded"...
Over the course of centuries, the intended meaning was misconstrued by native speakers of English, turned on its head and read to mean: "despite your having had 'small Latin and lesse Greek," blah, blah blah.
"Modernizing" Shakespeare's English shall lead to untold multiplications of errors of this kind in the representation of his poetry and his plays' dialogue by credentialed scholars who edit these works for the lay reader. It's much, much better to leave them with the texts as we have them with glossaries to help grasp the (often difficult and disputed) meanings. They're already controversial enough in the tattered way many of them came down to us.
Floating in my head is something my Latin 101/102 professor taught. For example, the word imperium is most often translated as "power." One word for one word. I've seen other translations like "empire," or "command." He taught us (Shout-out to Professor Lemac. Lemac attack!) that imperium really means the ability to get things done. If you have imperium, you can get shit done. So it is less a single word and more of a concept. Reading in the original language is listening to Brahm's Symphony no.4 on vinyl vs. a translation which is more an mp3.
Oh, I don't go for putting Shakespeare into contemporary English . . . and I prefer the King James Version to any modern text. In both cases, I'm going for the poetry, not the accuracy. If I want to know exactly what a biblical verse means, I might read a commentary or look at a contemporary translation. I let students know about "No Fear Shakespeare" but I warn them, too. Consider wicked Edmund's speech in King Lear. Contemporary translations only give you the G-rated version. All students must run out and purchase The Arden Edition of Shakespeare right this nanosecond!
I agree. People who dislike Shakespeare and opera because of the languages would not be beating the doors down to get to them if only they were in English. Besides, there have been many versions of Shakespeare done with a modern spin -- Othello and Macbeth are frequently done like this, and I think "Ten Things I Hate About You" was basically "Taming of the Shrew" made modern. They perform in middling fashion at best. And the NY Met Opera put on an English-language Baroque pastiche a few years back called "The Enchanted Island" that fanficced Shakespear and filked a bunch of Baroque arias, giving them English lyrics. The people who attended and loved it were exactly the same people who attend and love normal Baroque opera in Italian -- myself included.
If you like it, you don't do so despite the weirdness. The weirdness is part of it. If you dislike the weirdness, you are not going to suddenly like it if the weirdness is removed.
Building on the Hurston quote. One might have thought, 50 years ago, that chess is the whitest game there is. And therefore that we'd need to change the rules for black kids to participate fairly. Which of course in chess simply means a handicap, say a knight and a pawn. But today we know that black kids from bad neighborhoods, like poor white rural kids, often do very very well at chess, and this held up as an example of opportunity to shine.
So, I suppose the question is, how did chess stop being white? And why can't apply to everthing else?
"One might have thought, 50 years ago, that chess is the whitest game there is."
One should have been mistaken. It wasn't--certainly not fifty years ago and not even a century ago. Chess masters have _long_ come in all "colors" and from all walks and nations.
1. As you suggest in the Atlantic piece, the department could be dropping the requirements simply to get more majors no matter the students’ race or background. It says something that IF this is the case, that one choose as a cover doing everything you can to imply this is about getting more Black students. Modem academics may be more comfortable saying they’re lowering standards for inclusiveness than just that they’re lowering standards to keep a program. It’d be interesting to know what Princeton’s numbers are.
2. I’m an historian of medieval England, post Norman conquest. If an undergraduate wanted to write about England before the Conquest using translated sources, I think that would be permitted at most universities. And it is undergraduates we’re talking about. Now if a graduate student were permitted to work on early England (formerly Anglo-Saxon England) without studying Old English, that would I think generally be held to be a scandal. Same goes for Latin. So your colleague at the Atlantic may be on ok ground. Although cutting against what I said about undergraduates, I myself was expected to have Latin to do an undergraduate senior thesis on the fourteenth century.
this is all too much like giving a trophy for everyone who participates in the foot race, a participation trophy to make the kids feel good. But what is really true is that it was a foot race to see who was fastest. School is structured as a competition. For me it was a competition with myself, to see how far I could go and how well. I didn't care about the other students. But they sometimes did challenge my limited thinking. Rather than feeling poorly about myself, i followed barbara jordan's method . . . when she lost a (i think) state debate championship, she followed the woman who beat her from event to event and watched her debate and learned from her and then the next year beat her. Her time in congress showed how well she learned from her opponent. ultimately though the competition is always with the self and from reading jordan's autobiography she felt the same way. The question is, what kind of person do i want to be? and what i am willing to do to get there? I would loathe being given an easier time of it for some patronizing reason. I would feel a kind of shame, not confidence, not a feeling of surmounted an obstacle, but as if someone had helped me over the course while others simply went through it on their own.
I wonder if they changed the requirement because they were having trouble recruiting enough students to run a major, and they chose to mention inclusiveness when explaining it in order to save face.
I know education is your thing John, and that's ok. As a person that works outside of education, I am more concerned about the effects of this on the workplace.
I am terrified of typing this btw, as if someone will dox me on just the tiny bit of information here and I'll be out of a job and society forever.
My workplace has recently gone through this new version of DEI training and everyone is very into it. In the last month, I've had two colleagues that are POC produce work that was not 100% ready. This is normal, all people do this all the time. Instead of turning around and asking them to do further edits on the work (obvious grammatical errors), or elaborate on sections that were thin or missing, the manager asked me to do them. The manager has expressed to me that we should understand that the work they do is based on their own standards and we should trust those standards and their deep community experience and we should work with what they produce, celebrate what they bring to the table, and not criticize them for what they don't excel at. However, she doesn't state that the work is not ready for public consumption, and doesn't articulate that her solution is simply to have a white person finish the work. Of course this whole conversation is had without mentioning race, but everyone knows what we are talking about. To ask that individuals take responsibility for their own work (to have equality of expectations), although not explicitly stated, feels labeled as "racist." I'm sure my manager is very sincere in her belief that she is doing the right thing. It is probably worth mentioning that both POC here are long-time professionals and one has a PhD; it seems like they should be able to fix obvious errors on their own work after review. The whole situation is so cringe-inducing and Orwellian I can barely stand it.
In your case it's cringe-inducing, but what about, hypothetically, where someone made it through medical school on 'their' standards. Later they make a few 'obvious' errors with a patient. Do you want them to be your surgeon?
Or the pilot for whom that small bit in flight school about learning how to land was insufficiently sensitive to their cultural background; forget about wanting to have that pilot, would you want to BE that pilot?
So sorry to hear this. It is dispiriting to say the least. The tyranny of low expectations.
And, btw, I thought long and hard about commenting on substack as well before I subscribed. I had the same fears as you do. We must all find ways of standing up if where can. I salute you for your courage in posting here.
I would suggest that courses in the vernacular be offered and could count toward a general Philosophy degree, but that anyone seeking a major or minor in Classics must engage the material in the original Greek or Latin, and only certain (and few) of the vernacular courses count toward a major or minor. This provides teh opportunity for non-specialists to engage with the classics, but acknowledges that true expertise requires the original language.
I think this stands up to the comparison to English--you can read and study The Venerable Bede in the original in order to be an English History major, but you must engage the original for a degree in Medieval English Literature. (English Lit, in general, seems like a grey are and worth discussing.)
