Faith and Complex Greek Words

Which is the more difficult word, "love" or "antidisestablishmentarianism?"  At first glance, many would say the latter, but that is because long, multisyllabic words seem scary.  When you get right down to it, "antidisestablishmentarianism" is easy to break down into its etymological roots, and the definition is quite narrow and specific.  It means the belief that a church that has received government support should continue to do so and should not be disestablished.  "Love," on the other hand, is a word applied to a romantic interest, a favorite type of pizza, devotion to one's country, and the driving force behind the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Through constant use and familiarity, it has taken on so many meanings as to be nearly meaningless, and the same is true of another common word, "faith."  It has come to have a sort wispy sense, something light and delicate and otherworldly, but, as we will see, it is a concrete, robust word capable of supporting the massive edifice of a human life.

Etymology and Theology

Trinity, Andrei Rublev, 1425

Hebrews 11:1 is a well known verse that states in the King James Version, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."  The Greek word translated substance is ὑπόστασις (hypostasis), which breaks down into two parts meaning to stand beneath.  The English word "substance" is itself little more than a transliteration of the Latin word used in the Vulgate translation substantia, which means the same thing as the Greek.  The light may be starting to dawn for you as you think, "How nice!  Faith is that which stands beneath my hopes.  It is the foundation on which hope is built."  If you stopped here, you would certainly be blessed with a good understanding.  Hope indeed is not merely a fanciful wish, but something with a strong foundation, but as infomercials on late-night television used to say, "But wait!  There's more!"

That Greek word hypostasis took on new meaning in the fourth century A.D. with the Cappodocian Fathers Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen.  Their thinking, along with the Holy Spirit-led work at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, led to a phrase that summarizes the orthodox Christian understanding of the Trinity, μία οὐσία, τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις (mia ousia, treis hypostaseis), a phrase that is typically translated, "one being/essence, three persons."  In Christian theology, the idea of hypostasis goes beyond that which stands beneath.  It contains more than the notion of a foundation.  Hypostasis expresses the very idea of God the Father qua Father, God the Son qua Son, and God the Holy Spirit qua Spirit.

Look again at Hebrews 11:1.  Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for.  Suddenly we see something real about faith, taking "real" in the literal sense from its Latin root res, meaning "thing."  When something has been realized or has become real, it has been "thingified."  It is more than just an abstract thought.  Faith is not fancy, but the real foundation of hope, as real as the three persons of the Holy Trinity.

Etymology and Philosophy

The second half of that verse expands on this idea by stating that faith is the evidence of things not seen.  The word translated "evidence" is ἔλεγχος (elenchos), and any student of philosophy in general or Socrates in particular will know that this word carries a lot of freight.  Most commonly seen in its latinized spelling, elenchus is the method by which Socrates would test the ideas of others in an effort to find the truth.  It involved the vigorous back-and-forth discussion that we find in the dialogues of Plato, dialogues that were in essence a verbal crucible in which the dross of falsehood was burned away until only the pure truth of a matter remained.

This is what faith is, according to Hebrews 11:1.  It is the unsparing process that arrives at truth, even when that truth cannot be grasped by the physical senses.  

Putting It All Together

Faith is something robust and vigorous.  It is solid and alive.  Because it is hypostasis and elenchos, it is capable of supporting hope and indeed our very lives.  Foundations, of course, can be composed of many materials, so the real question is about what our faith is made of.  The kind of faith that Hebrews 11:1 is referring to is the kind best described in the words of the 1834 hymn by Edward Mote.

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus' name.

On Christ the solid rock I stand.

All other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand.

They Should Have Sent a Poet

Golf is a challenging game, but the perfectly hit shot, one that causes the ball to explode from the sweet spot of the club face, is one of the most satisfying and exhilarating of feelings.  No one needs to write one more piece about how challenging teaching is.  The internet is filled with such articles.  But when everything comes together in a day of stunning academic experience and student ability on display, that needs to be shared and celebrated.

