Well, here is the issue as I have found it: To teach in the flexible, liberal arts way you advocate, the prof must first be liberally educated him/her/themself. I teach my gen ed class as a chronological mini-core, but I make a point of doing what is now called intersectional interpretations of our texts from Day 1. Gilgamesh is from the fertile plains of present-day Iraq; Odysseus is no cardboard hero but something of a pirate and a trickster; Seneca is a rich colonial doling out advice at the heart of the Roman Empire; Perpetua and Augustine are Africans as well as the purveyors of a new religion; Heloise and Abelard are dueling gender philosophers and theologians; Chaucer problematizes marriage as a medieval institution and steals from the best while doing it; Equiano and Austen share a world where war and transportation—not to mention subjection—are central concerns, etc. etc. These “core texts” can be turned into something quite fresh and relevant. But first one needs to have the foundation already laid by one’s own education to do it.
I think that's right--but I think those foundations can be (as liberal education is) quite pluralistic. E.g., you and I are both widely-read but we're both Africanists too, and that lets us bring a whole range of other possible frameworks and experiences and ways of being human into view in reading with students. Which then also ought to swing the choice of readings in a core curriculum much more widely open. If we can do that--if four generations of global readers around the planet have done it--then it should be possible to substitute in Sundiata for Gilgamesh and so on. This is what we've been trying to do in one class for the Aydelotte Foundation. The debate over liberal education is familiar: education in the great books and deep thoughts? education for work and practical arts? Education to improve character and cultivate morality? But most of the people who want to have that discussion go back to a very particular genealogy of white men that they see as having shaped the terms of that debate. But you can just as easily use DuBois, Washington, Shepard debating higher education--the terms of their discussions are very similar, only inflected with specific reference to Black education in a white supremacist society. That can BE the foundation laid for the next generation to do this kind of reading in turn with the next after them.
I like this post! Yes, I think given the exigencies of this moment--you need to teach non-Western texts, or you just devalue your whole project. Whether you want to or not, you uphold white supremacy. Also, if you genuinely do want to remove cultural chauvinism, people should read Muslim writers and realize they were consciously carrying on the traditions of Aristotle, or read the Chinese writers and realize they cared less than nothing for what people in Europe were doing. Nothing could accomplish the goals of a Great Books education better than that.
Sure, Tim, and I have taught Sunjata in my gen ed classes over the years—in tandem with The Odyssey, in fact. But I’m an anthropologist, too, so I like to make the familiar strange as much as I like to make the strange familiar. We are not the 5th century BCE Athenians, after all, and that becomes apparent when one takes the religious accusations swirling around Socrates seriously—which means taking Plato’s reports of Socrates’s use of Delphi seriously, too. It cannot just be subbing in some “other” texts; it must also be taking apart the canonical assumptions of the “standard” ones. To do that, once again, the teacher needs to have been liberally and widely educated, or to be willing to learn the trick of it, themselves.
Yes. But the thing to reject, I believe, is what is lightly defended in the linked essay: that there is a Western tradition which accumulates chronologically over time and must forever be a kind of canonical "spine" of a core curriculum. I think there are many texts that the magic of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar can be worked upon that hold up as a 'core' selection for all students to read, and without that seeming like "here's some Greeks, here's some medieval Christians, here's your Enlightenment and oh wait here at the end is the Popol Vuh". You can really mix up what Christians, especially early ones, are talking to and being talked to by; you can completely challenge the idea of Enlightenment thinkers just being the usual suspects writing to one another in some republic of letters. The Ree book I reference is great for that--the guys who get into these kinds of courses are also talking to and from a bunch of texts that only a narrow band of historians ever bother with that are actually really interesting and can be made relevant. And there's a ton of vernacular/everyday texts we could be teaching in a liberal core just to actively raise the question of whether there's anything actually special about the texts we venerate or whether they're just the texts that happen to survive a series of accidents.