Exactly. A classics course in the vernacular would be like "Biology for Non-Majors"--i.e., a course aimed at students who are interested in the subject but are not seeking a degree in it. Otherwise, what will a classics degree from Princeton mean, especially when compared with classics degrees from other top-rated schools? Will it become a "joke" degree?
Another analogy: imagine not requiring a serious mastery of calculus or even algebra for a college major in physics. Wouldn’t people laugh at the suggestion?
Classics is the only literary field in the humanities that has not suffered from an invasion of “theory” people and others bored by literature and mostly interested in politics. The reason for this, aside from the seriousness of classicists, is the stiff entry requirement, a knowledge of Greek and Latin.
This said, physics depts often offer a course in classical physics w/o calculus and classics depts courses on Greek and Roman works in translation. That’s quite reasonable.
Well, we know that CRT advocates are now promoting the notion at state education levels that math in K-12 is racist... I imagine the scrapping of calculus mastery is not far behind. Sigh.
This is fun because I agree, disagree, and partially agree with what you are saying. So let's break it down:
1. There is a difference between an average reader and a person who is seeking an academic degree. I have no desire to immerse myself in Russian just to read Dostoevsky. Yes, things are lost in translation, but if you pick a well respected translation you can avoid much of the loss. So I am approaching Russian literature as a person who loves to read. If I was seeking an academic degree in Russian literature then the rules are different. You can not achieve scholarship in a field where you can't even read the primary texts as written.
2. Classics is an elite field for those willing to immerse themselves in ancient languages, culture, and history. If you want to just read The Iliad or the Aeneid then pick up one of the great translations, there are several. If you want to be a scholar in the field then you have to perform due diligence.
3. Translating Opera is unnecessary. Every opera I've ever attended, even at the college production level had a screen with subtitles. I don't want to watch Kurosawa films dubbed and I can read a screen when attending the opera. Besides, rendering Italian into English would play merry hell with the rhythm.
4. My sister has her doctorate in French. Quite honestly if a person isn't willing to speak and read a language then they have no business getting a degree in it.
5. If you want a doctorate in Medieval English history then you will need to show a working knowledge of Latin, Old English, Middle English, and Middle French.
6. Maybe the problem is not the rigor of the programs but the quality of the students. Not everyone belongs in college. I say that as someone who has worked 25 years in various areas of college administration. Instead of lowering the quality of our programs how about we worry more about who we are letting in.
I agree with all you of said, except a partial disagreement with #6. Everyone deserves to further their education. So I take a slight exception to your phrasing of "worry more about who we are letting in." The problem here is not enough educational opportunity for humans in general across all spectrums of life and socioeconomic status. And the problem is the social value we place on particular schools. Its not nice. Applicants need to find schools that match their interests, aptitude, and some measure of proven commitment to having developed the aptitude -- such proven commitment should include adherence to standards (I've studied three years for the test and I did well). There should be various modes of higher education. This is the 21st century -- we can figure out how to educate all who wish to be educated without sacrificing standards of any one institution. It is society at large that needs to be the judge of whether there is social currency (I will hire you if you graduate from "x" university) in graduating from a particular university. I can say with great confidence that all graduates from a top tier university are of not of equal social value, yet we think that they are simply by virtue of their time spent in the super-thinker club. I think top tier universities should continue to provide a "sacred" space for intellectuals and exclude people who don't play the same competitive game of chess. But there are various types of excellence and not all excellence is bred in an Ivy league school. We should also keep in mind that schools can be known for excellence in particular programs of study. If a school has a great thinker or great teacher in a great program of study, that's what should matter: competitive admission to a program of study. The social capital that Ivy graduates attain is is something that needs to be placed in perspective. I suspect insiders do know which programs are rigorous and which ones are average, but the general public does not know. People see "graduate of Harvard," and they think they see a saint. Also, there are other human qualities that matter more than academic achievement. For example, this can be often seen in the field of medicine and approaches to patient care. A medical degree from an Ivy league doesn't tell me anything about a doctor's approach to patient care, sense of medical ethics, or understanding of clinical research ethics. I do think we need gatekeepers, much like we need referees in sports. But there is griping about gatekeepers because everyone wants to be valued.
"It is society at large that needs to be the judge of whether there is social currency (I will hire you if you graduate from "x" university) in graduating from a particular university. I can say with great confidence that all graduates from a top tier university are of not of equal social value, yet we think that they are simply by virtue of their time spent in the super-thinker club."
Unfortunately, no matter how many in the public at large object, these "elite"institutions, so well-recognized that I needn't even name them, can foist such a
system on the public whether it's worthy or not. As long as people regard the main purpose of education as the key to getting into employment (and government/public administration or elective office!) at "the best places", schools' marketing-departments are going to present their programs as doing that better than the competition. The practice is now understood to have invaded the whole educational career. There are pre-schools which market their programs as giving a toddler a leg up in getting into ... the selective elementary schools. Sometimes, it's just pre-school through grade 12 in the same elite place or "campus."
Where money can buy advantages, there'll be people who'll sell what they claim to be the shorter or surer way to providing them to young pupils and students. From this comes all the pressure on these youth to get those grades.
Measures of intelligence and job-getting-and-keeping competence are bound to converge, each corrupting the other in such a system. Of course there are talented parents and youth who can and do navigate such systems with far more success than others. Those already come in every skin-tone and background; so all "races" can and do play this game now. But the institutions, for the sake of public image, can tweak the results so that outcomes more closely reflect what's conventionally viewed as "fair(er) distributions" (i.e. according to race) of the this spoils-system.
No doubt, many of these students, whatever their age, _are_ exceptionally bright and highly motivated according to the conventional views of those characteristics. But few schools and perhaps even fewer elite employers are so naive as to believe that there's a fast and sure correlation between actual grounded intelligence or excellence in the job and attendance at and graduation from these schools. Still, if one is required to "sort" candidates, this allows easy means for lazy administrators. I don't accord any automatic credit or particular esteem to graduates of Ivy League institutions--that goes as well for graduates wherever they come from--France's Sorbonne or the École Nationale d'Admin., or Britain's Eaton, Harrow, Oxford or Cambridge.
I agree that people should go on past the standard secondary education. But not everyone has a academic mind. That’s not an insult. They just have a different set of skills. I think that a truck driver is just as noble a professional as a professor. Maybe more so! But that truck driver should go to an academy that trains truck drivers. Same for plumbers, welders, hair stylists, etc. I count good friends in every one of those professions. None of them need a bachelor’s degree. Every man to his trade and honor to all who work. Hell, I’ve done roofing in a Louisiana summer. You won’t see me looking down on the men who do that for a living. My wife has several younger brothers. The twins are excellent examples of making something from nothing. One of them took his own significant musical skills added a couple of classes at a community college and learned the art of music engineering. While working odd jobs he bought equipment and turned the small house he rented into a studio. He slept on a couch in that studio for three years. Now he is as busy as he wants to be recording music for local musicians. He even engineered one of those special “iTunes Sessions” for one local band that did well. His twin moved to California and eventually found his place as a gardener. I remember when you couldn’t get that boy out in the sun. Today he is planting food gardens all over LA and is in the process of opening a business dedicated to his favorite crop: gourmet mushrooms. A college degree wasn’t for them.
