From jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu Thu Feb 1 05:47:15 2001 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id FAA112036 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 05:47:14 -0800 Received: from ccat.sas.upenn.edu (CCAT.SAS.UPENN.EDU [165.123.88.70]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id FAA12263 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 05:47:13 -0800 Received: (from jod@localhost) by ccat.sas.upenn.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA26286 for classics@u.washington.edu; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 08:47:13 -0500 (EST) From: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (James J. O'Donnell) Message-Id: <200102011347.IAA26286@ccat.sas.upenn.edu> Subject: Re: Longinus O'er a Bottle To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 08:47:12 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <001001c08c19$56b816f0$b04110ac@is.suac.ac.jp> from "Steven J. Willett" at Feb 1, 2001 03:36:42 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23-upenn3.3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steven J. Willett wrote: > > 1. Every country with which I'm familiar attempts to maintain the vitality > of its cultural traditions through an educational program that stretches > from grade school to university. This is certainly true of Russia, China > and Japan. I suspect it is true mutatis mutandis for virtually every > independent country on the planet. Here in Japan we call the study of the > Japanese language (formally "Nihongo") "Kokugo" to indicate it is the > "national language" through which students gain consciousness of their > inherited cultural traditions, of their collective identity as Japanese > citizens. We have no doubt about the content of the Japanese classical > canon and no shame in requiring students to learn it. > And is this a good thing? Are there abuses to which this practice is particularly prone? Is it unmistakably the only way to manage education? Japan a weak example, as I understand it, in that the homogeneity of Japanese culture is far greater than that of the USA; and a questionable example, in that the maintenance of that homogeneity is at least controversial. > 2. But for some decades now, the partisans of postmodern political ideology > have denied the West--certainly the United States--the right to do the same > thing: maintain its cultural integrity through mandatory study of the > Western classical canon. "Denied the right" generalizes some incidents to an overstatement. It is possible to disagree with "mandatory study of the Western classical canon" and to vote against it without "denying a right". > Nor is there any need to define the Greco-Roman canon; its outlines > are quite clear. The English canon from Chaucer to the nineteenth century > is also clear and continues to be taught--often inconsistently with > considerable apologetics--well below elite research institutions and their > graduate schools. Also taught in all the elite research institutions with which I've been associated. (We're going on from Don Quixote to Shakespeare this week, and I'm already salivating over Milton for the weeks after.) Though the clarity of the outlines of those canons is news to me. They are quite labile. > 3. The motive to preserve one's inherited culture cannot automatically be > equated with prejudice against other cultures as George seems to think > (under correction) Chris is suggesting. Quite true. But the two are indeed sometimes found together. The open questions should be how often is that the case and what one might do to weaken the link and undermine the prejudice. (If the two are indissolubly linked, *then* undermining the prejudice means undermining the inherited culture. I prefer to work on weakening the link.) > For the past seven years I have at > various times argued on this list that (a) Classics should include Hebrew > and Sanskrit and (b) students should be required to master 2-3 foreign > languages, as many in Western Europe do, so they can more intimately > understand and enjoy other cultures, not just pipe in the chorus of > theorists who demand instant "celebration" of all nonWestern--expecially > oppressed cultures--without deep knowledge of them. Chris would I'm sure > agree with this. > Easy to agree with (a): for saying a version of that I had the honor of being attacked by name in WKH? One agrees with (b) on condition that one is prepared to pay some high cultural prices and that one believes that educational goals are best met by managing and increasing requirements. I would be delighted to live in an America where multiple languages flourish side by side, and I would be closer to living there if I had not been such an idiot aged 14-18 and resisted the Spanish I could easily have learned in my border town. There *was* a school requirement, and virtually all of us (the anglo students in my neighborhood and in my school) resisted it quite handily and stupidly. The reconstruction of American society required to make such requirements efficacious seems to me well beyond the range of possibility, even if we were to agree that it is desirable. Jim O'Donnell Classics, U. of Penn jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu .