View Full Version : Barbaros Adipiscendam
The barbarians are winning.
I see that in an effort to combat “systemic racism” Princeton will no longer require Greek or Latin for Classics majors. I’ll admit to confusion over exactly how conjugating verbs or translating Virgil constitutes oppression.
Perhaps next they could eliminate math from the physics program, it being a tool of white supremacy.
O tempora, O mores
The barbarians are winning.
I see that in an effort to combat “systemic racism” Princeton will no longer require Greek or Latin for Classics majors. I’ll admit to confusion over exactly how conjugating verbs or translating Virgil constitutes oppression.
Perhaps next they could eliminate math from the physics program, it being a tool of white supremacy.
O tempora, O mores
You lost me on the connection to white supremacy. I have seen numerous reports that a liberal arts degree is not worth much but the focus should be on the STEM-focused courses. Would this not be more of the same?
FWIW, I think that everyone should first take a liberal arts year or two to learn how to think. It is quite amazing how smart people were in the past and communicated in different languages. They were able to build cathedrals, pyramids, waterworks, ships, understand the stars enough to travel the world without the STEM-focused courses. Imagine that!
ETA -this same wisdom was expressed in every continent and colour of humanity. It was not just white people!!!!!!!!!
I would be interested in learning why this is happening. Is it all industry driven to create the best worker?
ApatheticNoMore
5-31-21, 11:33am
I have seen numerous reports that a liberal arts degree is not worth much but the focus should be on the STEM-focused courses. Would this not be more of the same?
that was never meant to apply to Princeton, that was for the ordinary folks who are going to non-prestigious state U, who should get just the right, but not too much education, wouldn't want that. But in truth most people do need a way to earn a living as well of course, whether that's through a focused bachelors, trade school, post graduate, apprenticeship, the family business, or frankly with many people it's just by falling into something (but how does one plan that?). But honestly if your degree is that prestigious it alone will open doors.
You lost me on the connection to white supremacy. I have seen numerous reports that a liberal arts degree is not worth much but the focus should be on the STEM-focused courses. Would this not be more of the same?
FWIW, I think that everyone should first take a liberal arts year or two to learn how to think. It is quite amazing how smart people were in the past and communicated in different languages. They were able to build cathedrals, pyramids, waterworks, ships, understand the stars enough to travel the world without the STEM-focused courses. Imagine that!
ETA -this same wisdom was expressed in every continent and colour of humanity. It was not just white people!!!!!!!!!
I would be interested in learning why this is happening. Is it all industry driven to create the best worker?
I think that with an adequate application of racial reductionist ideology, it is possible to dumb down both the humanities and the sciences to the point where there can be little material difference between them.
catherine
5-31-21, 12:47pm
You lost me on the connection to white supremacy. I have seen numerous reports that a liberal arts degree is not worth much but the focus should be on the STEM-focused courses. Would this not be more of the same?
FWIW, I think that everyone should first take a liberal arts year or two to learn how to think. It is quite amazing how smart people were in the past and communicated in different languages. They were able to build cathedrals, pyramids, waterworks, ships, understand the stars enough to travel the world without the STEM-focused courses. Imagine that!
ETA -this same wisdom was expressed in every continent and colour of humanity. It was not just white people!!!!!!!!!
I would be interested in learning why this is happening. Is it all industry driven to create the best worker?
I completely agree with your thoughts on liberal arts education. I often think the same thing about how people used to be so diverse and skilled in so many areas. Now we're experts how to access our favorite TV shows and whatever micro-specialty we are skilled in and that's it. I would love for the Renaissance ideal to have a renaissance!
As for the Classics department dropping the requirement of Greek and Latin at Princeton.. oh, well. I personally think that's a shame because I tend to appreciate those things, but I'd love to read about the rationale.
I'll ask my daughter, a recent graduate of Princeton who was in the Classics department, what the story is.
I already have some thought that there may be more to see here than the surface story. For instance, I know the department has been deeply troubled the past few years, and many female and some male department members are refusing to take some of the core language courses from the main professor who teaches such things, for...reasons....
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2021/02/princeton-classics-review-department-culture-katz-misconduct
I took Greek in college but it was koine, not the elitist classical literary Greek. Maybe they could switch to that.
So, talked to my daughter just now, who just this morning talked to some faculty members in the department at Princeton.
