Circe’s that hot chick who wants to “unman” all of Odysseus’ crew, but ends up jut turning them into pigs until she gets some from the Big O, right?
DeskMonkey: in my own way, that’s what I was trying to say. Bravo.
Anyway, this thread is way too confusing, I have no idea what’s being argued about now. Oh well, back to my book that was written this year. Guess I’ll get nothing from it though since it’s not a classic.
Hey, this BBQing is sort of fun, but please goboy et al, don’t take what I say too personally. I wouldn’t bother replying to your posts if there was not something of value in them.
Go ahead and read it: you’re obviously not reading this thread.
While I’d say that the error mentioned in the OP reflects a decline in standards, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s our educational standards that are slipping. Rather, I’d say it’s editorial standards that are in bad shape and getting worse. Time was, in a major metropolitan daily, that sentence would either have been cut or fixed. These days, it often seems that whatever the reporter or writer types as a first draft ends up in print: solecisms, logical errors, mangled idioms, etc. I also think, though I have no data to prove it, that the rise of journalism departments in academia has served to make most of the people who’re writing for daily papers more poorly educated (though better credentialled) than in the past; instead of having a broad liberal education, many have spent four years in the equivalent of a trade school, learning a lot about the mechanics of writing for and producing newspaers, but failing to acquire the skills in processing information, making connections with other knowledge, and communicating that effectively to others, that are the hallmarks of a traditional liberal education.
Hence the rationale for studying many of the cultural touchstones that have been defended and derided in this thread. The same characteristics that have made many of the “classics” objects of appreciation throughout the ages also make them appropriate for study in a formal educational environment; they offer some aspect of human experience up in a particularly clear or useful form for consideration and reflection. In some cases, it’s a philosophy or world view, in others it’s a certain type of situation, and in others it may simply be the cool way the words sound together. A truly useful education is not about acquiring knowledge (though a fair amount of that happens as a natural by-product) but about developing the mental muscles and intellectual equipment to identify the salient features of any new phenomenon encountered, to recognize the connections or analogies with things already known, to think coherently and clearly about them, and to communicate effectively the fruits of that effort to others. Hamlet is important not because we care particularly about the situation of some semi-lengendary Danish prince and the details of his family life, but because in it, certain aspects of the experience of being human are teased out from the mass of irrelevant background information and made visible in a way that’s convenient for thinking about them – and because it points out possibilities in the use of the language that were not evident before it was written. Reading and thinking about Hamlet, particularly in an environment where we’re expected to communicate the results of our thinking to others, sharpens our mental acuity and hones our communication skills. The same could be said of any number of contemporary movies, books, songs, comic books, etc. The criteria for inclusion in a curriculum ought to be how useful a work is in focusing the mind on one or more aspects of human experience or the world around us and providing concentrated matter for consideration. Note that this says nothing about the age or nature of the work; such ends may be best served by reading Plutarch in some cases or by listening to NSync in others. It’s inevitable that older works are going to be more common in the curriculum; they’ve stood the test of time as being useful and have had time (in some cases, thousands of years) to become widely known. A play first performed this year is going to remain unknown for at least a couple of years to the majority of teachers who might consider it ideal course material. And of course there’s the ongoing expansion in the amount of potential course material out there – if anything, the proliferation of information probably makes teachers more likely to stick with the tried and true; no one has time to wade through the mountains of new material that’s available, so it’s easier to go with what you know. Potentially outstanding material will usually, though not always, be recognized fairly quickly and added to the curriculum, where it will thrive or wither on its utility.
Note also that I don’t claim that the works most worthy of study are the same as those most worthy of enjoying; while some works may be worth studying mainly because of what they demonstrate about the aesthetics of a medium, others are useful pedagogically but not that “good” aesthetically. Other works may be delightful to experience but useless for any but the most arcane course of study.
I’m pretty sure it’s “The Marching Morons” by C. M. Kornbluth. Someone’s probably got this already, but I’m too lazy to read the entire discussion to check 
Which posts exactly?
Is it anti-intellectual to point out that some classics have been supplanted by newer ones? Or to favor an overall wider base of knowledge than existed before? If these posts are “demonstrably anti-intellectual”, then you shouldn’t mind demonstrating. And try not to pick only the least consequential ones to make your case.
It seems to me that Americans are less concerned about the classics then they were in days past. However, whole new fields of knowledge have emerged since then. We now have a population that shares a far wider base of knowledge, with individuals having specific strengths in certain areas. People may no longer be required to read Homer, but for those who are into that sort of thing, opportunities also exist to study it in greater depth than ever in the past.
As the vast sum of human knowledge expands, we have less opportunity to study everything of cultural significance in great depth. The old canon of classics has been supplanted by a more varied sampling that stretches across cultures and ages, and is more relevant to today’s society than Milton or Dante.
It is not to the benefit of society to force people to be indoctrinated in the classics as thoroughly as once occurred. These people will later pursue a high degree of specialization in what is probably a field wholly unrelated to the classics (for example, computer science, although Wittgenstein was mentioned in a class on computer vision I took). We have to decide what becomes part of the base of knowledge shared across the board, and what is relegated to those who choose to specialize in that field.