To The Stars Through Antiquity

Apollo 1 Exhibit at Kennedy Space Center

Ad astra per aspera.  To the stars through difficulties.  The path to the stars has indeed been a difficult and a long one, perhaps longer than many realize, stretching back as it does to the age of classical antiquity.  We recently completed a unit in our Latin II classes that saw our high school students reading selections from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero about space, along with parts of the first science fiction novel, True History, written by Lucian of Samosata in the second century A.D.  To get the full story on this unit, which saw students translating and discussing ancient works on outer space, being introduced to ancient technology through the Antikythera Mechanism and ancient mathematics through the calculation of the earth's circumference by Eratosthenes, and exploring the music of the spheres with NASA's discovery of the sound of black holes and the classical music of Gustav Holst, check out our short documentary.

One part of the unit about which I was particularly excited came at the end.  After three weeks of deep study in ancient readings on space, our students met a friend of mine via Zoom.  Neil Jenkins and I go back to first grade in our friendship, but I did not bring him in for us to discuss our fondness for '80s music and Miami Vice.  He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Alabama and is an amateur astrophotographer, although you should not let the title "amateur" mislead you into thinking his work is second rate.  

IC 1805 The Heart Nebula in the Constellation Cassiopeia
Event Horizon Astrophotography (c) 2021

The Great Orion Nebula M42
Event Horizon Astrophotography (c) 2022

He talked with the students about quantum physics, laser physics, and astrophotography, along with how his Christian faith and work as a scientist fit perfectly together.  When students were asking for his email, asking me for copies of his slides, and staying after class to discuss further the wonders of space, I knew this had been a meaningful event.

Duces Discipuli Facti

As soon as the last bell of the day had rung, another small group of students came to the room for a leadership meeting about a Latin club event.  My intent was to let them handle everything, and I doubt I could have added much that afternoon anyway.  My mind and heart were already too full from the Zoom class with Dr. Jenkins.  As it turned out, I was not needed.  These student officers led with such efficiency they could have given a lesson to many adults.  They worked together, listened to each other's ideas, yet did not become stuck in the mire of indecision.  Just when I thought my heart could take no more of being impressed with students, I was overwhelmed by their display of leadership skills.  In Book 1 of the Aeneid, Vergil describes Queen Dido by saying, dux femina facti, the leader of the deed was a woman.  In this case, the leaders of the deed were students, and I could have offered nothing that would have made their work better.  On the drive home, I called my wife and more or less babbled.  I could not find the words to describe these extraordinary young people and was reminded of the a scene in Contact, the 1997 movie featuring Jodie Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway, who takes a trip through a wormhole to another part of the universe.  Stupefied at what she sees, all she can say is that instead of a scientist, they should have sent a poet.

Life's Rich Pageant

For many people, the phrase "life's rich pageant" is familiar because it is the title of R.E.M.'s fourth album, although it has a much longer history.  I reach for that phrase often, for it captures perfectly what is my typical experience of the academic and educational life.  Have I known the sorts of stories that are driving so many people out of the education profession?  I have, but they have never been the norm.  When given the opportunity, young people will astonish with the depth of their thought and their ability to do something with it, and I saw that once again just the other day.

Update

Two weeks after publishing this post, I came across an amazing, new discovery.  The star catalogue of Hipparchus, long thought to have been lost, has been discovered, in part, as a palimpsest at an Egyptian monastery.  The following images are from the article about this amazing find in the Journal for the History of Astronomy.

Detail of f. 53v, beginning of the first column of undertext (Syriac overtext in dark brown, and faint traces of a few letters of the undertext).

Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2021.

Detail of f. 53v (multispectral image, by the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library and the Lazarus Project of the University of Rochester processed by Keith T. Knox: the enhanced Greek undertext appears in red below the Syriac overtext in black).

Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2021.

Detail of f. 53v (yellow tracings based on full set of multispectral images).

Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2021.

