Can a “Classical Liberal Education” Shape the 2024 Presidential Race?:
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida hopes so. and he’s found a promising way to politicize the phrase. He has packed the Board of New College, the smallest institution (around 600 undergraduates) in Florida’s public university system. It’s a school with a reputation as liberal, leftist, progressive-leaning – choose your word. The new board in turn has fired the president, threatened the tenure rights of faculty, and indicated it hopes to remodel the institution along the lines of Hillsdale College, a small (1500 undergraduates), avowedly conservative and “Christian” institution based in Michigan. New College, they say, will thereby offer a “genuinely classical liberal education.” And Florida, will take another step toward becoming, in the Governor’s phrase, “the place where woke goes to die.”
Background reading: For a blow-by-blow view of the January meeting of the new Board at New College see this account by Sophia Brown in The Catalyst (the student newspaper at New College). For the views of Matthew Spalding, one of the newly appointed trustees at New College, see this intervie in The Collegian (the student newspaper at Hillsdale). Dan Tompkins calls our attention to the possibility that this model for higher education will be adopted by other states. . Let us know what happens in your state.
--
If so much is riding on the Hillsdale model, let’s take a closer look at the institution.
First, the students. A friend who has lectured there tells me he found the students serious and engaged. His audience was probably composed of somewhat more men than women (53%:to 47% overall). Here the data pretty much give out: since Hillsdale accepts no government funding, it is not legally required to report on the diversity of its student body. Nonetheless, that is an important part of the picture, since students learn from one another. Why not let us know?
There is one more bit of data, an important one since students vote with their feet. The graduation rate is 78%, mediocre for a private liberal arts college.
What sort of education are these students getting? Here’s how Hillsdale structures its undergraduate education. The college has a real curriculum, not a smorgasbord, as in so many places these days. Its core is Western Civilization, overwhelmingly so. The Greek and Latin classics are well represented, with a departmental faculty of six members, who were trained at major universities and publish in respected journals. None, as best I could tell, is a real ideologue. I don’t see comparable strength or interest in other civilizations that are already profoundly affecting our future. Hillsdale reminds me very much of liberal arts colleges of the 1950s, but in the intervening decades things have happened, not least a belated but genuine national effort to come to terms with race, gender, and globalization.. Governor DeSantis knows what a good education is; he graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2001 and from Harvard Law School in 2005.
Litmus test: Is Hillsdale the sort of place you (or Governor DeSantis) would recommend to a college-bound teenager in your own family? .If not, do you think it wise for the public university system in your state to adopts the Hillsdale as a model?
The issue, of course, is more political than educational. If you were running for elective office, you might find it useful to include a “classical liberal education” as part of your campaign, especially if it lacked well thought out policy ideas.
--
The Challenge and the Opportunity: :
With “a classical liberal education,” in the spotlight those of us who profess the Classics - whether inside or outside academia, should steal the phrase right back, and seize the opportunity to reinvigorate classical education. But, that requires great clarity about what a classical liberal education means in today’s setting. Let me hear from you, readers, and I will try to sum up what I am hearing in the March Then & Now Newsletter – along with some fulminations of my own. .
--
Who Said Virtue Was a Road to Happiness?
The January Newsletter challenged readers to identify the author of this statement:
“There is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness …”
No one guessed it was George Washington in his Inaugural Address (1789). More important: Does anyone understand happiness that way today, that is, linking it to “virtue”? If not, are we missing something?”
--
Word of the Month:
Neuroplasticity: In layman’s terms: The ability of the brain to reprogram itself. We used to be told that the brain stopped growing at 18 or 21 or so. but now scientists tell us it keeps growing, maybe even into old age.
Much of the research that has been done on neuroplasticity concerns the ability of the brain to circumvent damage it incurs. But there is also evidence that an undamaged brain can gain resilience and richness through certain practices; meditation, practice of the visual arts contribute over time to the growth of the brain. Apart from one tantalizing article on Chaucer I have found very little research on whether serious engagement with language and literature has a similar effect, but surely that’s a question that the New Philology wants answered.
--
Quotable:
“[We enjoy] more free time than ever before; but instead of educating ourselves, we entertain ourselves to death.“
Orin Woodward
Without the Humanities What do we lose?
James Engell answers, “A Lot,” in “Humanists All,” Harvard Magazine February 2023. Thanks to Jean Houston for calling this essay to my attention.
