From ev23@umail.umd.edu Sat Dec 30 14:58:42 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id OAA24928 for ; Sat, 30 Dec 2000 14:58:41 -0800 Received: from umailsrv2.umd.edu (umailsrv2.umd.edu [128.8.10.76]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id OAA14153 for ; Sat, 30 Dec 2000 14:58:40 -0800 Received: from umail.umd.edu (bay6-40.dial.umd.edu [128.8.23.104]) by umailsrv2.umd.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA13871 for ; Sat, 30 Dec 2000 17:54:26 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3A4E688E.921F6048@umail.umd.edu> Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 17:58:22 -0500 From: Elizabeth Vandiver X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: What About Latin and the Working Class? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Julilla1@aol.com wrote: > Exactly. It's all well and good for someone from Harvard or Yale to expound > upon the values of Ancient Greek and it's relevance to today's world but I > don't think that they turn around and look at the reality of the community > college student. Latin and Greek and Classics *look* worse than useless to > most people because, in general, when mommy and daddy are working for a > combined income of Fifty thousand a year and they actually have time to take > a well deserved break with their child they aren't lecturing on Homer. They > want something solid for their kids with the surety that what they learn will > help the child do better than they have. Well--I'm not so sure. My experience in making video/audio courses for the Teaching Company has shown me that there is a great deal of interest in classical topics "out there," so to speak--okay, the people who write or telephone me about my lectures don't see learning about Classics as a path to "privilege", but they DO see the material as relevant to their own lives in some way. At least, that's the impression I get. I wouldn't normally post this kind of thing, but here are a couple of bits from one recent e-mail: "I started working when I was 16 years old and only was able to go through the 7th grade in education. I only mention this because I want you to know that your classes on the Iliad and the Odyssey have been an absolutely great experience for me. I look forward every day to listening to the CD's. ... I thought you should be told that you are making a consequential difference in the lives of people that are not necessarily college students." Granted, he doesn't say that learning about the Iliad and the Odyssey contributes to his *material* welfare--but that's not the only kind of value that education has to offer. And equally clearly, he considered these subjects worth spending money on. This e-mail is far from unique, too; in fact, the Teaching Company recruited me because their customers had been saying, in poll after poll, that they wanted courses on Classics, and it made good business sense to give those customers what they wanted. Though I would have doubted it before I made these courses, I now think there is a *huge* amount of interest in Classics among "working class" people (and others)--academia just isn't doing a very good job of identifying and tapping that interest, in general. And now I have the feeling I'd better duck because I've probably just lit the fuses to several large bombs... Elizabeth Vandiver .