An excellent article in Nature puts this amazing discovery into context.  As we continue to learn more about the ancient world, we also find new ways to combine modern technology with fields of study such as archaeology, linguistics, philology, science, and more.  Putting together a passion for classical studies, computer imaging, and astronomy, for example, can lead to an exciting career, and as the Roman playwright Terence once wrote, "Homo sum:  humani nil a me alienum puto."  "I am a human being:  I think nothing human alien to me."  (Heuton Timorumenos, 77)

Sharing a Classroom

My classroom is small, measuring about 23' x 13'.  For this reason, most of my Latin classes meet in other classrooms.  As I have written elsewhere, and borrowing Hamlet's expression, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space, and because this is true, I do not mind at all sharing my small classroom with many, many other teachers.  Both in this classroom, which is really more of an office, and in any place where I teach, I do not teach alone but am engaged in a most collaborative enterprise, for I have the pleasure of working alongside some of the greatest teachers the world has ever known.

There are Socrates and Plato and Alexander Pope, to say nothing of Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and Vergil.  The history teachers have their say thanks to Livy and Tacitus, and of course Homer holds a mighty sway.

Texts and commentaries

Oxford and Loeb texts

Penguin translations

Sometimes they speak their native Greek or Latin, and sometimes they speak in English, but always they are there, guiding the conversations I have with my students.  Even when their voices cannot be heard directly, they are teaching nonetheless, for they are like the waters described by William Butler Yeats in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Although the majority of my fellow teachers speak their wisdom from across the centuries, there are more modern educators as well, speaking to matters of linguistics and philosophy and the natural sciences.

A few of my colleagues who teach philosophy and science

Surely, you say, these do not all make their way into the daily curriculum of a high school Latin class.  Surely it would not be appropriate for them to do so.  Isn't a secondary language class about nouns and verbs and learning the basics?  No, they do not all make their way into our daily lessons, at least not explicitly so, but I disagree with the notion that any of these teachers should not be allowed through the door.  In 1970, G. P. Goold, who over his illustrious career served as the chair of Classics departments at Harvard, University College London, and Yale, as well as serving as the chief editor of the Loeb Classical Library for twenty-five years, wrote a most unfortunate statement with which I took issue in an article I wrote a few years ago about a textual difficulty in Vergil's Aeneid.  Goold wrote, "An elementary teacher, to reach in due season the end of his curriculum, must every hour turn a Nelson eye to serious problems and refrain from pursuing truth beyond the charted boundaries of the textbook."  I wrote in response, "I would argue that the true magister can never be so bound, but must, along with the students, pursue the truth, no matter how anfractuous the path."

And if truth, rather than the important but necessarily lesser goals of skills proficiency and career readiness, is the foundation and raison d'etre of education, then surely there must be another teacher in every classroom, even the one who claimed to be truth itself, Jesus Christ.

The 3-D printed bust of Christ, courtesy of my son

You see, all of these great teachers have taught me.  I am the product of their wisdom, eloquence, and art, and in that way alone, they are teaching my students as surely as I am.  Because I have spent considerable time with many of them, their words and ideas are also at the ready when I attempt to do what all teachers do, make connections.  Education is essentially helping someone see that this is that.  In its simplest expression it may be an equation, for example one connecting the ideas of 2 + 2 and 4.  In more complex forms it can be seen in metaphors, allusions, and parables.  Indeed the metaphoric nature of all language points to the this-is-that nature of communication, of which formal education is but one particular instance.  For this reason, the assassination of President Kennedy can make its way into a reading of Caesar in Gaul.  The dual nature of light as wave and particle will enter into a discussion about the opening of Vergil's Aeneid.  Even Disney's The Lion King will help to illustrate the aspects of Catiline's conspiracy and the fertile ground for demagoguery among the poor and disenfranchised.

Just as these secular teachers weave their way seamlessly and effortlessly through our exploration of Latin, so does the greatest teacher of them all, but for a different reason and in different ways.  I am blessed now, somewhere past the midpoint of my career, to teach in a school where Christ is acknowledged as Lord.  We are, therefore, free to offer a complete approach to learning, one that does not exclude faith as a way of knowing.  My students and I can easily make references to Scripture just as we do to writings by Plato or Homer.  Yet, and far more significantly, Christ is present in our classes in a way the others cannot be, for He is still alive.  His Holy Spirit dwells within us, leading us, according to John 16:13, into all truth, which, as stated above, is the reason a school exists.  Although it is my name on the door, my small classroom is actually crowded with the greatest of all teachers, and I am more than grateful to share with them the delightful, exciting, and provocative calling of teaching.

