Fencing Bear at Prayer

  (click to enlarge)

I can't.  I'm too tired.  I have nothing to say.  No, as usual, that's not quite true.  Thanks to the reading I've been doing these past four or so weeks , I have much, too much to say.  If only I knew where to start.  If only. I am tired.  Truly.  It's the second week of term, and I'm teaching a wholly new course on education in the Middle Ages.  I know, I know, it was the Dark Ages, they didn't have any education.  Which, of course, isn't true.  They had loads.  Only--and here's the embarrassing thing--even we medievalists don't spend enough time thinking about what medieval people (i.e. school children) learned in school.  In particular, we don't spend enough time thinking about grammar.  And logic.  And rhetoric.  A.k.a. the trivium . I know I don't.  I'm embarrassed that my Latin isn't stronger than it is.  Even after almost a full year of working on my translation of John of Garland ....

While talking about Dorothy Sayers' argument in favor of reviving the medieval educational model of the trivium : 1)  She's right.  We should be teaching grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric as the tools of learning, not worrying about false dichotomies between the "sciences" and the "humanities" (both "subjects" in her terms, not "tools"). 2)  We would be much better off thinking of teaching in terms of the medieval scholastic practice of disputatio --defining terms, distinguishing parts of our argument, testing our reasoning on the basis of syllogisms--rather than claiming we are teaching by the "Socratic method," whatever that is.  3)  Thinking about teaching and learning as exercises in developing tools makes it possible to correct our students (and ourselves) without worrying about hurting anybody's feelings because it makes one's corrections concrete ("You need to define your terms," "There is a fa...

"Bernard [of Chartres] also used to admonish his students that stories and poems should be read thoroughly, and not as though the reader were being precipitated to flight by spurs.  Wherefore he diligently and insistently demanded from each, as a daily debt, something committed to memory.  "At the same time, he said that we should shun what is superfluous.  According to him, the works of distinguished authors suffice.  As a matter of fact, to study everything that everyone, no matter how insignificant, has ever said, is either to be exceedingly humble and cautious, or overly vain and ostentatious.   It also deters and stifles minds that would better be freed to go on to other things.  That which preempts the place of something that is better is, for this reason, disadvantageous, and does not deserve to be called 'good.'  To examine and pore over everything that has been written, regardless of whether it is worth reading, is as pointless as to fritter...

So that we neither idolize it nor demonize it, neither expect it to provide all the answers (as in the Renaissance), nor blame it for all of the things that we see wrong about our own day (as in the Reformation).  There was never a Golden Age in which everything was idyllic or perfect; there has never been a Turning Point after everything went wrong (or right).  The past has always been just like the present, mixed up, contrary, the best of times and the worst of times all at the same time.  Traditions have always been both good and bad, institutions have always been subject to innovation and change.  There have always been people eager to take advantage of others; there have always been people willing to help.  It does no good, therefore, to pretend that we who are alive now are either better or worse, wiser or more corrupt, more or less virtuous or vicious than those who have come before us.  If we are wise, we will learn from them; such is the gift of ci...

I knew it was a mistake involving myself in political commentary*, but having taken the plunge, I guess I have to keep swimming, at least until the election. One of the things that has mystified me for years is how the label "liberal" came to be associated with support for government regulation of business, e.g. environmental and worker protection measures, or even (heaven forbid) financial transactions. I know that my colleagues in political science would have an answer to this, and I suspect it goes back to sometime in the 1980s, when Berke Breathed did all those comics about the General [my bad: the Major; it's been a long time] and Milo hunting liberals in the meadows of Bloom County. But knowing the little that I do about the history of the concept of liberalism as it developed in the 19th century, I must confess myself rather confused. This is the way John Stuart Mill (as Wikipedia puts it, "one of the first champions of modern 'liberalism'") s...

Me, writing political commentary?! Stranger things have happened, like, for instance, having a candidate for president who is intelligent and articulate and able to put issues before what the other candidate's campaign is saying about him personally. So, I watched the debate Wednesday night with increasing hope and concern: is it possible that America might go so far as to elect a president who, while rich*, was also at the top of his class in school? Or are we going to fall yet again for the dumbing down of our politics to the level of personal grievance and feelings? It all hinges on Joe the Plumber. But who is he? I don't mean in real life; everyone knows that now . Even on Wednesday, Senator McCain didn't really care about who "Joe" was or his staff would have bothered to find out, for example, that "Joe's" full name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher and that he isn't even licensed by the Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service M...