Ivy League is overrated and only a big deal in certain areas. I live in NW Louisiana and there aren’t a lot of them around here. Our CEOs have degrees from LSU, Louisiana Tech, and the small 200 year old college where I work. Most of the doctors went to LSU Med Center and most of the lawyers are Tulane and LSU Law alumni. I agree that the place where one gets a degree tells you little about their character. The one Harvard MD that I knew was a lush who ended up going to jail for solicitation of a minor.
I agree that people should continue to learn and we have never had more opportunities. I am a subscriber to The Great Courses. I read between 100-150 books a year both fiction and non-fiction. All of us can do this. Digital technologies in the library means that anyone can download books, courses, audiobooks, and learn. It’s all up to the consumer’s choice. So your truck driver can spend all day listening to. John McWhorter course from The Great Courses and know more about the history of language than your average PhD in Physics.
the fellow who remodeled my home was exclusively self-taught. He did the plumbing, the gas heat, electricity, built a deck -- everything. All up to code. He could figure things out almost intuitively. He had a blog for a while for one of his hobbies and he asked me to check his grammar for it. He felt a sort of shame that he didn't get his phrases up to "standard." I can get my grammar right but I felt he was much smarter than me. I grew up in a blue collar town in the 60s so I had no problem hiring someone like this. I had a great admiration for him and truly trusted him. I also love to learn from people who have hyper-focused their intellectual lives on a particular topic. We simultaneously undervalue and overvalue individuals like this. If we could learn to allow people to develop their innate aptitude and provide opportunities for everyone, we would all be better off. I had a conversation with a Scottish friend of mine and he explained that in the UK it would not be strange for a person to be both a Shakespearean scholar and a plumber simultaneously. I don't know how prevalent that is, but I will say that in the U.S., our university alma mater and job are so tightly tied to our identity (ugh, that word again). Sometimes, you gotta flip burgers for a livin'. Just flip 'em right, and I'm good. I just want people to have health care, retirement safety net, and educational opportunity wherever whenever. And flip burgers, fix houses, learn languages -- whatever. I do think that even those who are not "academic" do benefit from some fundamentals that some might deem outside of some apparent aptitude. We should be really cautious about making assumptions about aptitude as I think we've made mistakes about this historically. Its about choice. People generally know what they want to do and what they don't want to do and this is usually aligned with aptitude. Our culture shouldn't foster perpetuation of stereotypes about people who take "shop" in high school and kids shouldn't feel as if they should follow their socioeconomic or racial peer groups into particular professions. We simply must do a better job developing an overt philosophy of education in this country. Each child should be taught to be reflective and deliberate about their own education and career choices.
"the fellow who remodeled my home was exclusively self-taught. He did the plumbing, the gas heat, electricity, built a deck -- everything. ... He could figure things out almost intuitively." He had a blog for a while for one of his hobbies and he asked me to check his grammar for it" ...
I once met and got to know a guy like that. In four months, I only heard him twice utter something in English which wasn't grammatically impeccable. His command of English was far superior to most of even the best native-English-speaking graduates of the top schools and universities today; so I can only wonder at the exquisite level of his spoken German--of which I know so little that I couldn't follow a conversation at the dining-table in it. But this fellow was a rarity in so many respects. He's one of perhaps two or, at most three, genuine geniuses I can claim to have met. His intellectual skills were in every way (that I could observe) on a par with his practical and tradesman skills, all of those, like your acquaintance, self-taught.
While staying with the family, I mentioned "graham-crackers", something new to him. He looked up the recipe on-line and, using his home kitchen wares, ground whole-grain wheat in his kitchen's grain-mill and made delicious graham-crackers from scratch. He had gone to university and graduated; I'm not even sure now the area of his major studies. But he read everything, was interested in, curious about, everything. Once married, he bought a patch of land in a rural area--formerly-owned large farmer's exploitation which had been pared down to fewer than ten acres--and was raising small livestock and crops on it.
... "I had a conversation with a Scottish friend of mine and he explained that in the UK it would not be strange for a person to be both a Shakespearean scholar and a plumber simultaneously."
if your Scottish friend says so-- never having been to Scotland, I don't know what Scottish plumbers read in their spare time. But I suspect that it's quite unusual, whatever the "strangeness" of it. I readily accept that "Shakespeare" can and does (as ought to be the case with no surprise) appeal to absolutely all kinds of people in all kinds of trades and walks of life; but reading Shakespeare as a pastime interest and studying the work as a scholar aren't (and shouldn't be) the same things--not that you claimed they are.
I'd be delighted to see it happen but I've never overheard a group of tradesmen/women discussing Shakespeare or his work over their lunch-break.
I can't like this comment enough: “ If we could learn to allow people to develop their innate aptitude and provide opportunities for everyone, we would all be better off.” I so wish we approached education more creatively and dropped the posturing. We should be feeding minds, not egos. I often wonder how much human potential gets wasted by our current focus. We could do so much better.
There's a lot of keen insight in what you write. I think we're now thorough victims of the ethos of "everybody must be allowed 'in here,' competence be damned because allowing everyone in makes everyone feel all cozy and accepted, and we're all equal in what we deserve."
Really? I'm "equal to" and "deserving of" everything the person who toils and sweats to master Russian or Latin or Greek can reap from a mastery of these languages--ancient or less so in form--and the literature they encompass, classic or modern?
I first read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Terre des hommes in the English translation from Lewis Galantierre, published by Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. I thought it was beautiful. It made me want to learn French. When I did, I learned better how beautiful was Galantierre's rendering. That's why, now, knowing that Shakespeare regarded Ovid's Latin as a thing of sublime beauty and style, I want to cry for the fact that I cannot touch it as he was able to do. If the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare was so brilliant a craftsman of startlingly original English for his own or any time since, it's in no small part due to his masterful knowledge of classic Greek and Latin--which he learned as a youth from six to thirteen from the best classics-scholars of his day*, not at some clapboard schoolhouse in Stratford-upon-Avon-- and he read those classic authors all his life.
It's not a pleasant, heart-warming thing to dwell on what's been lost on the road to this marvelous modernity of ours, is it? We're now on a convoluted treadmill with far-reaching deleterious consequences for us which I fear we can little recognize or understand.
The societies in which nearly all educated people learned Latin and Greek were inherently different kinds of places in which to live from those latter which had and now have nothing of that facility in anything like so widespread a way. This is true even in admitting that the _real_ mastery of these languages even in an ostensibly well-schooled general population was probably not terribly good much of the time.
Taking French in high school and college, I got my diplomas from these with no facility at all for reading or speaking French. Years later, even after months of tutoring from talented native tutors at Alliance Française courses, I could barely hold the simplest of conversations. Only by living in France did I break through the barriers and gain a fluency. There, to save money, after reading a first novel in English and becoming a fan of Philip Roth's fiction, I read others of his novels in French, so well translated by Josée Kamoun (https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/why-philip-roth-sounds-so-good-in-french-the-method-of-a-master-translator/c3s4854) and in every word on the page I could hear Roth's voice in my mind's ear.
_______________
* Sir Thomas Smith (23 December 1513 – 12 August 1577)
I have often puzzled that a culture which so aptly applies the "no pain, no gain" principle to anything oriented toward physical fitness, eschews it application to educational, emotional, or psychological struggles and efforts.