George Strait, Cicero, and Citing Your Sources

A friend of mine shared that an educator in her child's district had sent the following to parents as part of a district-wide communication.  "Reality is created by the mind.  We can change our reality by changing our mind."  This quotation was attributed to Plato.

My immediate reaction was that Plato could not have written that statement.  As I texted my friend, that statement is closer to what the pre-Socratic philosopher Protragoras said in his famous dictum, "Man is the measure of all things," which Plato utterly destroyed in his dialogue Theaetetus.  I added that according to his theory of forms laid out in Book 7 of Republic, Plato suggests that reality is not the physical objects around us, but rather transcendent forms accessible only to the mind.  This in no way suggests reality is subjective and created by the mind, as the quotation sent to the parents does, but rather the exact opposite.

All this reminds me of a scene from The West Wing (S04, E04) in which Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) asks his assistant Donna Moss (Janel Maloney) to attend a self-help seminar hosted by someone who is advising their opponent in the upcoming presidential election.  The scene that follows depicts what happens when she returns to the office.

Not only does proper citation of sources matter so that others can follow the same research and so that we do not misattribute facts and quotations, but it matters because it usually indicates a broader, deeper acquaintance with primary sources and the bases of research.  Few people actually want the cheap, knock-off perfume or jewelry.  They want what is genuine, although many are happy to pass off their work as authentic when in fact it is a pale imitation.

The Roman orator Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was known to end sections of his speeches with certain rhythms.  One in particular followed the pattern DUM dum dum DUM dum, which was easily achieved by putting the present infinitive of the verb "to be" next to a 3rd person singular present passive subjunctive from a second conjugation verb.  Esse videatur was a common example, so common in fact that people who wanted to imitate Ciceronian style thought it was good enough just to tack that wording onto the ends of sentences.  Needless to say, DUM dum dum DUM dum does not an orator make.

The song that captures this best for me is George Strait's "The Real Thing," which is from his 2001 album The Road Less Traveled.  He sings of discovering rock and roll in the '50s and realizing there was more to music than just what he had heard on the radio.  As he sings in the chorus line, "I don't want you under my roof with your 86 proof watered down 'til it tastes like tea.  You're gonna pull my string, make it the real thing for me."

I couldn't agree more.  It is important to use and cite primary sources, to take the extra step to do the research, and to express your ideas, not with imitated eloquence, but with the force and beauty that can come for dealing with the real thing.

Words That Take You Back

 

On a short break between classes, I wandered over to one of the book cases in my classroom and pulled off the Loeb edition of Plato's Republic.  As I scanned the opening words,  

κατέβην χθὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ μετὰ Γλαύκωνος τοῦ Ἀρίστωνος...

I went down yesterday to Piraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston...

I was transported to another time and place.  No, it was not to ancient Athens or the port of Piraeus, but to high school during my senior year.  Before getting to that, however, I should note that it was the word "Piraeus" itself that did the trick, or rather, my sudden remembrance that the word "Piraeus" was coming up.

In the last quarter of the school year in Latin II, I have for a long time taught a unit on ancient Greek language and culture that includes readings from Plato's Republic and another of his dialogues, Theaetetus.  It had been longer than I realized and nearly longer than I could remember since I had last read Republic from the beginning, and so it was that as the first words started to form in brain as my eyes picked them from the page that I realized one of the upcoming words would be "Piraeus," which is the port city for Athens.  Suddenly there rushed upon my memory the image of Socrates, the main character in the dialogue, and his friend Glaucon walking toward the city, but it was the image that the English translation by Jowett had first formed in my mind when I was in high school.

