No, that was my mistake Everyman. Sorry - the wish was mother to the thought
Everyman wrote:
Choisya wrote:
It is good, I think, that we are reading The Republic and Utopia within a short period of time
Has the Republic actually been scheduled? I haven't noticed it popping up on the scheduling thread as an active option.
True pmath, there is a lot to be said for reading around the Utopian literature in general, and Distopian literature for that matter. As someone else has mentioned, many of these ideas are alien to us now and so it becomes necessary to see where they are 'coming from'. Apart from The Republic they are all quite small 'novella' type books so an absolute doddle to us lengthy classic readers
pmath wrote:
L and K, I mentioned to Choisya that I was reading The Republic (here). You'll probably appreciate Utopia more if you read The Republic beforehand.
KristyR wrote:
I am confused too, if we are reading The Republic as well as Utopia I need to order a copy.
Laurel wrote:
Did I miss something? When are we reading The Republic? I have Bellamy's book but have not read it yet.
Choisya wrote:
It is good, I think, that we are reading The Republic and Utopia within a short period of time because it will be interesting to compare the one piece of Utopian literature with the other, so many centuries apart.
By default. There's no other place for it; at one point I think it was even you who suggested that British should be extended to non-British authors (such as French) in English translation.
This thread has been addressed to Plato since it was started nearly a year ago, so it makes perfect sense that Timbuktu1 would post about it here.
This thread has been addressed to Plato since it was started nearly a year ago, so it makes perfect sense that Timbuktu1 would post about it here.
Choisya wrote:
Gosh! How did Plato get onto the British Classics board? I know we Brits have some good authors but Plato wasn't one of them.
St. John's is indeed a wonderful place for the right student. (For the wron gone, it's a disaster.) But we owe a lot to Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago for the inspiration for the New Program.
Yes, it takes a very special teacher to teach legitimately using the Socratic method. It takes a teacher who believes that his or her role is not to be the authority, but to be a co-learner with the students. It's very hard for most professors to make this seismic shift in their approach to the classroom, where they are not the teachers but the books are the teachers. They want to instruct, to promote THEIR view, which of course is the right view, to tell you not just what to read but what to think about it. That's why in most colleges or universities, it's very hard to have the same faculty teach both traditional courses and great books courses. They simply can't adapt to the idea that the students and they are both students sitting at the feet of the master teacher who wrote the book.
Often little things count a lot, and one of the most important small things at St. John's is that in every class every member of the college, student or faculty, is addressed formally as Mr, Mrs, or Miss. (Ms wasn't an issue when I was there; I wonder whether it is today?
) There are no academic titles -- no Professor Smith, no Dr. Smith, just Mr. Smith, who may be a student or a tutor.
The other cardinal rule of the seminar is that nobody is right because of who they are. In actuality, a tutor seldom puts forth an opinion; their principal role is to question and to draw opinions out of the students for testing against the book. But when they do put out an opinion, it gets no more automatic acceptance or validity than one put forth by a student. Both need to be tested against the book. In my freshman seminar, we had a first year tutor who, in the second or third seminar, was being questioned by the students about something he had said, and he got exasperated by being questioned and blurted out "I'm right because I'm the teacher, I've studied this for years, and I know." The next day, he was gone.
Yes, it takes a very special teacher to teach legitimately using the Socratic method. It takes a teacher who believes that his or her role is not to be the authority, but to be a co-learner with the students. It's very hard for most professors to make this seismic shift in their approach to the classroom, where they are not the teachers but the books are the teachers. They want to instruct, to promote THEIR view, which of course is the right view, to tell you not just what to read but what to think about it. That's why in most colleges or universities, it's very hard to have the same faculty teach both traditional courses and great books courses. They simply can't adapt to the idea that the students and they are both students sitting at the feet of the master teacher who wrote the book.
Often little things count a lot, and one of the most important small things at St. John's is that in every class every member of the college, student or faculty, is addressed formally as Mr, Mrs, or Miss. (Ms wasn't an issue when I was there; I wonder whether it is today?
) There are no academic titles -- no Professor Smith, no Dr. Smith, just Mr. Smith, who may be a student or a tutor.The other cardinal rule of the seminar is that nobody is right because of who they are. In actuality, a tutor seldom puts forth an opinion; their principal role is to question and to draw opinions out of the students for testing against the book. But when they do put out an opinion, it gets no more automatic acceptance or validity than one put forth by a student. Both need to be tested against the book. In my freshman seminar, we had a first year tutor who, in the second or third seminar, was being questioned by the students about something he had said, and he got exasperated by being questioned and blurted out "I'm right because I'm the teacher, I've studied this for years, and I know." The next day, he was gone.
Timbuktu1 wrote:
St. John's must be a wonderful place. My son went to the University of Chicago, in the hope that he'd have a similar education. Although he did get some of what he was looking for the pre-med program crowded out a lot of it. At present I'm taking the great books program at University of Chicago and my son is so jealous he's promised himself that when he retires he will take it as well. I'm in the second year of a four year program and until this class I have loved every minute of it. After this last session the students were ready to stage a revolt. I think this particular teacher is having a hard time. In fact, she pretty much shut down all discussion and we all kind of stared at each other and her for awhile. Some students are ready to demand their money back. I think it takes a lot of skill both academic and social, to conduct a class using Socratic questioning. We've been lucky until now. I've taken it as a personal challenge, however, and I'm determined to read, read, read this work until I get a handle on it.
We always read two works at the same time and part of the thrill is seeing how they relate. There's usually a conceptual/philosophical work and an artistic work. I love the system. The struggle to understand the concepts and then, the Eureka! when the artist allows you to feel them. The Odyssey is a pure delight and I'm having fun looking for the connections.
It's a real pleasure and honor to know you. Thank you for your support, it has helped as well as inspired me.
The appeal to authority is deeply ingrained in human thinking -- after all, don't all of us as young children appeal to the authority of our parents? We ask them all sorts of questions and believe what they tell us. Our whole education system is based on appeal to authority. How do we know that X is true? Because it's in the textbook, stupid. Or because that's what the teacher gives us "correct answer" points for.
Not that authority can be dismissed entirely. Authority is necessary for learning. If you and I disagree on the definition of a word, what do we do? We go to the dictionary and look it up.
For most of the Middle Ages, appeal to authority was all there was. The Bible and Aristotle (the Philosopher) were the authorities, and any argument could be ended by quoting one or the other. The magic of the Renaissance was that it did away with appeal to authority thinking and encouraged independent thinking.
Authority can be very helpful. Much of what I know about the Republic came from reading (particularly Eva Brann) and listening to the Teaching Company lecture series on Plato. The question, for me, is whether you use the authority as an element of your own thinking, evaluating and deciding for yourself what to believe, or whether the response is "okay, the Bible or Aristotle or Piaget or whoever says it, so that in and of itself makes it true and we don't need to go further."
Of course, you know all this, but I had to think it out loud for my own benefit.
As to Darwin, I think he got the credit because he was the showman, the one who wrote the popular book and went around pushing it. There are many ideas throughout history that are attributed to the "wrong" person because they were the ones who popularized the idea, not the one who discovered it.
Not that authority can be dismissed entirely. Authority is necessary for learning. If you and I disagree on the definition of a word, what do we do? We go to the dictionary and look it up.
For most of the Middle Ages, appeal to authority was all there was. The Bible and Aristotle (the Philosopher) were the authorities, and any argument could be ended by quoting one or the other. The magic of the Renaissance was that it did away with appeal to authority thinking and encouraged independent thinking.
Authority can be very helpful. Much of what I know about the Republic came from reading (particularly Eva Brann) and listening to the Teaching Company lecture series on Plato. The question, for me, is whether you use the authority as an element of your own thinking, evaluating and deciding for yourself what to believe, or whether the response is "okay, the Bible or Aristotle or Piaget or whoever says it, so that in and of itself makes it true and we don't need to go further."
Of course, you know all this, but I had to think it out loud for my own benefit.
As to Darwin, I think he got the credit because he was the showman, the one who wrote the popular book and went around pushing it. There are many ideas throughout history that are attributed to the "wrong" person because they were the ones who popularized the idea, not the one who discovered it.