They don't apply that principle anymore -- look up Tess Holliday. You yes you can be well over 300lb and refer to yourself as "fit" and any insistence otherwise is "fatphobic," and yes that is a real word. Amazing, isn't it?
But ‘no pain, no gain’ is considered ‘blaming the victim’ if the problem is caused by impediments put there by a wrongdoer. Many people believe that system racism alone is to blame for lower scores on standardized tests, for example. Proposing what you did opens you to a charge of ‘colorblind racism,’ which is the view that with talent and hard work anybody can succeed (i.e., the American dream). These people overlook the fact that the greater the impediments the more that diligence and hard work are necessary for success, and that the message to individual children should not be that systemic racism will keep them from succeeding so they’re wasting their time, but rather that with diligence and hard work they will get far beyond where they would be without it, a proposition that no one can deny.
More from Prof. Paul Hamilton's comments on the point of _reading_ Shakespeare in an un-modernized form:
"Dr. Paul Hamilton, a Shakespeare scholar, offers a brilliant and concise statement which cuts through much of the current confusion concerning the value of reading Shakespeare and why, by the way, the recent temptation to modernize its language misses the point of bothering to read the works in the first place.
He writes (in the second of the two following comments) a clarifying reply to my own response to his comment (1) here :
"To savage the plays is not to root out bardolatry. It is to avoid the problem all together - which is that the issue is power. To read any complex work of art as a bland and unified expression of any "ism" is idiotic. That is a problem of appropriation. It is not an aesthetic problem.
To turn "bardolatry" into a denunciation of a particular Renaissance aesthetic is not going to affect those in power. They couldn't care less whether it is Shakespeare or Milton or Wordsworth who symbolizes the superiority of one class over another. The artists anyway are almost always on the side of the disenfranchised. What you need to do is isolate the fraud of the approbation (appropriation (?)) of works of art for purposes utterly opposed to the artwork itself."
this (2) follow-up:
...
"My point is that the real problem is that Shakespeare is appropriated for various ends - whether that is status, nationalism, etc. The cringe-worthy speeches and ceremonies on Shakespeare's birthday; the false notion that Shakespeare's views were identical with the interests of the state; the mobilization of Shakespeare as an implicit defense of the class structure, when, in reality, he continually undermines class assumptions, etc. All of that is execrable and demands a * cultural * critique.
THIS----> *** "The problem, though, is * not * the Renaissance aesthetic of the plays. The entire point of appreciating a work of art from a different historical period is that you will be estranged from your own assumptions - and have to encounter a view of language and life that is different. The demand that every work of art be easy to understand - as another poster observed - is simply an infantile wish to have one's own worldview always confirmed. <----- THIS ***
"As others have also pointed out, the author is clearly projecting his own tendency to use meaningless words to gain social status onto those who enjoy Shakespeare. I don't think I have, in recent years, * ever * seen such a binge on pseudo-hip argot "necro-obsequious evangelical proselytism"!
"Admittedly, the author proves his thesis - that he is incapable of understanding Shakespeare . . . because - as others have observed - he is totally unaware that his * one quote * from Shakespeare (from Richard II) is not meant to be taken at face value. The quote is profoundly ironic. He could have at least read the plot summary in Spark Notes™ to figure that one out . . . And, it also speaks to the mendacity of shomeone who savages the reputation of a writer without bothering to try to understand his work.
"And, as the * late * citation from the Shakespeare critic, Erin Sullivan, makes clear (did he really think this wouldn't be spotted?), he plagiarized a scholarly article about "bardolatry" without understanding a word of what was being said. Just look at the article and find the quotes he lifted from it . . . He has clearly never read Tolstoy on Shakespeare or Voltaire. He just blankly copied quotes from that essay, which he found online.
"All in all, this is a dreadful piece. And we could all have been spared the crude mixture of ignorance, nastiness, plagiarism, and misinformation if an editor from The Guardian - who wasn't sleeping on the job - had bothered to look at it carefully."
I see this problem differently, as a result of too much focus on practicality and a tendency to believe that education = job training.
Americans have always been practical people. This trait is a strength in many ways: it leads people here to start businesses, invent stuff, and generally get things done. A negative side of it is a tendency to devalue anything that's NOT perceived as practical. This tendency has increased in the last 25 or 30 years or so. Fevered efforts to push kids into STEM majors is an example of that. As is conventional wisdom about humanities degrees leading to jobs in fast food or coffee shops.
I suspect that a lot of people see studying ancient languages as being impractical. Well, beyond middle school worksheets for Greek and Latin root practice.
As for classics at Princeton in particular, if I interpreted the story on their website correctly, enrollment was suffering and they made this decision a while ago. Plus, you had to know some Greek and/or Latin just to enroll in the program. This does seem overly restrictive and counterproductive, given how rarely schools teach these languages these days. But that said, knowing these languages should still be required for a degree calling itself Classics.
I completely agree that lowering standards for a particular group amounts to what GW Bush described as the soft bigotry of low expectations (which these days is cloaked in a mantle of progressive policies and practiced by people who are so blinded by their own emotional ideology, they don't even realize that they're undermining the people they claim to help).
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/curriculum-changed-add-flexibility-race-and-identity-track
You make some really spot on comments, particularly about pragmatism. Not sure how that changes until wealthy individuals begin to endow individuals to pursue education for the sake of the community, similar to what was once done in the arts and for ministers.
Regarding languages, I don’t see how a serious curriculum in classics cannot require proficiency in the languages any more than a serious curriculum of Biblical studies cannot require proficiency in relevant Greek, Hebrew and Latin. For those of us who took other career paths but want to supplement our education, we can be given a pass, but must accept that we will forever be taking someone else’s word for what the text means.
I read Faust in German freshman year of college (after two years of high school German). It was brutal. Every page was at least half footnotes explaining what he meant, the context of the times, words that not even modern German speakers use, etc.) I probably would have gotten more of the meta themes of Faust if I'd read it in English, but I would have missed the inside jokes, the double entendres, and a peak into the times in which Goethe wrote it. So I can see it both ways. I support getting more people into the classics so they can grapple with the ideas of the Greek and Roman philosophers, playwrights. But it you really want to go deep you'll need to learn the languages.
I know that's not as big a part of classics since European languages and culture weren't as heavily influenced by Egypt as by Latin and Greek, but Egypt, Rome, and Greece overlapped a lot, to the point where hieroglyphic literature could be considered part of classics. So should Black kids be exempted from learning that, too?
This is berserk. I imagine there are more than a few kids in poor schools who are itching to learn this stuff, and who would love the chance to actually learn this stuff, the serious mind-crunching, challenging stuff. To take that chance away from them is cruel and punishing.
Telling a kid he is too dim to master certain fields because of the color of his skin seems somewhat retrograde.
Absolutely -- but the thing is, the wokesters are so ready to assume dark-skinned kids can't master Latin and Greek. Would they be so willing to assume they couldn't master a classical African language? I bet not. In fact, I imagine they'd be ready to call European teachers or students of it cultural appropriators.
The whole idea is preposterous.
It seems to me that part of getting a degree form an elite school means that you master things at a level beyond the local community college. Princeton should require the Greek and Latin for a degree but a lower tier school (which met my academic capabilities) should not. Also, I think we should not look at everything through the race prism. I would bet a white child who was born in the hollers of Kentucky would be at a similar disadvantage to a black kids raised in Baltimore.
