From mcmahon@mail.lemoyne.edu Sat Oct 26 05:05:26 2002 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.09) with SMTP id g9QC5PFD145876 for ; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 05:05:25 -0700 Received: FROM mxu2.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Sat Oct 26 05:05:24 2002 -0700 Received: from kiwi.lemoyne.edu (kiwi.lemoyne.edu [192.231.122.6]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.09) with ESMTP id g9QC5Nnf004758 for ; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 05:05:24 -0700 Received: from mail.lemoyne.edu ([192.168.250.198]) by kiwi.lemoyne.edu; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 08:05:29 -0400 Message-ID: <3DBA8522.9AE3AD9B@mail.lemoyne.edu> Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 08:05:54 -0400 From: "John M. McMahon" Reply-To: mcmahon@mail.lemoyne.edu X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Latin and SATs References: <3DBADF1D.15369.13A4290@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Steven J. Willett" wrote: > I think Dan has not quite caught the drift of Chris' post. We should > always call attention to the proven ancillary benefits of studying Greek > and Latin, but what real long-term advantage accrues from trying to > measure "the effect of studying Latin?" The purpose of studying these > languages ultimately lies not in some pragmatic "effect" but in access to > a 2,500-year-old tradition that formed and continues to form the West. > Defence of the Classics must rest on the inherent value of the literature > bequeathed by the tradition, and thus on the necessity of studying the > texts in their original form, not on the notion that the languages will as it > were grind students into sharper intellects with higher long-term earning > power. A defence that rests on utilitarianism will fail. The ultimate > problem with current skirmishing tactics is simple: the leaders of our > field are afraid, for very well-known ideological reasons, to take an > unwavering public stand on the absolute value of the Classical heritage > to education. Two things: 1) While I disagree for the most part with Steve's representation of Classics folks' "current skirmishing tactics," in a landscape increasingly dominated by a spread-sheet mentality, it is more than even "pragmatic effect" that has become an end in itself for indicating/proving success. It has become the numbers ... and those numbers are what an academic mangerial class understands and what, sadly, we are more and more often asked/mandated to produce and cite as evidence. Sadly, even the carefully-worded and persuasive rationale and recommendations appended to the evaluation documents is for the most part relegated to secondary status ... if that ... in administrative acknowledgements. 2) I agree with Steve's suggestion that > [de]fence of the Classics must rest on the inherent value of the literature > bequeathed by the tradition, and thus on the necessity of studying the > texts in their original form, not on the notion that the languages will as it > were grind students into sharper intellects with higher long-term earning > power. I think all of us have made those former points to audiences at many levels and only resort to the latter as secondarily significant. Yet I would add that we ignore at our peril the *other* aspects of the study of Classics that make up the whole -- material culture, especially. As I just yesterday explained to my LAT 101s, Classics is *the* original model for the comprehensive study of the liberal arts (something that seems to have (re)caught on all of a sudden with "innovative" and "integrated" ways to present core program material to students); but I also realize that the present cohort of (possibly) very eager and supportive students are ... for whatever reasons ... more likely to become engaged with language, literature and original texts if also prompted to look at the other facets of the civilizations that produced them. John McMahon LMC .