My senior English teacher, John Richardson, had brought Plato up in class, and I must have been intrigued enough to want to read the philosopher for myself.  I remember the thrill of finding the Modern Library edition with the classic translation by Benjamin Jowett at Hawley-Cooke Booksellers across the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky.  That copy resides in my classroom even now.

This slender volume was my introduction to philosophy and reading the great works on my own.  We had not been assigned to read it, but I was interested and gave it a whirl.  There I was, sitting in the living room of my home in southern Indiana, reading Plato, and it was a heady experience indeed.  It was also above me in many places, and I cannot say I made it all the way through to the end.  Yet it pierced me with an arrow of passion for philosophy that has continued to burn.

Jowett himself had this to say about the importance of translation in his own English rendering of Thucydides.  It is a necessary thing, he argued, in order "once more [to] present that old life, with its great ideas and great actions, its creations in politics and in art, like the distant remembrance of youth, before the delighted eyes of mankind."

It was that distant remembrance of youth that came flooding back to my mind today as I recalled Jowett's Republic, let loose by recalling one word, Piraeus.  What words take you back to another time and place?  What whole works serve you that way?  When they evoke distant memories, they can usher a very bright spot into your day indeed.

When A Student Asks A Question

Our district once allowed eighth grade students to begin their world language study at the high school.  Although that opportunity has been cut, we still have a few fifth year students who began their Latin studies earlier than most, and this allows them to explore areas of academic interest outside the traditional curricula in Latin I through IV.

One of those students recently asked me if I had any Plato in the room, and this confused me, since I had tasked them with deciding on something to read in Latin.  He went on to explain that he wanted a Latin translation of Plato, and I paused.  I could think of no Latin translations of Plato, despite that the ancient Romans certainly knew his works, and so I told my student I would have to get back with him.

During my prep period I did a bit of research and found an article that explained why I could think of no Latin versions of Plato.  In "Two Thousand Years of Latin Translation from the Greek,"* Dean Lockwood observed that not only was there little need for translation since most educated Romans knew Greek, but also the Romans went in more for imitation and adaptation than straight translation.  Plautus and Terence wrote their own plays, Cicero and Seneca developed their own philosophies, and Horace and Vergil composed their own poetry, and while all of these were heavily influenced by Greek originals, it was translation by way of adaptation rather than literal translation in which the Romans engaged.

This was interesting enough, and I quickly printed the article from JSTOR to share with the students later in the day, but I had also run across references to Renaissance Latin translations of Plato, and this made me curious to find a text online.  I soon found two sources for Marsilio Ficino's Platonis Opera Omnia, which was originally published in the 1480s.  These digitized copies, here and here, are from a 1557 edition, and the second allowed for the downloading of individual pages.

Republic, Book 7, Ficino translation

I quickly printed the first two pages of Republic, Book 7, which my students had read in translation during a Greek unit in Latin II, and at that point I began wishing the hours away until the last period of the day when I would see these students.  In the meantime, I asked my department chair if she would like to sit in on that period, for I would have something exciting to share.

When the last period of the day finally rolled around, I instructed the Latin III and IV students in what to work on and then met with the Latin V students and my department chair.  I was like a kid at Christmas!  We discussed the Lockwood article and why it made sense that the ancient Romans would not have produced a translation of Plato.  We then explored the Ficino translation, observing the difficulty of reading the typeface with its ligatures and abbreviations that were holdovers from calligraphy of the manuscript days, but noting also the relatively easy reading of the Latin itself.

In the end, the students decided to read some of the Roman philosophy of Seneca and Cicero because the typeface of modern editions is easier to see, but they agreed that it was fascinating to explore this Renaissance work and to marvel at what is available to us through digitized editions of works that would otherwise rarely see the light of day.

*Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 49 (1918), pp. 115-129 

How Classics Saved My Life

"I am a college-educated American.  In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil.  I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages.  Dante was a stranger to me, and so was Shakespeare.

"The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution.  I was ignorant of Descartes and Newton.  My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment.  Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting."  The Benedict Option, p. 154, Rod Dreher

As I read these words, I was struck by the realization that there, but for the my chosen field of Classics, would have gone I.  Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Virgil...why, of course, I thought, but then I paused.  Had I actually encountered them in any class not of my choosing?  I thought long and hard about it, and the answer was no.