2009 Classics major, summa cum laude. If your degree says Classics, it needs to be earned in the heavy lifting and battle scars of studying the Ancient Greek and Latin languages. What would a Classicist from even 50 years ago say to someone who earned a degree that says Classics and then when asked to parse or decline, the graduate doesn't know how?
I'm curious--and more than a bit envious--about your abilities in the classics. Can you explain briefly what it is about Greek or, for me, especially, Latin, which makes learning it so damn difficult? Is it mainly a matter of finding a talented instructor? I've gotten nowhere trying to teach myself from some of the supposed best texts. What, for you, were some of the "Aha!" moments where confusion gave way to clarity? Can you suggest some strategies for those who might like to try again to learn some on their own? For me, French was not terribly difficult. But I find German terribly difficult. Once upon a time, in the last year of middle-school, for lack of space, I and others were placed in a "study-hall" hour smack in the middle of a German language class. It was, I think, first-year German. After that experience I knew I didn't want to take up German as a main second-language.
Help?
" ... what it is about Greek or, for me, especially, Latin, which makes learning it so damn difficult?"
One word, and this is coming form a hobby language learner: declensions. It's the same reason why I opted not to bother with Icelandic. For most English speakers, they are damned weird and come across as absolutely unreasonable. You can definitely claw your way across the gasoline fire of declining nouns, but it does take some grit to do so.
I despise declensions, but then I learned Welsh for fun, which has the simplest verbs in the world but highly irregular plurals. I am currently picking Middle Egyptian back up again after years away from it, and that orthography will make most people's eyeballs knock together in their skulls. Every language has its pungee pits in different places, and the declension pit is particularly intimidating.
I can't speak for classicist Higgins (with whom I completely agree), but for me, probably the main thing that makes Latin harder than modern Romance languages is the word order that is so different from ours. I find that with a modern Romance language, the ideas just seem to flow in a way that feels natural, whereas with Latin, there's almost always a struggle to figure what words go with what other words. A lot of people who can read Latin never get past the "decoding" stage to the stage of just reading the language as you would read anything else. (I know I haven't.)
Post-script:
While it's true that I'm opposed to anyone being forced to enter into in-depth studies of Shakespeare, I do think that when English is one's _native tongue_, students ought to be encouraged near the end of their formal schooling to keep open and ahead of them as adults, whatever their courses in life, at least a trial of some of his plays and poetry _as_ the _author_ wrote them, in his own (as far as we have them) renderings; and these students ought to be given very clear and straightforward arguments on why they should think that it's worth their time and trouble (all these could, and, I believe _do_, apply to Latin and Greek language study. Here are my reasons:
The study of Shakespeare is not part of some grand effort to "save a great author and his work from oblivion." Rather, in studying Shakespeare--as native English-speakers-- we undertake a valuable, and, I'd say, essential task by which we "save" _ourselves_ and essential parts of our culture, without which we're going to have a greatly impoverished idea of who we are and were we "came from"--the "passage" by which we got to this state. We don't rescue Shakespeare-- his works and all that he left us, rescue _us_ from a fate which he well understood was otherwise a dreadful one-- because he so revolutionized the scope and capacity of his language and did so much to create ours, yes, he recognized his works' virtues and cultural value and, as is often the case with geniuses, he felt no need to indulge in false modesty or apologize for the accident of having been born brilliant.
This is not a flight of theoretical fancy, It's submitting to the hard realities of what culture is and what it means to have one and to care for and about it.
Spoken language is the primordial aspect of human culture and, while communication in the simplest forms is not unique to our species, language, and, especially, _written_ language is a late and inestimably precious part of what _is_ unique about us as. For English speakers, to live without Shakespeare's art is to live a life in which one is, however slightly, hobbled, in which one has but one "ear", but one "eye". We do not and we cannot understand _ourselves_--let alone each other-- as well without Shakespeare as we _might_ _with_ his work. Who, understanding that, would choose to do without?
those are both interesting and welcome responses. One of my impressions about Latin is that word-order is nearly entirely arbitrary--something which means that, in practice, a gifted artist of the language can do things with it which are surprising, beautiful and unexpected but still entirely grammatically correct. And that describes "Shakespeare's" mastery and uses of English.
Two other things hinder my capacity to persevere: virtually everything of the classics has been translated and is easily available in English. No new "great literature" is being written in classic Greek or Latin. (It's still true, though, that the old great literature's beauty and meanings aren't as well and clearly expressed in translations. (So people continue to learn the language for that (great) advantage.)
But even accomplished scholars in Latin are prone to making seriously bad errors in their translations. I read Martin Irvine's "The Making of Textual Culture: 'Grammatica'and Literary Theory 350-1100" (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (series)) for what was, in effect, a linguistic and grammatical history of the world into which "Shakespeare" was born (450 years later). I thought it was a great study--but, nearing the end of it, I turned to and read some reviews of it and learned that Irvine had made some really embarrassingly bad mistranslations of Latin in the course of it. I had no way of spotting these on my own and had simply taken all his translations at face-value.
This has happened where Shakespeare's English is concerned and, if it's "modernized," It'll happen more and more as scholars who aren't very talented misconstrue the original intent and meanings in their modernization of them.
A now notorious example concerns Ben Jonson's "To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us" (from the First Folio)
By Ben Jonson (1572–1637) which appeared in the frontispiece of the first folios of the then-collected work. (This elaborate homage is full of inside jokes and puns--so fitting in a tribute to the author.)
... "And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so my brain excuses,— 25
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses;
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line. 30
And
***though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,***
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names, but call forth thund’ring Æschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 35
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for a comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 40
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe." ...
(https://www.bartleby.com/337/276.html)
those words marked out with asterisks are the point here. To every reader of that time, they meant unambiguously what today we'd express this way:
"even _if_ you _had_ had 'small Latin and less Greek (learning) I should, just the same not lack for great names to compare with yours, Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova " ... etc,
that is, in other words, "your erudition in Latin and Greek being so great, even if it hadn't been, I'd still class you with these greats--but it _wasn't_ small Latin and lesse Greek that you commanded"...
Over the course of centuries, the intended meaning was misconstrued by native speakers of English, turned on its head and read to mean: "despite your having had 'small Latin and lesse Greek," blah, blah blah.
"Modernizing" Shakespeare's English shall lead to untold multiplications of errors of this kind in the representation of his poetry and his plays' dialogue by credentialed scholars who edit these works for the lay reader. It's much, much better to leave them with the texts as we have them with glossaries to help grasp the (often difficult and disputed) meanings. They're already controversial enough in the tattered way many of them came down to us.
Floating in my head is something my Latin 101/102 professor taught. For example, the word imperium is most often translated as "power." One word for one word. I've seen other translations like "empire," or "command." He taught us (Shout-out to Professor Lemac. Lemac attack!) that imperium really means the ability to get things done. If you have imperium, you can get shit done. So it is less a single word and more of a concept. Reading in the original language is listening to Brahm's Symphony no.4 on vinyl vs. a translation which is more an mp3.
Oh, I don't go for putting Shakespeare into contemporary English . . . and I prefer the King James Version to any modern text. In both cases, I'm going for the poetry, not the accuracy. If I want to know exactly what a biblical verse means, I might read a commentary or look at a contemporary translation. I let students know about "No Fear Shakespeare" but I warn them, too. Consider wicked Edmund's speech in King Lear. Contemporary translations only give you the G-rated version. All students must run out and purchase The Arden Edition of Shakespeare right this nanosecond!