Well, here is the issue as I have found it: To teach in the flexible, liberal arts way you advocate, the prof must first be liberally educated him/her/themself. I teach my gen ed class as a chronological mini-core, but I make a point of doing what is now called intersectional interpretations of our texts from Day 1. Gilgamesh is from the fertile plains of present-day Iraq; Odysseus is no cardboard hero but something of a pirate and a trickster; Seneca is a rich colonial doling out advice at the heart of the Roman Empire; Perpetua and Augustine are Africans as well as the purveyors of a new religion; Heloise and Abelard are dueling gender philosophers and theologians; Chaucer problematizes marriage as a medieval institution and steals from the best while doing it; Equiano and Austen share a world where war and transportation—not to mention subjection—are central concerns, etc. etc. These “core texts” can be turned into something quite fresh and relevant. But first one needs to have the foundation already laid by one’s own education to do it.
I think that's right--but I think those foundations can be (as liberal education is) quite pluralistic. E.g., you and I are both widely-read but we're both Africanists too, and that lets us bring a whole range of other possible frameworks and experiences and ways of being human into view in reading with students. Which then also ought to swing the choice of readings in a core curriculum much more widely open. If we can do that--if four generations of global readers around the planet have done it--then it should be possible to substitute in Sundiata for Gilgamesh and so on. This is what we've been trying to do in one class for the Aydelotte Foundation. The debate over liberal education is familiar: education in the great books and deep thoughts? education for work and practical arts? Education to improve character and cultivate morality? But most of the people who want to have that discussion go back to a very particular genealogy of white men that they see as having shaped the terms of that debate. But you can just as easily use DuBois, Washington, Shepard debating higher education--the terms of their discussions are very similar, only inflected with specific reference to Black education in a white supremacist society. That can BE the foundation laid for the next generation to do this kind of reading in turn with the next after them.
I like this post! Yes, I think given the exigencies of this moment--you need to teach non-Western texts, or you just devalue your whole project. Whether you want to or not, you uphold white supremacy. Also, if you genuinely do want to remove cultural chauvinism, people should read Muslim writers and realize they were consciously carrying on the traditions of Aristotle, or read the Chinese writers and realize they cared less than nothing for what people in Europe were doing. Nothing could accomplish the goals of a Great Books education better than that.
Sure, Tim, and I have taught Sunjata in my gen ed classes over the years—in tandem with The Odyssey, in fact. But I’m an anthropologist, too, so I like to make the familiar strange as much as I like to make the strange familiar. We are not the 5th century BCE Athenians, after all, and that becomes apparent when one takes the religious accusations swirling around Socrates seriously—which means taking Plato’s reports of Socrates’s use of Delphi seriously, too. It cannot just be subbing in some “other” texts; it must also be taking apart the canonical assumptions of the “standard” ones. To do that, once again, the teacher needs to have been liberally and widely educated, or to be willing to learn the trick of it, themselves.
Yes. But the thing to reject, I believe, is what is lightly defended in the linked essay: that there is a Western tradition which accumulates chronologically over time and must forever be a kind of canonical "spine" of a core curriculum. I think there are many texts that the magic of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar can be worked upon that hold up as a 'core' selection for all students to read, and without that seeming like "here's some Greeks, here's some medieval Christians, here's your Enlightenment and oh wait here at the end is the Popol Vuh". You can really mix up what Christians, especially early ones, are talking to and being talked to by; you can completely challenge the idea of Enlightenment thinkers just being the usual suspects writing to one another in some republic of letters. The Ree book I reference is great for that--the guys who get into these kinds of courses are also talking to and from a bunch of texts that only a narrow band of historians ever bother with that are actually really interesting and can be made relevant. And there's a ton of vernacular/everyday texts we could be teaching in a liberal core just to actively raise the question of whether there's anything actually special about the texts we venerate or whether they're just the texts that happen to survive a series of accidents.
This is really well-said