In my high school senior English class we read a bit of Chaucer, and I will always be grateful for the introduction I received to Pope, Donne, and Keats from that teacher, Mr. John Richardson.  I also got from him Shakespeare's sonnets to go along with Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar, the only Shakespearean plays I would ever be required to read throughout my educational career.  Somewhere there were bits of Homer's Odyssey.  There was no significant world history class for my high school diploma.

As an undergraduate at Indiana University, I took only two English classes.  Through one, a survey, I was introduced to Dante, though only parts in the Norton Anthology that included glimpses of the Old Testament as literature.  I took only one history class, and that was in ancient history for my major in Classical Studies.

Only in classes that I chose to take as a high school Latin student or undergraduate and graduate student in Classics did I encounter any of the following:  Caesar, Cicero, Horace, Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Plato, and Herodotus.  I was introduced to Montaigne and Hume in an elective freshman honors seminar.  Although we read part of Augustine's Confessions in that class, I had never heard of the church fathers until I casually encountered them through friends in graduate school, and then it was not in any class.  All that I know of Aquinas has been acquired on my own.  The same goes for Anselm, Descartes, and Milton.  Alexis de Tocqueville, The Federalist Papers, and The Constitution of the United States of America...if I had not read them of my own accord, they would hold no place in my knowledge.  In fact, as I survey the significant authors on my bookshelves, I find that at best I know of a few from any required class in my schooling.  Most I learned about on my own, and almost all I have read solely outside the classroom.

My encounter with Latin in high school sparked an interest in me that led me to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in Classics, and it was through that interest and study that I have come to know most of what I know of any importance.  Friends, such things ought not to be.  The human heritage bequeathed to the world through the history, literature, and theology of the West should not be a curiosity available only for a kid who studies Latin to discover.  Should everyone become a Homeric scholar or an expert in Dante?  Of course not.  But everyone should be introduced to the true gems of human discovery and achievement.  Whether or not a person picks up one of those gems and makes it his or her own is up to that student.  This much, however, is true.  Any school or system of education apart from a program of specific skills training that does not, as Benjamin Jowett wrote in the preface to his translation of Thucydides, "present that old life, with its great ideas and great actions, its creations in politics and in art, like the distant remembrance of youth, before the delighted eyes of mankind," stands convicted of dereliction of duty and betrayal of its true mandate.

Plato and Back-to-School Night

Our Latin II students are studying Greek right now, both the language and the culture.  Most educated Romans knew Greek, so it is fitting that our students get at least a passing familiarity with some of the highlights.  After having studied the language a bit, they are now reading bits of Plato in translation, and we recently had a fascinating discussion of Republic V.  They were not surprisingly quite excited to learn that Plato advocated the same kind of education for women as for men.  They were struck that someone from the 4th century B.C. could be so, as one student put it, "ahead of his time."

And then we read this.

And this lawful use of them seems likely to be often needed in the regulations of marriages and births. 

How so? 
Why, I said, the principle has been already laid down that the best of either sex should be united with the best as often, and the inferior with the inferior, as seldom as possible; and that they should rear the offspring of the one sort of union, but not of the other, if the flock is to be maintained in first-rate condition. Now these goings on must be a secret which the rulers only know, or there will be a further danger of our herd, as the guardians may be termed, breaking out into rebellion. 

Very true. 
Had we not better appoint certain festivals at which we will bring together the brides and bridegrooms, and sacrifices will be offered and suitable hymeneal songs composed by our poets: the number of weddings is a matter which must be left to the discretion of the rulers, whose aim will be to preserve the average of population? There are many other things which they will have to consider, such as the effects of wars and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as far as this is possible to prevent the State from becoming either too large or too small. 

Certainly, he replied. 
We shall have to invent some ingenious kind of lots which the less worthy may draw on each occasion of our bringing them together, and then they will accuse their own ill-luck and not the rulers. 