--
SCORPIO:
The perilous art of acronyms is discussed in “Two Thoughts about the Unthinkable Murder in Memphis,” in my blog of January 30th.
--
--
Towards a New Philology:
Old Philology rarely raised her nose from the text; but now, reincarnated as the New Philology she knows her job description includes blowing the whistle whenever language gets censored or otherwise abused.
Of late we’ve been experiencing a cascade of well-intentioned efforts to purge our language of words and expressions that might be deemed hurtful or offensive . Should Philology blow her whistle on any of these?
-The American Medical Association: Their Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts, provides a long list of words to avoid when physicians and patients talk.
- A group at Stanford University tried something very similar.
Insults, boycotts, and death threat. against J. K Rowling, famed for the Harry Potter series, ,provoke two kinds of reactions: the feeling that she must have said something nasty about transgendered people to provoke such hostility, and, on the other side, people, philologists really, who ask what she actually said.. A good starting point for the inquiry is the essay by Pamela Paul “In Defense of J.K. Rowling” in the New York Times of February 16th.
A brown paper bag to the rescue! The Stanford code mentioned above may inadvertently provide a way to avoid much nonsense. : When the code condemned “brown bag lunch” for its alleged racism, the whole edifice came tumbling down. The University repudiated the code and people began to laugh at its absurdity. Perhaps throughout the English speaking world we are approaching a reductio ad absurdum.
--
The Other Side of the New Philology:
Blowing the whistle on the abuse of language, whether it comes from the left or the right, is one side of the philologist’s new job description. The other is more fun, asking “What do Typos, Puns, Riddles and Palindromes Have in Common?” Let’s begin with palindromes.
--
A Palindromic Short Story set in a Doctor’s Office:
Thanks to Mark Saltveit for telling us about Peter Hilton who entered this palindrome in a contest among Bletchley Park code breakers during World War II: .
"Doc, note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod."
Hilton came up with that without paper, pen or pencil; he had the gift of simply visualizing the words in his head, lying back on his bed -- a skill that obviously helped him break the Nazi codes, as well as leading to an illustrious career as a geometer.
Here's a link to Mark’s article on the topic.
. Question: Hilton’s palindrome is virtually a short story. Are there any limits, practical or theoretical, on the scale of a palindrome? It can morph into Ring Composition (arranging a story in A B C C B A order). I called attention to this way of writing in the appendices to my Thucydides, but the pattern is all over classical literature.
On my To Read list: Mary Douglas’ work on ring composition: Thinking in Circles ..
One more step? What about Macbeth? Is it a palindrome on steroids? Consider how the Witches’ scene at the outset comes back in Act V when “Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane.”
--
A Riddle of Alexander the Great, still unsolved:
“The story is told that Alexander the Great at one of his banquets proposed the riddle, 'What is that which did not come last year, has not come this year, and will not come next year?' The answer suggested by one of his officers was 'Our arrears of pay', which' is said to have procured the speaker not only his arrears but an increment as well. “
E. S, Forster
Clever all around, BUT what solution was Alexander expecting when he posed the riddle? What’s your solution to this riddle?
Palindrome:
I thought “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama” was as good as palindroms get, but ,then my attention was called to this Latin one: anonymous verse found in a poetry textbook called Tractatus de Versibus by Christanus Campililiensis,
Arte mala mere vidi vere mala metra.
which Bill Berg translated as “I've seen verses of consummately bad art, truly bad."
Your Favorite Typo, please:
Can you top this one? A respectable journal I know left the letter L out of “public affairs.”
--
Squares:
Move over palindromes, try squares:
The Most famous of squares is the Latin: construct evoking Publius Vergilius Maro and the long journey Venus’ son, Aeneas, took before he reached the shore of what would eventually become Rome:
AMOR
MARO
ORAM
ROMA
Can you come up with a four letter square that works in English? I can only do a mediocre three letter one. Please help.
Summing Up: Riddles, palindromes, squares, even typographical errors teach us to feel the texture of language, hence they are not to be deplored but enjoyed by Philology and her devotees. The pleasure involves savoring individual words and phrases, rolling them around in your mouth as if tasting that bottle of Chateau Lafitte Rothschild 1959 which you tucked away in years ago, forgot about and only recently rediscovered. Every word should be like tasting a sip of a $7,000 wine.