I agree. People who dislike Shakespeare and opera because of the languages would not be beating the doors down to get to them if only they were in English. Besides, there have been many versions of Shakespeare done with a modern spin -- Othello and Macbeth are frequently done like this, and I think "Ten Things I Hate About You" was basically "Taming of the Shrew" made modern. They perform in middling fashion at best. And the NY Met Opera put on an English-language Baroque pastiche a few years back called "The Enchanted Island" that fanficced Shakespear and filked a bunch of Baroque arias, giving them English lyrics. The people who attended and loved it were exactly the same people who attend and love normal Baroque opera in Italian -- myself included.
If you like it, you don't do so despite the weirdness. The weirdness is part of it. If you dislike the weirdness, you are not going to suddenly like it if the weirdness is removed.
Building on the Hurston quote. One might have thought, 50 years ago, that chess is the whitest game there is. And therefore that we'd need to change the rules for black kids to participate fairly. Which of course in chess simply means a handicap, say a knight and a pawn. But today we know that black kids from bad neighborhoods, like poor white rural kids, often do very very well at chess, and this held up as an example of opportunity to shine.
So, I suppose the question is, how did chess stop being white? And why can't apply to everthing else?
"One might have thought, 50 years ago, that chess is the whitest game there is."
One should have been mistaken. It wasn't--certainly not fifty years ago and not even a century ago. Chess masters have _long_ come in all "colors" and from all walks and nations.
Ah - hadn't realized chess has always been a part of black American culture. In a way that's even more interesting!
A couple of observations, for what they’re worth.
1. As you suggest in the Atlantic piece, the department could be dropping the requirements simply to get more majors no matter the students’ race or background. It says something that IF this is the case, that one choose as a cover doing everything you can to imply this is about getting more Black students. Modem academics may be more comfortable saying they’re lowering standards for inclusiveness than just that they’re lowering standards to keep a program. It’d be interesting to know what Princeton’s numbers are.
2. I’m an historian of medieval England, post Norman conquest. If an undergraduate wanted to write about England before the Conquest using translated sources, I think that would be permitted at most universities. And it is undergraduates we’re talking about. Now if a graduate student were permitted to work on early England (formerly Anglo-Saxon England) without studying Old English, that would I think generally be held to be a scandal. Same goes for Latin. So your colleague at the Atlantic may be on ok ground. Although cutting against what I said about undergraduates, I myself was expected to have Latin to do an undergraduate senior thesis on the fourteenth century.
this is all too much like giving a trophy for everyone who participates in the foot race, a participation trophy to make the kids feel good. But what is really true is that it was a foot race to see who was fastest. School is structured as a competition. For me it was a competition with myself, to see how far I could go and how well. I didn't care about the other students. But they sometimes did challenge my limited thinking. Rather than feeling poorly about myself, i followed barbara jordan's method . . . when she lost a (i think) state debate championship, she followed the woman who beat her from event to event and watched her debate and learned from her and then the next year beat her. Her time in congress showed how well she learned from her opponent. ultimately though the competition is always with the self and from reading jordan's autobiography she felt the same way. The question is, what kind of person do i want to be? and what i am willing to do to get there? I would loathe being given an easier time of it for some patronizing reason. I would feel a kind of shame, not confidence, not a feeling of surmounted an obstacle, but as if someone had helped me over the course while others simply went through it on their own.
I wonder if they changed the requirement because they were having trouble recruiting enough students to run a major, and they chose to mention inclusiveness when explaining it in order to save face.
I know education is your thing John, and that's ok. As a person that works outside of education, I am more concerned about the effects of this on the workplace.
I am terrified of typing this btw, as if someone will dox me on just the tiny bit of information here and I'll be out of a job and society forever.
My workplace has recently gone through this new version of DEI training and everyone is very into it. In the last month, I've had two colleagues that are POC produce work that was not 100% ready. This is normal, all people do this all the time. Instead of turning around and asking them to do further edits on the work (obvious grammatical errors), or elaborate on sections that were thin or missing, the manager asked me to do them. The manager has expressed to me that we should understand that the work they do is based on their own standards and we should trust those standards and their deep community experience and we should work with what they produce, celebrate what they bring to the table, and not criticize them for what they don't excel at. However, she doesn't state that the work is not ready for public consumption, and doesn't articulate that her solution is simply to have a white person finish the work. Of course this whole conversation is had without mentioning race, but everyone knows what we are talking about. To ask that individuals take responsibility for their own work (to have equality of expectations), although not explicitly stated, feels labeled as "racist." I'm sure my manager is very sincere in her belief that she is doing the right thing. It is probably worth mentioning that both POC here are long-time professionals and one has a PhD; it seems like they should be able to fix obvious errors on their own work after review. The whole situation is so cringe-inducing and Orwellian I can barely stand it.
In your case it's cringe-inducing, but what about, hypothetically, where someone made it through medical school on 'their' standards. Later they make a few 'obvious' errors with a patient. Do you want them to be your surgeon?
Or the pilot for whom that small bit in flight school about learning how to land was insufficiently sensitive to their cultural background; forget about wanting to have that pilot, would you want to BE that pilot?
This is affirmative action all over again. Sad that we learn so little.
So sorry to hear this. It is dispiriting to say the least. The tyranny of low expectations.
And, btw, I thought long and hard about commenting on substack as well before I subscribed. I had the same fears as you do. We must all find ways of standing up if where can. I salute you for your courage in posting here.
This is pretty horrifying.
I would suggest that courses in the vernacular be offered and could count toward a general Philosophy degree, but that anyone seeking a major or minor in Classics must engage the material in the original Greek or Latin, and only certain (and few) of the vernacular courses count toward a major or minor. This provides teh opportunity for non-specialists to engage with the classics, but acknowledges that true expertise requires the original language.
I think this stands up to the comparison to English--you can read and study The Venerable Bede in the original in order to be an English History major, but you must engage the original for a degree in Medieval English Literature. (English Lit, in general, seems like a grey are and worth discussing.)
Sorry, I meant "...you can read and study The Venerable Bede in the VERNACULAR to be an English History major..."
Exactly. A classics course in the vernacular would be like "Biology for Non-Majors"--i.e., a course aimed at students who are interested in the subject but are not seeking a degree in it. Otherwise, what will a classics degree from Princeton mean, especially when compared with classics degrees from other top-rated schools? Will it become a "joke" degree?
Another analogy: imagine not requiring a serious mastery of calculus or even algebra for a college major in physics. Wouldn’t people laugh at the suggestion?
Classics is the only literary field in the humanities that has not suffered from an invasion of “theory” people and others bored by literature and mostly interested in politics. The reason for this, aside from the seriousness of classicists, is the stiff entry requirement, a knowledge of Greek and Latin.
This said, physics depts often offer a course in classical physics w/o calculus and classics depts courses on Greek and Roman works in translation. That’s quite reasonable.
Well, we know that CRT advocates are now promoting the notion at state education levels that math in K-12 is racist... I imagine the scrapping of calculus mastery is not far behind. Sigh.