It is not at all anti-intellectual to redraw that line to include less of the classics. As a computer science major, I would like to see the basics of computers supplant some of the classics. I see no reason that the opening line of Finnegan’s Wake should be something I need to know to sound intelligent, if others can sound intelligent without a basic understanding of boolean logic.
waterj2, have you read any of this thread? In skimming it for quotables you seem to have missed great chunks of it: your arguments are almost word for word the same as my arguments. I’m tempted to flatter myself and call it plagiarism, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume you haven’t read the whole thread.
[sub](And there’s no apostrophe in Finnegans Wake. 
)[/sub]
Actually, I think waterj2 pretty much summed up my position on this whole affair.
Maybe it’s your superior intellect, lissener, but as far as I’m concerned, this whole thread made more sense when we were all responding to goboy’s straightforward OP, rather than attempting to defend ourselves against your bizarre accusations of being “anti-intellectual”.
I think everyone here thinks that that intellect is good. Anyone disagree?
Ummm. Forrest Gump got along just fine without intellect.
Roaches ain’t that smart either but they seem to do OK.
Intellect as a virtue is simpl a conceit of the human race.
Was I the only one who found irony in goboy’s sig line, that it was from a popular youth culture television show and not from a book?
Well, sure. Of course intellect is good, but being an “intellectual” is not necessary. And it’s not a standard by which people should be measured. In a way, being intellectual is kind of a hobby. Some people enjoy enriching their lives by reading and pontificating, others enjoy doing so by sitting in the middle of a lake fishing, still others would prefer to watch every cheesy movie that they can find. Or maybe they like to do all three. No one should be insulted for not being intellectual, or an avid fisher, or a B-movie maven. But I guess they probably should be insulted if they write a movie review and flub up their literary references.
Potato - potahtah, let’s call the whole thing off.
For the record, it was Alphagene’s position I was writing in support of. I figured that much was clear. While I don’t think goboy is a snob, I think his expectations of cultural literacy are not in keeping with society’s current demands, and are influenced more by his tastes than any sort of objective standards. Now where are the “demonstrably anti-intelligent” posts you spoke of?
Umm, the OP referred to a work based on Homer. You’re right, Circe does figure in Comus, mea culpa, but she is most famously associated with the Odyssey. You’re absolutely right about the intermeshing web of classical allusion in English literature, but that’s not the &*% topic, is it?
But you did not simply pass over Milton, or even just miss Milton; you flatly denied Milton (“not milton”) after claiming knowledge of Milton, and put another poster on the spot over the issue. If you are going to hold a newspaper and the general public to a high standard, you really should meet that standard yourself. If you are going to permit yourself to make the occasional error, then cut some slack for the rest of us trogs.
You found an error in a classical allusion in a newspaper, and used it as a touchstone to then go on to condemn the general public for not being able to answer trivia questions concerning Milton et al., and used this in turn as a springboard to condemn society for not only being ignorant, but deliberately being ignorant (“Fahrenheit 451 is just a kiss away.”) There is no logic to this what so ever. More to the point, it demeans a great many people, who while not up to your standard (though what that is is hard to tell given your own demonstrable lack of erudition on your own subject matter), are nevertheless well educated and critically aware. You call a reviewer for the Washington Post an “idiot”. You call people “troglodytes” for getting their facts wrong. Well, given your own lack of reading of the author you put forward and the character you put forward, welcome to the mire with the rest of us.
Your OP asked “Whatever happened to erudition in America?” in the context of a misplaced classical allusion used in a contemporary review, but now you now state that “…the intermeshing web of classical allusion in English literature…[is] not the &*% topic.” Your topic seems to be shifting out from under you, for having demonstrated a remarkable lack of erudition concerning your own example, you are now trying to distance yourself from your own OP. It was you, and no one else, who began the thread by complaining about a lack of knowledge concerning both Circe and Milton, so don’t try to turn away now that your own ignorance of Circe in Milton is apparent. Pleading mea culpa in the manner you have chosen is no more than a brush off. I suggest that a retraction of the statements you made in your OP would be more appropriate.
If you seriously want to look at erudition in terms of a classical education, come back with some facts concerning literacy rates over the last few hundred years. Come back with publication numbers for classical and classic texts. Come back with enrolment figures for classical studies, literature, and liberal arts over the history of universities. You might just find that we live in a time of unprecedented literacy and access to literature, despite errors in newspapers, and despite most people not giving a fig about literary erudition. Don’t continue to whinge on about how youth today are not well educated, and about how general cultural and academic standards have fallen. People have been making such unsubstantiated complaints since Plato’s time.
In short, do you or do you not consider yourself erudite? After all, with questions of your own making, you still managed to lose your own OP’s quiz show.
Oh, puh-leeze, Mary, I never claimed erudition for myself, but I am an admirer of erudition of others.
I ALREADY said I was WRONG in denying Circe was a charater in a work by Milton; however, Circe is associated with Homer, not with Milton, nor Hesiod, no matter that she may figure in their works.
Who called you a trog? Not me. As I ALREADY wrote, I was wrong to use that term in the OP. The OP wasn’t aimed at you, so why are you taking what seems to be a deep personal offence?
I’m talking about people like my former roommates, high school graduates, who did not read newspapers or books, who
didn’t know that we had fought a war in Korea.
Am I erudite? I wish I were. There are a great many lacunae in my education. But I read constantly, I try to pick up as much knowledge as I can.
OK, I’m wrong, and the general public is highly educated. Our high schools and colleges are the best, and our workforce is the best-educated on the planet. We are not hiring any foreigners in out tech industries, and our grasp of higher math and science is second to none.
And Homer is a household word. Happy?