As I suspected, it's a media tempest-in-a-teapot:
https://classics.princeton.edu/department/news/statement-community-undergraduate-concentration
Daughter also pointed out that the pre-existing language requirements for the Classics track made it nearly impossible for people from non-privileged backgrounds to enter the department, or to do well in it, as you basically had to enter Princeton as a freshman already with significant skill in Latin/Greek, and "that pretty much means you only get kids from douchie schools like Andover and Exeter". My daughter was fortunate in that she has an extraordinary facility with languages, parental and grandparental support and expertise in teaching languages, and arrived at Princeton already with a working knowledge of English, Old English, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Old & Middle Egyptian. In her work at Princeton, she concentrated most of her efforts on Anglo Saxon, Celtic, Norse, and Coptic languages.
Daughter points out these changes allow people who are more interested in the history/culture/legal/social tracks in the Classics department a chance to do more work in those areas without much of their free course load being consumed by language classes they have little use for. She also posits that this change will encourage more people to enter the department and pick up a working knowledge of some of the languages, without having to master it to the level required to do graduate-level research.
She went on to say:
"I think it’s important to realize that an undergrad humanities degree should be useful and meaningful even for people who have no intention of further academic work and I think that sometimes gets lost in the requirements and orientation of academic departments"
t But honestly if your degree is that prestigious it alone will open doors.
Throughout my entire career in technology/science, I was never once asked if I had a degree, what I had studied, or where I had attended university.
They did more background checking on me when I entered fire/rescue work than they ever did in industry/science :-)
Thanks, Bae. Just common sense.
"Perhaps next they could eliminate math from the physics program, it being a tool of white supremacy."
Wasn't math developed by swarthy Middle Easterners? Asians? Hardly a tool of white supremacy, which is too often a contradiction in terms anyway.
I did equally well in math and languages, but "studied" the latter because they were easy for me, and I was a lazy sod. If I had it to do over, with all the lovely choices available now, I like to think I would be more open to a challenge. But maybe that's just revisionist thinking.
Seems like the old story, where the right-wing media fixates on some instance in which political correctness is taken to a silly extreme, but which on closer examination is pretty reasonable.
I say this as one who laments the erosion of humanities requirements. There are now schools where you can major in English without having read Shakespeare or Chaucer.
In a separate post I just linked to a series of philosophy lectures (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yat0ZKduW18&list=PL9GwT4_YRZdBf9nIUHs0zjrnUVl-KBNSM) that I watched to help pass the time during the height of the pandemic. This was a full-year course that I believe was required of Wheaton College students at the time. You can bet that after taking that class, those kids knew how to think.
"I say this as one who laments the erosion of humanities requirements. There are now schools where you can major in English without having read Shakespeare or Chaucer."
One of my many majors was English. I read Chaucer in high school (interesting only because of linguistic changes), and dropped out of a Shakespeare class a week in. Now, I'd just cut to the chase and study technical writing, as I eventually did.
"I say this as one who laments the erosion of humanities requirements. There are now schools where you can major in English without having read Shakespeare or Chaucer."
One of my many majors was English. I read Chaucer in high school (interesting only because of linguistic changes), and dropped out of a Shakespeare class a week in. Now, I'd just cut to the chase and study technical writing, as I eventually did.
Chacun a son gout. As I told my Shakespeare students when I was teaching it, you can get through life without having read Shakespeare, but you're missing out on something pretty good.
Chacun a son gout. As I told my Shakespeare students when I was teaching it, you can get through life without having read Shakespeare, but you're missing out on something pretty good.
oldhat, you taught Shakespeare?? So cool. I remember not being able to sleep one night because I was worrying about Shakespeare fading into oblivion. haha! I haven't read his work in a long time, but I do have those little Folger Library editions where the right side is the text and the left side are the notes. I've had them for years--in fact the price on the books are around .50.
My personal fave is Richard II
I'm sure I read some of his work in high school and I'm familiar with several of his story lines.
I kind of liked the "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes..." poem.
I'm not much of a fan of works touted as "literature" anyway.
There's a piece in that right-wing media outlet, the Atlantic on Princeton's decision: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/princeton-classics-major-latin-greek/619110/
They quote some of the University's blather about the Classics' place in "the long arc of systemic racism".
It still seems to me that Classics minus classical languages is mere Greco-Roman Studies.
It still seems to me that Classics minus classical languages is mere Greco-Roman Studies.
When my daughter was at Princeton in the Classics department, her work was mostly in Norse, Old/Middle Irish, West Saxon, and Coptic.