See https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/04/california-math-class-detrack-race-equity/
This is fun because I agree, disagree, and partially agree with what you are saying. So let's break it down:
1. There is a difference between an average reader and a person who is seeking an academic degree. I have no desire to immerse myself in Russian just to read Dostoevsky. Yes, things are lost in translation, but if you pick a well respected translation you can avoid much of the loss. So I am approaching Russian literature as a person who loves to read. If I was seeking an academic degree in Russian literature then the rules are different. You can not achieve scholarship in a field where you can't even read the primary texts as written.
2. Classics is an elite field for those willing to immerse themselves in ancient languages, culture, and history. If you want to just read The Iliad or the Aeneid then pick up one of the great translations, there are several. If you want to be a scholar in the field then you have to perform due diligence.
3. Translating Opera is unnecessary. Every opera I've ever attended, even at the college production level had a screen with subtitles. I don't want to watch Kurosawa films dubbed and I can read a screen when attending the opera. Besides, rendering Italian into English would play merry hell with the rhythm.
4. My sister has her doctorate in French. Quite honestly if a person isn't willing to speak and read a language then they have no business getting a degree in it.
5. If you want a doctorate in Medieval English history then you will need to show a working knowledge of Latin, Old English, Middle English, and Middle French.
6. Maybe the problem is not the rigor of the programs but the quality of the students. Not everyone belongs in college. I say that as someone who has worked 25 years in various areas of college administration. Instead of lowering the quality of our programs how about we worry more about who we are letting in.
I agree with all you of said, except a partial disagreement with #6. Everyone deserves to further their education. So I take a slight exception to your phrasing of "worry more about who we are letting in." The problem here is not enough educational opportunity for humans in general across all spectrums of life and socioeconomic status. And the problem is the social value we place on particular schools. Its not nice. Applicants need to find schools that match their interests, aptitude, and some measure of proven commitment to having developed the aptitude -- such proven commitment should include adherence to standards (I've studied three years for the test and I did well). There should be various modes of higher education. This is the 21st century -- we can figure out how to educate all who wish to be educated without sacrificing standards of any one institution. It is society at large that needs to be the judge of whether there is social currency (I will hire you if you graduate from "x" university) in graduating from a particular university. I can say with great confidence that all graduates from a top tier university are of not of equal social value, yet we think that they are simply by virtue of their time spent in the super-thinker club. I think top tier universities should continue to provide a "sacred" space for intellectuals and exclude people who don't play the same competitive game of chess. But there are various types of excellence and not all excellence is bred in an Ivy league school. We should also keep in mind that schools can be known for excellence in particular programs of study. If a school has a great thinker or great teacher in a great program of study, that's what should matter: competitive admission to a program of study. The social capital that Ivy graduates attain is is something that needs to be placed in perspective. I suspect insiders do know which programs are rigorous and which ones are average, but the general public does not know. People see "graduate of Harvard," and they think they see a saint. Also, there are other human qualities that matter more than academic achievement. For example, this can be often seen in the field of medicine and approaches to patient care. A medical degree from an Ivy league doesn't tell me anything about a doctor's approach to patient care, sense of medical ethics, or understanding of clinical research ethics. I do think we need gatekeepers, much like we need referees in sports. But there is griping about gatekeepers because everyone wants to be valued.
"It is society at large that needs to be the judge of whether there is social currency (I will hire you if you graduate from "x" university) in graduating from a particular university. I can say with great confidence that all graduates from a top tier university are of not of equal social value, yet we think that they are simply by virtue of their time spent in the super-thinker club."
Unfortunately, no matter how many in the public at large object, these "elite"institutions, so well-recognized that I needn't even name them, can foist such a
system on the public whether it's worthy or not. As long as people regard the main purpose of education as the key to getting into employment (and government/public administration or elective office!) at "the best places", schools' marketing-departments are going to present their programs as doing that better than the competition. The practice is now understood to have invaded the whole educational career. There are pre-schools which market their programs as giving a toddler a leg up in getting into ... the selective elementary schools. Sometimes, it's just pre-school through grade 12 in the same elite place or "campus."
Where money can buy advantages, there'll be people who'll sell what they claim to be the shorter or surer way to providing them to young pupils and students. From this comes all the pressure on these youth to get those grades.
Measures of intelligence and job-getting-and-keeping competence are bound to converge, each corrupting the other in such a system. Of course there are talented parents and youth who can and do navigate such systems with far more success than others. Those already come in every skin-tone and background; so all "races" can and do play this game now. But the institutions, for the sake of public image, can tweak the results so that outcomes more closely reflect what's conventionally viewed as "fair(er) distributions" (i.e. according to race) of the this spoils-system.
No doubt, many of these students, whatever their age, _are_ exceptionally bright and highly motivated according to the conventional views of those characteristics. But few schools and perhaps even fewer elite employers are so naive as to believe that there's a fast and sure correlation between actual grounded intelligence or excellence in the job and attendance at and graduation from these schools. Still, if one is required to "sort" candidates, this allows easy means for lazy administrators. I don't accord any automatic credit or particular esteem to graduates of Ivy League institutions--that goes as well for graduates wherever they come from--France's Sorbonne or the École Nationale d'Admin., or Britain's Eaton, Harrow, Oxford or Cambridge.
I agree that people should go on past the standard secondary education. But not everyone has a academic mind. That’s not an insult. They just have a different set of skills. I think that a truck driver is just as noble a professional as a professor. Maybe more so! But that truck driver should go to an academy that trains truck drivers. Same for plumbers, welders, hair stylists, etc. I count good friends in every one of those professions. None of them need a bachelor’s degree. Every man to his trade and honor to all who work. Hell, I’ve done roofing in a Louisiana summer. You won’t see me looking down on the men who do that for a living. My wife has several younger brothers. The twins are excellent examples of making something from nothing. One of them took his own significant musical skills added a couple of classes at a community college and learned the art of music engineering. While working odd jobs he bought equipment and turned the small house he rented into a studio. He slept on a couch in that studio for three years. Now he is as busy as he wants to be recording music for local musicians. He even engineered one of those special “iTunes Sessions” for one local band that did well. His twin moved to California and eventually found his place as a gardener. I remember when you couldn’t get that boy out in the sun. Today he is planting food gardens all over LA and is in the process of opening a business dedicated to his favorite crop: gourmet mushrooms. A college degree wasn’t for them.
Ivy League is overrated and only a big deal in certain areas. I live in NW Louisiana and there aren’t a lot of them around here. Our CEOs have degrees from LSU, Louisiana Tech, and the small 200 year old college where I work. Most of the doctors went to LSU Med Center and most of the lawyers are Tulane and LSU Law alumni. I agree that the place where one gets a degree tells you little about their character. The one Harvard MD that I knew was a lush who ended up going to jail for solicitation of a minor.
