The Real World

     When my daughter was young, she would often be asked, not usually by fellow homeschoolers, why she kept reading The Lord of the Rings.  I told her to reply, "Because I want to know what's going on in the world."

     That came to my mind today after a discussion I had with a Catholic men's group at our school.  One of the young fellows told me that his professor in Introduction to Sociology -- a typical course assigned during orientation to unsuspecting freshmen -- expressed her disdain for our twenty-credit Development of Western Civilization Program, required of all students.  "You should be studying something that will be of use to you in the Real World," she said, "like feminist sociology."

     Pause here to allow the laughter to die down.

     Homo academicus saecularis sinister, the creature beside whom I have spent all my adult life, is a source of endless entertainment, like a child with wobbly consonants trying to talk serious grownup.  I really could not repress the merriment.  "If somebody said that to me," I laughed, "who was a construction worker, or who went down in the mines, or quarried rock, or built roads, I'd say, 'Fellow, you're wrong about that,' but at least I'd say there was something to what he'd said."  But homo academicus saecularis sinister doesn't really have much regard for the men who do that.  HASS never drives down the highway, saying, "You know, I'm quite lucky, because I don't have to break my back in the sun, and I get three months of the year off, and am paid quite well compared with what a man or a woman who does something absolutely necessary is paid, as for instance the men who rolled the asphalt on this road I'm speeding on."  Indeed HASS will complain about never being paid in accordance with his or her intelligence, which, according to the most reliable testimony, that of HASS -- who should know best, after all -- is astonishingly high.

     When I hear a phrase like "The Real World," I must confess that I fall into the sin of detraction.  That is, I immediately detract fifteen points of intelligence and ten points of common sense from my interlocutor.  If it's followed by such phrases as "today's society" or "the global marketplace" or "thinking outside the box," I inevitably turn to an object of greater interest, a child playing in a sandbox, a retriever wagging his doggy tail, or the purple streaks of cloud gathering in the west.  I dearly hope that my students will never consider the sand-furrowing child, or the galumphing retriever, or the setting sun, to be anything other than deeply Real, mysteriously and beautifully and achingly Real, and that their encounter with the great poetry and art of the west, not to mention that perennial philosophy of Aristotle, and that wisdom-seeking eros of Plato, and the word of God itself, will confirm them in their love for that Reality.

     One of the students said, "She's overeducated," but alas, that is not true.  If I were to take my friend the truck driver to the Sistine Chapel, he would not be so foolish, I am sure, as to say, "Hmm, a lot of naked people falling all over themselves."  He would sense that there was a mystery there to which he'd hope someone might introduce him, to lead him by the hand, saying, "Notice the electric space between the finger of God and the finger of Adam," or "See how Michelangelo has painted his own face in the sagging skin held by Saint Bartholomew."  My friend might be slightly undereducated for an hour in the Sistine Chapel -- and who, for that hour, would not be?  But the college professor who sniffs at the Gilgamesh, Hesiod, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Cicero, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the letters of Saint Paul -- just to take the first semester for example -- is not overeducated.  That professor is undereducated, and overschooled, a deadly combination.  Deadly, but common enough, from what I see, and especially common among people who reduce all matters to contemporary partisan politics, as homo academicus saecularis sinister is wont to do.

Comments

[Hunter Baker]

Yet another classic post from Dr. Esolen.

[John Willard]

After I told my Medieval Studies professor that I was interested in studying theology, he said, "Oh that's nice. Just don't learn too much History or else you won't be able to be Catholic anymore." To which I said, "Oh. I've always found it to be precisely the opposite." He was a man who had never even begun to consider the discipline he taught.

[Beth from TN]

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By seagirls wreathed in seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us and we drown.
--T. S. Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

What most people of the sort you describe call the "real world" is the one that will most certainly drown us if we pay it too much heed. Lovely post, as always, and I especially love the things you point us to if we want to know the real world -- children, and laborers, and dogs, and sunsets, and the Sistine chapel . . . oh, yes.