Don’t be put off by the price; it’s not the most expensive wine in the world
--
Big Bad Bog Bodiess::
More discoveries have now been published about the Bog People, as reported by the New York Times. The study traces bodies buried in bogs in northern Europe many of whom were apparently murdered
--
You’ve Heard them, Now Hold a Connor Classical Guitar in Your Hands: Look here!
--
Drinking Games, Ancient Cottabus:
Heather Sharpe, an associate professor at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, has carefully recreated the ancient drinking game called kottabos-in Greek. She played it, however, with diluted grape juice, not that Chateau Lafitte. Here’s how it’s done.
Concerned about Democracy? Want a glimpse into a Harvard Classroom? Try Danielle Allen’s Democracy Renovation Newsletter.
Ponderables:
“We don’t need a metaphor to tell us the soul needs nourishment; we need a metaphor to help us recognize what it is that will do the nourishing.”
Maurice Brendenheim Confessions
--
“No one can take this source of happiness from them. It is theirs so long as they live and continue to choose it. It does not depend on anyone else’s judgment or approval, and it does not require a long life or a string of achievements.”
Paul Woodruff, Living toward Virtue “
--
The Happiness Series Continued:
“And Pascal captures something important too in how the incessant anticipation and preparation to be happy can tend to make happiness itself unreachable. But he is wrong to see our various attachments to the past and to the future as examples of ‘wandering in times which are not ours’, for they all belong to us and we belong to all of them equally.”
Richard Moran
--
January Riddle Solved at Last:
“What goes up the chimney down, but not down the chimney up?” Answer: An umbrella. --
--
Help Wanted:
Please send me your favorite palindrome, riddles, squares, neologisms, and links to articles you think other readers might enjoy.
--
Do you have any friends? If so, please forward this Then & Now Newsletter and ask if they’d like to be on the mailing list. Then, just send their addresses to [email protected]. (You can unsubscribe there, too.)
Thanks!
Bob Connor
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida hopes so. and he’s found a promising way to politicize the phrase. He has packed the Board of New College, the smallest institution (around 600 undergraduates) in Florida’s public university system. It’s a school with a reputation as liberal, leftist, progressive-leaning – choose your word. The new board in turn has fired the president, threatened the tenure rights of faculty, and indicated it hopes to remodel the institution along the lines of Hillsdale College, a small (1500 undergraduates), avowedly conservative and “Christian” institution based in Michigan. New College, they say, will thereby offer a “genuinely classical liberal education.” And Florida, will take another step toward becoming, in the Governor’s phrase, “the place where woke goes to die.”
Background reading: For a blow-by-blow view of the January meeting of the new Board at New College see this account by Sophia Brown in The Catalyst (the student newspaper at New College). For the views of Matthew Spalding, one of the newly appointed trustees at New College, see this intervie in The Collegian (the student newspaper at Hillsdale). Dan Tompkins calls our attention to the possibility that this model for higher education will be adopted by other states. . Let us know what happens in your state.
--
If so much is riding on the Hillsdale model, let’s take a closer look at the institution.
First, the students. A friend who has lectured there tells me he found the students serious and engaged. His audience was probably composed of somewhat more men than women (53%:to 47% overall). Here the data pretty much give out: since Hillsdale accepts no government funding, it is not legally required to report on the diversity of its student body. Nonetheless, that is an important part of the picture, since students learn from one another. Why not let us know?
There is one more bit of data, an important one since students vote with their feet. The graduation rate is 78%, mediocre for a private liberal arts college.
What sort of education are these students getting? Here’s how Hillsdale structures its undergraduate education. The college has a real curriculum, not a smorgasbord, as in so many places these days. Its core is Western Civilization, overwhelmingly so. The Greek and Latin classics are well represented, with a departmental faculty of six members, who were trained at major universities and publish in respected journals. None, as best I could tell, is a real ideologue. I don’t see comparable strength or interest in other civilizations that are already profoundly affecting our future. Hillsdale reminds me very much of liberal arts colleges of the 1950s, but in the intervening decades things have happened, not least a belated but genuine national effort to come to terms with race, gender, and globalization.. Governor DeSantis knows what a good education is; he graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2001 and from Harvard Law School in 2005.
Litmus test: Is Hillsdale the sort of place you (or Governor DeSantis) would recommend to a college-bound teenager in your own family? .If not, do you think it wise for the public university system in your state to adopts the Hillsdale as a model?