ApatheticNoMore
6-7-21, 6:24pm
There's a piece in that right-wing media outlet, the Atlantic on Princeton's decision: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-greek/619110/
I laughed when Trump referred to it as a left wing publication, what are we talking Counterpunch, nah not even Vox, the Atlantic, oh LOL left wing publication. No they just had it in for Trump and that they did, because really who wouldn't, because he sucked in too many ways to even count anymore.
Shakespeare, sure I read for school, I've seen plays too (one not that long ago, before covid). But at this point I wouldn't care if I spent the rest of my life reading only female authors, so only Shakespeare's sister :~), though I remain free to make any exceptions because I invented that criteria anyway :laff:. Because maybe I have had enough of the male perspective on life, all my life. But that's not what a college student should do necessarily.
In my late twenties/early thirties I was on a mission to read all of Shakespeare. I favored the Bantam paperback annotated versions. Because of my compulsion to keep lists, I can tell you that I read 25 of his plays and then I apparently lost steam. This might be something fun for me to resume in the future. I thought it was really good stuff!
In my late twenties/early thirties I was on a mission to read all of Shakespeare. I favored the Bantam paperback annotated versions. Because of my compulsion to keep lists, I can tell you that I read 25 of his plays and then I apparently lost steam. This might be something fun for me to resume in the future. I thought it was really good stuff!
I would love to hear a lecture on the context of each play when written. I heard a one-hour talk about one of the kings, I believe, and the play became so much more interesting stressing the importance of the verse pattern and sequence of ideas presented. The balance of serious and buffoon was carefully considered. The audience of his time was interesting as well. Shakespeare was a remarkable playright then and now.
I once sat next to two professors from NY who each year came to see a number of plays because they felt that the timing was so extraordinary at the Stratford Festival, Stratford, ON. It was interesting to talk to them.
I think my Great Courses has some so will add those to my streaming list as well as 'to watch'. That list is growing.
When my daughter was at Princeton in the Classics department, her work was mostly in Norse, Old/Middle Irish, West Saxon, and Coptic.
Given their importance to the shaping of the West, I sometimes wonder why Barbarian Studies doesn’t seem to be a formal discipline.
Given their importance to the shaping of the West, I sometimes wonder why Barbarian Studies doesn’t seem to be a formal discipline.
Right?
Apparently if you are looking to do a Ph.D. in Classics, this field hasn't been thoroughly plowed...
Right?
Apparently if you are looking to do a Ph.D. in Classics, this field hasn't been thoroughly plowed...
I once sat next to a history professor on a cross-country flight whose primary interest was systems of public finance during the period from the French Revolution through the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He said much the same thing about other thoroughly studied areas. That if you wanted something new to say, you had to nibble away at the unexplored margins or seek out some extremely specialized area that previous generations of scholars thought too trivial to pursue.
Or if you were very bold or ideologically committed, you could try reinterpreting history through a different lens such as Marxism or available technology or racial dynamics. He said they were the people who could make academic politics so venomous because their reputations depended on gaining converts and rooting out heresy.
dado potato
6-8-21, 3:28pm
In my late twenties/early thirties I was on a mission to read all of Shakespeare. I favored the Bantam paperback annotated versions. Because of my compulsion to keep lists, I can tell you that I read 25 of his plays and then I apparently lost steam. This might be something fun for me to resume in the future. I thought it was really good stuff!
I have been listening to an audiobook written and read by Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. It is amazing to me that after his death, friends of Shakespeare and members of his theatre company published his plays. I gather that it was very unusual at that time to publish plays. Plays were generally performed for audiences, and either failed or succeeded "at the box office".
I have been listening to an audiobook written and read by Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. It is amazing to me that after his death, friends of Shakespeare and members of his theatre company published his plays. I gather that it was very unusual at that time to publish plays. Plays were generally performed for audiences, and either failed or succeeded "at the box office".
That sounds really interesting - I love Bill Bryson!
I have been listening to an audiobook written and read by Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. It is amazing to me that after his death, friends of Shakespeare and members of his theatre company published his plays. I gather that it was very unusual at that time to publish plays. Plays were generally performed for audiences, and either failed or succeeded "at the box office".
That does sound a very interesting book to read.
I have been listening to an audiobook written and read by Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. It is amazing to me that after his death, friends of Shakespeare and members of his theatre company published his plays. I gather that it was very unusual at that time to publish plays. Plays were generally performed for audiences, and either failed or succeeded "at the box office".
He wrote another great book about the English language and how it evolved as a sort of patois of other languages called “The Mother Tongue”.
Bill Bryson has lots of interesting things to say. I will have to see if the library has this book!
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