To be sure, he said. 
And I think that our braver and better youth, besides their other honours and rewards, might have greater facilities of intercourse with women giventhem; their bravery will be a reason, and such fathers ought to have as many sons as possible. 

True. 
And the proper officers, whether male or female or both, for offices are to be held by women as well as by men -- 

Yes -- 
The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter; but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be. 

Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians is to be kept pure. 

They will provide for their nurture, and will bring the mothers to the fold when they are full of milk, taking the greatest possible care that no mother recognizes her own child; and other wet-nurses may be engaged if more are required. Care will also be taken that the process of suckling shall not be protracted too long; and the mothers will have no getting up at night or other trouble, but will hand over all this sort of thing to the nurses and attendants.

I am glad to say this section did not go over so well.  One student pointed out that this was eugenics, and we talked about that.  They observed that this was what the Nazis were after, and we talked about that.  The students were bothered that the weaker offspring would be done away with, and we talked about that.

And then I pointed out that the treatment of the good offspring, i.e. being taken to a separate place in the city away from their parents and being reared by agents of the state, described their own situation.  For indeed, what are public schools but places in the city, separate from students' homes, where children are taught by teachers who are paid via taxes?

Yeah, it got a bit uncomfortable.  They did not like seeing their own situation described in the midst of a passage with which most people profoundly disagree.  I was quick to point out that there can be things in a person's writings that we agree with and things that we do not.  You take the good and toss the bad.  Yet I also pointed out something else.  I know some of my students' parents from back-to-school night and a few more from other interactions, but for the most part, parents entrust their children for the most productive hours of the day, five days a week, during the most formative years of their lives, to people they do not know.

Teachers call home.  We make ourselves available at back-to-school night.  We reach out to our families.  It is, however, vitally important that parents be involved in the lives of their children by knowing what is going on at their schools.  They should know the names of their children's teachers, coaches, and principals.  They should be as engaged as they can be in the life of the school community.  Admittedly, this takes on as many different appearances as there are families in a school.  Some simply cannot be involved for any number of valid factors.  And some take the easy way out.  As they left my room, some were making verbal recognition of the responsibility they would one day need to take in the lives of their own children.

In Defense of Honors

In Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave in Book VII of his Republic, we see a picture of people chained in a cavern guessing at the order and shapes of shadows that pass on the wall in front of them.  They give each other awards and honors for who is best at this guessing game, but when one fortunate soul is freed from the cave and sees the true light of the sun, he no longer has any regard for the prizes that were given among the prisoners for predicting and identifying the shadows.

In this illustration, Plato is quite right.  There is truth, goodness, and beauty to be enjoyed, and once people have tasted of these, they are unlikely to think much of the "Certificate of Participation" or the spelling bee trophy.  Does this, however, mean that we jettison all honors?  Do we get rid of all ceremony and the physical tokens of glory that we like to bestow on one another?  I think not.  Ceremonies of honor have an important role to play, and nowhere more so than in education.

I recently had the opportunity to visit The College of Wooster, where I was to receive one of their Excellence in Teaching awards.  The freshmen have the opportunity each year to nominate a high school teacher who had a particular influence on them.  These nominees are then reviewed by a committee, and this year ten were chosen from across the country.

Recognition of the Excellence in Teaching recipients actually was a small part of the evening.  After a delightful dinner in the elegant Kittredge Dining Hall, an address by an alumnus, and the presentation of the EIT awards, the evening unfolded into a recognition celebration of a great many students.  They received honors, prizes, and scholarships in a variety of disciplines and for many reasons.  For example, there was the Robert G. Bone History Prize.  This was given to a junior majoring in history who best exemplified enthusiasm for learning, unbridled curiosity about life, and unbounded kindness toward others.

Stop.  Read the last sentence of the preceding paragraph again.

There was also the Larry L. Stewart Endowed Prize in Literature.  This was given to a junior English major with a strong academic record who embodied the ideals and spirit of engaged reading and writing in the study of literature.