The issue, of course, is more political than educational. If you were running for elective office, you might find it useful to include a “classical liberal education” as part of your campaign, especially if it lacked well thought out policy ideas.
--
The Challenge and the Opportunity: :
With “a classical liberal education,” in the spotlight those of us who profess the Classics - whether inside or outside academia, should steal the phrase right back, and seize the opportunity to reinvigorate classical education. But, that requires great clarity about what a classical liberal education means in today’s setting. Let me hear from you, readers, and I will try to sum up what I am hearing in the March Then & Now Newsletter – along with some fulminations of my own. .
--
Who Said Virtue Was a Road to Happiness?
The January Newsletter challenged readers to identify the author of this statement:
“There is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness …”
No one guessed it was George Washington in his Inaugural Address (1789). More important: Does anyone understand happiness that way today, that is, linking it to “virtue”? If not, are we missing something?”
--
Word of the Month:
Neuroplasticity: In layman’s terms: The ability of the brain to reprogram itself. We used to be told that the brain stopped growing at 18 or 21 or so. but now scientists tell us it keeps growing, maybe even into old age.
Much of the research that has been done on neuroplasticity concerns the ability of the brain to circumvent damage it incurs. But there is also evidence that an undamaged brain can gain resilience and richness through certain practices; meditation, practice of the visual arts contribute over time to the growth of the brain. Apart from one tantalizing article on Chaucer I have found very little research on whether serious engagement with language and literature has a similar effect, but surely that’s a question that the New Philology wants answered.
--
Quotable:
“[We enjoy] more free time than ever before; but instead of educating ourselves, we entertain ourselves to death.“
Orin Woodward
Without the Humanities What do we lose?
James Engell answers, “A Lot,” in “Humanists All,” Harvard Magazine February 2023. Thanks to Jean Houston for calling this essay to my attention.
--
SCORPIO:
The perilous art of acronyms is discussed in “Two Thoughts about the Unthinkable Murder in Memphis,” in my blog of January 30th.
--
--
Towards a New Philology:
Old Philology rarely raised her nose from the text; but now, reincarnated as the New Philology she knows her job description includes blowing the whistle whenever language gets censored or otherwise abused.
Of late we’ve been experiencing a cascade of well-intentioned efforts to purge our language of words and expressions that might be deemed hurtful or offensive . Should Philology blow her whistle on any of these?
-The American Medical Association: Their Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts, provides a long list of words to avoid when physicians and patients talk.
- A group at Stanford University tried something very similar.
- Now Roald Dahl’s works are being reworded. . The Telegraph reports that several hundred words in his books for children have been changed to to make the books more “inclusive.” Among the changes is apparently the removal of “mother and father,” (family is the correct word). This has caused a row in Parliament and raised the question of where to stop rewriting: novels for teen agers, young adults, favorite works of vulnerable old folks – Dickens? :Tom Jones? Shakespeare? The goal, after all, is to make sure that readers find themselves “represented” in the texts they read. That leaves plenty of room for rewriting, guided by a group that calls itself Inclusive Minds. .
Insults, boycotts, and death threat. against J. K Rowling, famed for the Harry Potter series, ,provoke two kinds of reactions: the feeling that she must have said something nasty about transgendered people to provoke such hostility, and, on the other side, people, philologists really, who ask what she actually said.. A good starting point for the inquiry is the essay by Pamela Paul “In Defense of J.K. Rowling” in the New York Times of February 16th.
A brown paper bag to the rescue! The Stanford code mentioned above may inadvertently provide a way to avoid much nonsense. : When the code condemned “brown bag lunch” for its alleged racism, the whole edifice came tumbling down. The University repudiated the code and people began to laugh at its absurdity. Perhaps throughout the English speaking world we are approaching a reductio ad absurdum.
--
The Other Side of the New Philology:
Blowing the whistle on the abuse of language, whether it comes from the left or the right, is one side of the philologist’s new job description. The other is more fun, asking “What do Typos, Puns, Riddles and Palindromes Have in Common?” Let’s begin with palindromes.
--
A Palindromic Short Story set in a Doctor’s Office:
Thanks to Mark Saltveit for telling us about Peter Hilton who entered this palindrome in a contest among Bletchley Park code breakers during World War II: .
"Doc, note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod."