I agree that people should continue to learn and we have never had more opportunities. I am a subscriber to The Great Courses. I read between 100-150 books a year both fiction and non-fiction. All of us can do this. Digital technologies in the library means that anyone can download books, courses, audiobooks, and learn. It’s all up to the consumer’s choice. So your truck driver can spend all day listening to. John McWhorter course from The Great Courses and know more about the history of language than your average PhD in Physics.
the fellow who remodeled my home was exclusively self-taught. He did the plumbing, the gas heat, electricity, built a deck -- everything. All up to code. He could figure things out almost intuitively. He had a blog for a while for one of his hobbies and he asked me to check his grammar for it. He felt a sort of shame that he didn't get his phrases up to "standard." I can get my grammar right but I felt he was much smarter than me. I grew up in a blue collar town in the 60s so I had no problem hiring someone like this. I had a great admiration for him and truly trusted him. I also love to learn from people who have hyper-focused their intellectual lives on a particular topic. We simultaneously undervalue and overvalue individuals like this. If we could learn to allow people to develop their innate aptitude and provide opportunities for everyone, we would all be better off. I had a conversation with a Scottish friend of mine and he explained that in the UK it would not be strange for a person to be both a Shakespearean scholar and a plumber simultaneously. I don't know how prevalent that is, but I will say that in the U.S., our university alma mater and job are so tightly tied to our identity (ugh, that word again). Sometimes, you gotta flip burgers for a livin'. Just flip 'em right, and I'm good. I just want people to have health care, retirement safety net, and educational opportunity wherever whenever. And flip burgers, fix houses, learn languages -- whatever. I do think that even those who are not "academic" do benefit from some fundamentals that some might deem outside of some apparent aptitude. We should be really cautious about making assumptions about aptitude as I think we've made mistakes about this historically. Its about choice. People generally know what they want to do and what they don't want to do and this is usually aligned with aptitude. Our culture shouldn't foster perpetuation of stereotypes about people who take "shop" in high school and kids shouldn't feel as if they should follow their socioeconomic or racial peer groups into particular professions. We simply must do a better job developing an overt philosophy of education in this country. Each child should be taught to be reflective and deliberate about their own education and career choices.
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EB11 hr ago:
"the fellow who remodeled my home was exclusively self-taught. He did the plumbing, the gas heat, electricity, built a deck -- everything. ... He could figure things out almost intuitively." He had a blog for a while for one of his hobbies and he asked me to check his grammar for it" ...
I once met and got to know a guy like that. In four months, I only heard him twice utter something in English which wasn't grammatically impeccable. His command of English was far superior to most of even the best native-English-speaking graduates of the top schools and universities today; so I can only wonder at the exquisite level of his spoken German--of which I know so little that I couldn't follow a conversation at the dining-table in it. But this fellow was a rarity in so many respects. He's one of perhaps two or, at most three, genuine geniuses I can claim to have met. His intellectual skills were in every way (that I could observe) on a par with his practical and tradesman skills, all of those, like your acquaintance, self-taught.
While staying with the family, I mentioned "graham-crackers", something new to him. He looked up the recipe on-line and, using his home kitchen wares, ground whole-grain wheat in his kitchen's grain-mill and made delicious graham-crackers from scratch. He had gone to university and graduated; I'm not even sure now the area of his major studies. But he read everything, was interested in, curious about, everything. Once married, he bought a patch of land in a rural area--formerly-owned large farmer's exploitation which had been pared down to fewer than ten acres--and was raising small livestock and crops on it.
... "I had a conversation with a Scottish friend of mine and he explained that in the UK it would not be strange for a person to be both a Shakespearean scholar and a plumber simultaneously."
if your Scottish friend says so-- never having been to Scotland, I don't know what Scottish plumbers read in their spare time. But I suspect that it's quite unusual, whatever the "strangeness" of it. I readily accept that "Shakespeare" can and does (as ought to be the case with no surprise) appeal to absolutely all kinds of people in all kinds of trades and walks of life; but reading Shakespeare as a pastime interest and studying the work as a scholar aren't (and shouldn't be) the same things--not that you claimed they are.
I'd be delighted to see it happen but I've never overheard a group of tradesmen/women discussing Shakespeare or his work over their lunch-break.
I can't like this comment enough: “ If we could learn to allow people to develop their innate aptitude and provide opportunities for everyone, we would all be better off.” I so wish we approached education more creatively and dropped the posturing. We should be feeding minds, not egos. I often wonder how much human potential gets wasted by our current focus. We could do so much better.
There's a lot of keen insight in what you write. I think we're now thorough victims of the ethos of "everybody must be allowed 'in here,' competence be damned because allowing everyone in makes everyone feel all cozy and accepted, and we're all equal in what we deserve."
Really? I'm "equal to" and "deserving of" everything the person who toils and sweats to master Russian or Latin or Greek can reap from a mastery of these languages--ancient or less so in form--and the literature they encompass, classic or modern?
I first read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Terre des hommes in the English translation from Lewis Galantierre, published by Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. I thought it was beautiful. It made me want to learn French. When I did, I learned better how beautiful was Galantierre's rendering. That's why, now, knowing that Shakespeare regarded Ovid's Latin as a thing of sublime beauty and style, I want to cry for the fact that I cannot touch it as he was able to do. If the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare was so brilliant a craftsman of startlingly original English for his own or any time since, it's in no small part due to his masterful knowledge of classic Greek and Latin--which he learned as a youth from six to thirteen from the best classics-scholars of his day*, not at some clapboard schoolhouse in Stratford-upon-Avon-- and he read those classic authors all his life.
It's not a pleasant, heart-warming thing to dwell on what's been lost on the road to this marvelous modernity of ours, is it? We're now on a convoluted treadmill with far-reaching deleterious consequences for us which I fear we can little recognize or understand.
The societies in which nearly all educated people learned Latin and Greek were inherently different kinds of places in which to live from those latter which had and now have nothing of that facility in anything like so widespread a way. This is true even in admitting that the _real_ mastery of these languages even in an ostensibly well-schooled general population was probably not terribly good much of the time.
Taking French in high school and college, I got my diplomas from these with no facility at all for reading or speaking French. Years later, even after months of tutoring from talented native tutors at Alliance Française courses, I could barely hold the simplest of conversations. Only by living in France did I break through the barriers and gain a fluency. There, to save money, after reading a first novel in English and becoming a fan of Philip Roth's fiction, I read others of his novels in French, so well translated by Josée Kamoun (https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/why-philip-roth-sounds-so-good-in-french-the-method-of-a-master-translator/c3s4854) and in every word on the page I could hear Roth's voice in my mind's ear.
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* Sir Thomas Smith (23 December 1513 – 12 August 1577)
Laurence (or Lawrence) Nowell (1530 – c.1570)
You wrote this post so I don’t have to, so thank you.
I have often puzzled that a culture which so aptly applies the "no pain, no gain" principle to anything oriented toward physical fitness, eschews it application to educational, emotional, or psychological struggles and efforts.
They don't apply that principle anymore -- look up Tess Holliday. You yes you can be well over 300lb and refer to yourself as "fit" and any insistence otherwise is "fatphobic," and yes that is a real word. Amazing, isn't it?
But ‘no pain, no gain’ is considered ‘blaming the victim’ if the problem is caused by impediments put there by a wrongdoer. Many people believe that system racism alone is to blame for lower scores on standardized tests, for example. Proposing what you did opens you to a charge of ‘colorblind racism,’ which is the view that with talent and hard work anybody can succeed (i.e., the American dream). These people overlook the fact that the greater the impediments the more that diligence and hard work are necessary for success, and that the message to individual children should not be that systemic racism will keep them from succeeding so they’re wasting their time, but rather that with diligence and hard work they will get far beyond where they would be without it, a proposition that no one can deny.
Astute.