[FrailestThing]

From Evelyn Waugh’s Scott-King’s Modern Europe:

“You know,” [the headmaster] said, “we are starting this year with fifteen fewer classical specialists than we had last term?”
“I thought that would be about the number.”
“As you know I’m an old Greats man myself. I deplore it as much as you do. But what are we to do? Parents are not interested in producing the ‘complete man’ any more. They want to qualify their boys for jobs in the modern world. You can hardly blame them, can you?”
“Oh yes,” said Scott-King. “I can and do.”
“I always say you are a much more important man here than I am. One couldn’t conceive of Granchester without Scott-King. But has it ever occurred to you that a time may come when there will be no more classical boys at all?”
“Oh yes. Often.”
“What I was going to suggest was—I wonder if you will consider taking some other subject as well as the classics? History, for example, preferably economic history?”
“No, headmaster.”
“But, you know, there may be something of a crisis ahead.”
“Yes, headmaster.”
“Then what do you intend to do?”
“If you approve, headmaster, I will stay as I am here as long as any boy wants to read the classics. I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.”
“It’s a short-sighted view, Scott-King.”
“There, headmaster, with all respect, I differ from you profoundly. I think it the most long-sighted view it is possible to take.”

[Margaret]

I think both Tony Esolen and the sociology professor are too narrow. One can appreciate the works of "old, dead, white dudes" AND contemporary scholarship, western or not, AND the works of, say, "old, dead, Chinese dudes." Why should it be either/or, rather than both? In fact, I would think the broader one's knowledge, the better. While the author appears to assert that studying "feminist scholarship" renders one less able to appreciate cheerful dogs, children playing in the sand, and Michelangelo, at least compared to the "dead, white dudes" or artisan brigade, he provides no evidence or explanation as to why this should be so, other than that people who don't agree with him are 15 points stupider (which I very much doubt.)

When my son was in an honors 9th grade literature class, he studied The Iliad and The Odyssey, along with Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, which is a modern parody of The Odyssey told from Penelope's point of view. In it, for example, Penelope mourns the death of 12 young maids who were killed by Odysseus and Telemachus for the crime of "being raped without permission." My boy and I had some fascinating discussions after reading both. My 14yo thought The Odyssey would be good for an R-rated computer quest game, which is probably what you have left when you strip the beautiful language. The contrast between old definitions of heroism and new was quite fascinating. We talked about the relative lack of power of women in those days, of Odysseus's recklessness and cruelty, and of the types of "monsters" of olden times relative to today's equivalents. Juxtaposing The Odyssey with The Penelopiad throws a host of issues into relief. Exploring them helps one negotiate the complexities of both old and new cultures, which enhances understanding of both.

[Kamilla]

Margaret,

On the contrary - you have provided the perfect example of why Tony has it right and the "feminist sociologist" is fit for nothing so much as turning young minds into tools of the State.

Beth, brilliant!

[John Willard]

Margaret,

"My 14yo thought The Odyssey would be good for an R-rated computer quest game, which is probably what you have left when you strip the beautiful language."

It seems you have undermined your point. The Odyssey is a lot more than beautiful language.

[Tony Esolen]

When I read about what is done to great art in our schools, I want to weep. It isn't that the Greeks themselves looked upon Odysseus as the perfect hero, far from it. Check out the tragedies of Ajax and Philoctetes. But I could spend hours discoursing upon the artistic excellence and the human (and social) insight of Book One of the Odyssey alone. We are, after all, talking about the greatest or the second-greatest poem ever written. I have dealt with this sort of thing in my latest book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. This method is really quite simple. Take one flaw, or what is at least perceived as a flaw, of a culture that is not your own, harp on it, and make yourself feel justified by comparison. Don't ever assume that any past age might in some important respect be superior to your own. In this case, don't assume that the great flourishing of human knowledge and art among the people who revered the Odyssey -- the flourishing that gave us philosophy, systematic geometry, historiography, democratic institutions, political thought, drama, and epic and lyric poetry unsurpassed in the west for more than a thousand years, and sculpture unsurpassed until the Renaissance -- could actually have something to teach us. And by all means don't suppose that the poet who portrayed for us Athena, Hera, Helen, Circe, Calypso, Arete, Nausicaa, and Penelope had any insight into the strength of women.