Hilton came up with that without paper, pen or pencil; he had the gift of simply visualizing the words in his head, lying back on his bed -- a skill that obviously helped him break the Nazi codes, as well as leading to an illustrious career as a geometer.
Here's a link to Mark’s article on the topic.
. Question: Hilton’s palindrome is virtually a short story. Are there any limits, practical or theoretical, on the scale of a palindrome? It can morph into Ring Composition (arranging a story in A B C C B A order). I called attention to this way of writing in the appendices to my Thucydides, but the pattern is all over classical literature.
On my To Read list: Mary Douglas’ work on ring composition: Thinking in Circles ..
One more step? What about Macbeth? Is it a palindrome on steroids? Consider how the Witches’ scene at the outset comes back in Act V when “Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane.”
--
A Riddle of Alexander the Great, still unsolved:
“The story is told that Alexander the Great at one of his banquets proposed the riddle, 'What is that which did not come last year, has not come this year, and will not come next year?' The answer suggested by one of his officers was 'Our arrears of pay', which' is said to have procured the speaker not only his arrears but an increment as well. “
E. S, Forster
Clever all around, BUT what solution was Alexander expecting when he posed the riddle? What’s your solution to this riddle?
Palindrome:
I thought “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama” was as good as palindroms get, but ,then my attention was called to this Latin one: anonymous verse found in a poetry textbook called Tractatus de Versibus by Christanus Campililiensis,
Arte mala mere vidi vere mala metra.
which Bill Berg translated as “I've seen verses of consummately bad art, truly bad."
Your Favorite Typo, please:
Can you top this one? A respectable journal I know left the letter L out of “public affairs.”
--
Squares:
Move over palindromes, try squares:
The Most famous of squares is the Latin: construct evoking Publius Vergilius Maro and the long journey Venus’ son, Aeneas, took before he reached the shore of what would eventually become Rome:
AMOR
MARO
ORAM
ROMA
Can you come up with a four letter square that works in English? I can only do a mediocre three letter one. Please help.
Summing Up: Riddles, palindromes, squares, even typographical errors teach us to feel the texture of language, hence they are not to be deplored but enjoyed by Philology and her devotees. The pleasure involves savoring individual words and phrases, rolling them around in your mouth as if tasting that bottle of Chateau Lafitte Rothschild 1959 which you tucked away in years ago, forgot about and only recently rediscovered. Every word should be like tasting a sip of a $7,000 wine.
Don’t be put off by the price; it’s not the most expensive wine in the world
--
Big Bad Bog Bodiess::
More discoveries have now been published about the Bog People, as reported by the New York Times. The study traces bodies buried in bogs in northern Europe many of whom were apparently murdered
--
You’ve Heard them, Now Hold a Connor Classical Guitar in Your Hands: Look here!
--
Drinking Games, Ancient Cottabus:
Heather Sharpe, an associate professor at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, has carefully recreated the ancient drinking game called kottabos-in Greek. She played it, however, with diluted grape juice, not that Chateau Lafitte. Here’s how it’s done.
Concerned about Democracy? Want a glimpse into a Harvard Classroom? Try Danielle Allen’s Democracy Renovation Newsletter.
Ponderables:
“We don’t need a metaphor to tell us the soul needs nourishment; we need a metaphor to help us recognize what it is that will do the nourishing.”
Maurice Brendenheim Confessions
--
“No one can take this source of happiness from them. It is theirs so long as they live and continue to choose it. It does not depend on anyone else’s judgment or approval, and it does not require a long life or a string of achievements.”
Paul Woodruff, Living toward Virtue “
--
The Happiness Series Continued:
“And Pascal captures something important too in how the incessant anticipation and preparation to be happy can tend to make happiness itself unreachable. But he is wrong to see our various attachments to the past and to the future as examples of ‘wandering in times which are not ours’, for they all belong to us and we belong to all of them equally.”
Richard Moran
--
January Riddle Solved at Last:
“What goes up the chimney down, but not down the chimney up?” Answer: An umbrella. --
--
Help Wanted:
Please send me your favorite palindrome, riddles, squares, neologisms, and links to articles you think other readers might enjoy.
--
Do you have any friends? If so, please forward this Then & Now Newsletter and ask if they’d like to be on the mailing list. Then, just send their addresses to [email protected]. (You can unsubscribe there, too.)
Thanks!
Bob Connor