Enthusiasm for learning.  Unbridled curiosity about life.  Unbounded kindness toward others.  The spirit of engaged reading and writing.

These are the very means by which we approach the true, the good, and the beautiful.  They are also themselves aspects of the true, the good, and the beautiful to be enjoyed in their own right.  For this reason, we properly honor those who exemplify and embody them.  Awards like these are no mere shadow honors.  They are the public recognition of what human beings do.  They remind their recipients that they are on the right path.  They shine a light on that path for the community who observes these honors, thus inspiring others to take up the journey.  They are not the self-indulgent and meaningless tokens of those trapped in the cave.  They are both the torches that light the way out and the appropriate, necessary, festive celebration of those who have seen the light.

As for the Excellence in Teaching awards, these were given with the same dignity and honor as the student awards.  The teachers were put up in The Wooster Inn, an elegant establishment that prompted me to tweet about my room that made me want to take out a fountain pen and begin inking the first lines of a novel.  On the evening of our arrival, we enjoyed hors d'oeuvres with faculty members and the students who had nominated us before the dinner celebration.  The following day we were treated to a tour of the campus, the opportunity to visit a class with our students, and lunch in the faculty dining area of Lowry Hall.  The entire event was coordinated by Dr. Hayden Schilling, whose hospitality alone was a significant honor.

Nothing More Than Happy Accidents

"First, let's be clear about what philosophy and education do not (italics original) amount to, what they do not offer in return:  philosophy and education do not amount to grades, diplomas, or the byproducts of schooling."  (A Primer on Philosophy & Education, p. 30)

Stop the presses!  If that sentence does not make you slam on the brakes and realize how subversive Samuel Rocha's book is, I don't know what will.  Ask anybody.  Students will tell you education is precisely about grades and diplomas.  Parents and legislators will say that it is all about the byproduct, namely, a job.

Rocha not only takes aim at this ultra-pragmatic view, but observes that it is pervasive throughout our educational system.  "In many colleges and universities, there are students who care more about being on the list of some person they hardly know (the Dean), based on three numbers and decimal point (their grade point average), than they do about anything else related to their studies.  Sadly, these people have been conditioned to feel and act this way in previous schooling institutions and elsewhere, too.  There has never been an infant who cared about grades, awards, or credentials."  (pp. 30, 31)

Whoa, Nelly, again!  Rocha takes us right back to Plato's cave and the poor prisoners who award prizes for correctly guessing at shadows.  One of the most challenging classes I have had the pleasure to teach is Theory of Knowledge, a course required for the International Baccalaureate diploma.  Students in the IB program are at the top of their academic game, but when they hit TOK, they get jarred from their routine of what works.  They know how to make an A in all their other classes.  They know how the system works and how to work the system.  Suddenly they find themselves in a class that asks them to explore how they know what they know.  Their concrete perception of the world gets a bit fuzzy.  I have watched honor roll students struggle with this class because the boundaries were vague and I could not tell them with the precision of their chemistry teacher how to achieve an A.  As a result, I have watched more than one such student unravel.

This is not to say that we should not care about grades at all, and Rocha concedes this.  No one should try to earn a D.  On the other hand, he suggests that "you should not confuse this institutionalized process of grade-getting, school-going, degree-worshipping, and job-seeking with what philosophy and education have to offer you."  (p. 31)  While he admits that these things are not trivial or unimportant, his point is simply that there is something more to the enterprise than just these things, and he uses a powerful analogy to make his point.

"It would be like trying to fall in love and get married in order to pay lower taxes," he writes.  (p. 33)  "[L]ower tax rates simply come as happy accidents.  Likewise, good grades come as happy accidents, too."  (pp. 33-34)

If making the honor roll or landing a job is not the supreme goal of education, what is?  It is that little thing that caused Pontius Pilate to pause in wonder.  Says Rocha, "Read for the truth.  Write and speak to show what seems true.  Ask questions to get at what might be true.  Attend classes to seek the truth.  Do not settle for shallow, impoverished grades and cheap, degrading rewards.  Philosophy and education require courage."  (p. 34)