It would be better not to teach Homer at all, than to teach students to sneer at him, in ignorance.

I read eight languages, teach literature, history, theology, philosophy, and art from a dozen cultures spanning three thousand years, and I have to be called "narrow" because I'm irked by someone running down my classes, who tells freshmen that reading Dante is supposedly irrelevant in the "Real World," while the latest work of the politiques, among whom I spend my adult life, is of paramount importance.

[Hunter Baker]

Dr. Esolen, my education was very modern until I happened upon a law school (a state school, no less!) that offered courses in American, English, and Jewish legal history. Those courses changed my life and led me to pursue a Ph.D. in the humanities. I can't measure up to your example, but I certainly recognize how wonderful such learning is and how terrible it is that we are losing those traditions in colleges around the country.

[Bob Srigley]

Many decades ago I entered the office of Professor H. Bruce Franklin seeking a late enrollment in a class he was teaching on Hawthorne and Melville. I did not know what the professor looked like, but there was some kid sitting behind the only desk in the room wearing a turtleneck with a Mao button. I asked if the Professor was in and he replied good-naturedly that he was and that I was talking to him.

Somehow, recently, a textbook from that period in my life surfaced among my belongings and I picked it up and started "Readings in Western Civilization", part of the required curriculum at Stanford before the time that Jesse Jackson arrived on campus to lead chants of "Hey Ho, Hey Ho, Western Civ has got to go."
Did anyone ever check to see if there was a baby in that bathwater?

I had transferred to Stanford after my freshman year at the University of Oklahoma and had asked for a recommendation from my favorite professor, Dr. Ruggiers, who taught Humanities 101. He said he would give the highest recommendation but cautioned me to carefully consider what I was doing. He told me that my papers would most likely be read only by grad students and that the professors would be more interested in their own research than in talking with me. He was not far wrong, though the greater fault lay in myself and my decision to take my curriculum more from the '67 "summer of love" in San Francisco than from much of value that still remained and was available to me.

Now I eke out a living as a cabinet-maker, devour courses from the Teaching Company, teach in my church when asked and try to puzzle out how not to allow my talents to lie fallow. As I think back on "Western Civ" at Stanford, I don't recall the teaching being particularly inspired -- as can happen with required classes -- but now, it seems the stakes are so much higher with the Barbarians not only at the gates but impudently claiming the high moral ground as well. Any teacher of Humanities who loves his material has no excuse for not being impassioned. This is a fight worth fighting and your writing, Tony, is a great encouragement and I hope you too are encouraged and inspired.

[MCModerator]

Comment deleted for ad hominem content.

[Bob Baker]

Dr Esolen you continue to brighten my world with your vivid prose - "undereducated and overschooled". That is simply beautiful. There is an entire lesson wrapped in three words. I commend you sir.

[Briana]

Nice work sir! I am posting a link below to an article a few years old that addresses a similar topic(appreciating beauty)except this isn't necessarily about being overschooled. Writer Gene Weingarten from the Washington Post tried a little experiment with classical violinist Josh Bell. He sent the musician to the busiest DC subway station at the busiest time of a given day to see how many people would listen to his music and only a handful did because they were too harried to stop for a few minutes. The article is a bit long but I enjoyed reading it.

http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2008-Feature-Writing

[Alexis]

Yup.

Just recently, someone I know encouraged her brother seminarians (on Facebook) to go see what "real people" were talking about--at a lecture at Union Theological on Feminist theology.

I'm sorry, but Union Theological is about as far from the real world as it gets.

[briana]

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman