A Papal Pedagogy

Alexander Pope (1688-1744), portrait by Michael Dahl c. 1727

Despite my regular use in the classroom of a smart board, the Internet, and other technological inventions of the modern age, mine is a pedagogy steeped in history and, as recent reading and reflection have shown, are papal, although not in the sense you may be thinking.  Be warned, however, for what follows may take you into waters far from the current educational current.

A Papal Perspective

The adjective "papal" derives from the Latin word for "pope," which is papa, but my use of it here refers not to the Bishop of Rome but rather to the poet Alexander Pope, whose work I first used to open a speech nearly forty years ago and who has remained my favorite English poet all my life.  In the definitive, indeed magisterial, biography of Pope, Maynard Mack explores in one section the Essay on Criticism, which was published in 1711.  If you will, please indulge an extended excerpt from pages 170-174.

[T]he steady expansion of forms of individualism...[fractured] traditional consensuses, leaving most lines of authority apart from personal self-assertion tentative and insecure.  Partly, at least, in response to all this, the Essay shows a pervasive concern for corporateness:  for the responsibility of the individual member, whether a person, idea, work of art, or critical term to some sort of community or whole.  [The Essay on Criticism acknowledged] that the idiosyncrasies of individual intelligence must be tried, and normalized, against the collective principles of the community of educated men.

For since the ancients participate with the modern in this universal and permanent Reason and have left behind them works whose permanent and universal character many centuries have proved, ancient literature must likewise be considered one of Nature's manifestations:  "Nature and Homer were, he found the same" (line 135).  This in turn meant that the Rules -- the principles of effective writing that a long line of critics had derived from Homer and other poets -- were by no means impositions of a dead hand upon the present....

Pope does not intend by this a theory of servile imitation.  He means rather that every new generation must strive to assimilate the art of those whose success in rendering our common humanity...time has demonstrated; the individual talent must steep itself in the tradition; and in Pope's day, when the only internationally accepted literature was that of Greece and Rome..., Homer and Vergil naturally comprised the heart of this tradition.  Pope knows, of course, that criticism cannot afford to let a live tradition degenerate into formulae, dictating "dull Receits how Poems may be made" (line 115); or lose the contemporary élan...that alone enables it to discern and applaud the "Beauties...no Precepts can declare" (line 141).  But he knows with equal firmness that the individual writer's imagination must be guided by his judgment, reflecting the collective experience hived up in the principles of good writing....

[T]he positives...are humility in the presence of what is greater than ourselves and intelligence to rectify our personal vision by collective wisdom.

The 21st Century Classroom

With this I could not agree more.  As I have written, I share my classroom with a vast number of teachers, most of whom are dead, for Homer and Vergil, Aristotle and Cicero, Aquinas and Montaigne and Pope, all teach with me.  As Mack wrote above, we do not go in for servile imitation.  My students have their own voices and their own ideas and insights to express with them, yet it is my task and calling to help them do so in the best way.  Again, this does not mean following "dull Receits," but it does mean introducing to these young thinkers that how a thing is said can help it be heard with greater or lesser effect.  It means pulling back the heavy curtain of prosaic, mundane communication and revealing the intricate beauties of language that have been developed and perfected throughout the ages by the poets and philosophers, the authors and orators whose works have stood the test of time.  Yet again, Mack rightly points out that Pope's vision is to help us develop humility in the presence of that which is greater than we and the intelligence to rectify our own visions, which is quite literally to make them right and straight, with the collective wisdom drawn from the centuries of the human race.

Where Such Teachers

Alexander Pope, attributed to Jonathan Richardson, c. 1736

Toward the conclusion of this section of his biography, Mack quotes a few lines, with which I will conclude, from Pope's Essay as an ideal, one that applies to teachers as well as to literary critics.  He goes on to observe, "Pope shared with most us a total inability to attain this ideal; yet it is touching to see it so vividly sketched."  Unattainable it may be, but I have known many teachers who have spent their lives reaching for it, and whether or not they grasped it, their students were the better served for their trying.  Then again, as Robert Browning put it, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's a heaven for?"  ("Andrea del Sarto, 97-98)

But where's the Man, who Counsel can bestow,

Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?

Unbiass'd, or by Favour or by Spite;

Not dully prepossesst, nor blindly right;

Blest with a Taste exact, yet unconfin'd;

A Knowledge both of Books and Humankind.  (lines 631-634, 639-640)

Hidden Treasure

 

I recently thought I had fallen into a real life version of a Dan Brown novel or the Nicholas Cage move National Treasure.  As I scrolled through some of my picture uploads on Facebook, I found one of the title page of a book I had forgotten I owned.  I knew instantly where the book was, and given what it was, I could hardly wait to pull it from its shelf.  When I did, I discovered something even more amazing.  

My Currently Favorite Collection

I am not a huge collector of things, but I have enjoyed collecting fountain pens, miniature Mustang cars, and the complete discography of certain rock and metal artists.  My favorite collection at the moment, however, is of English translations of Vergil's Aeneid.  In the fall of 2021, I launched a website listing every English translation of the epic poem in chronological order from the first in 1513 to the most recent.  I wrote about that website in a post called "Mr. Holland's Aeneid," which explains that the new website Aeneid Translator would include a color-coded system to indicate the translations that I actually own.  Until recently, my collection totaled thirty-seven translations, including every one from 1937 through 2021.  Just the other day, that total climbed to thirty-eight.

As I was scrolling through some old pictures on Facebook, I ran across one from the title page to a translation of the works of Vergil.  Since the picture was in my photos, I realized that I must own the book and immediately remembered

not only that I did own it, but where it was in my bookcases.  I ran to that particular bookcase, pulled off the volume, and began to explore what I had.

The Excitement of Discovery

The oldest translation of Vergil's Aeneid in my possession is the 1685 translation by John Dryden, but it is a 20th century edition.  Prior to my recent discovery, I had thought the oldest volume in our personal library was the 1794 edition of Cicero's De Oratore that I had purchased at an antiquarian bookshop in Florence, Italy.  This forgotten edition of Vergil published in 1770 bested that by twenty-four years.

It is the dream of book lovers to discover a long lost work.  Indeed, this idea forms the core of one of the best-selling books of all time, Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose, but let us be clear.  I did not unearth on a bookshelf in my Indiana home the lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics.  Still, just as children enjoy dressing up and playing as their favorite literary or movie characters, so I enjoyed the thrill of discovery when I realized just how old this volume was and what it contained.

As you can see from the title page in the picture above, this book contains the prose translation of Vergil's works.  It is, in fact, the first of two volumes (someday, perhaps, I will procure the second), that cover all of the Roman poet's works, the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid.  The prose rendering is that of Joseph Davidson, originally published in 1743.  As you can see from the opening page to the first book of the Aeneid, this is more than a simple translation.

Each page contains the Latin text, a section titled Ordo that puts the Latin into more traditionally English word order, Davidson's prose translation, and then copious notes.  After the double discovery of the oldest book in my library and a translation of Vergil I did not remember I had, a third thrill of excitement came when I noticed that in Davidson's comparison of the opening lines of the Aeneid with those of Homer's Odyssey, he cited Alexander Pope's translation after giving the Greek.  I have a good friend who is Beowulf fan, and he and I love to tease each other about who was the better poet, the Beowulf bard or Alexander Pope.  For my money, Pope will always win.  I have loved his heroic couplets since I was a senior in high school, and his translation of Homer, particularly the Iliad, is one of my favorite works of all time.

Holding a first edition of Pope's Iliad translation from 1715

These discoveries alone would have been enough to excite a bibliophile, but something even better was hiding in these three-hundred-year-old pages.

The Chief Design of Education

At the beginning of his book, Davidson includes an essay "To Those Gentlemen Who have the immediate Care of Education," and in it he lays out an understanding of education that has been held in various degrees by most people in most cultures, is espoused and practiced by some of us today, but has for too many others become a lost treasure.

Davidson refers to those of us who are teachers as "faithful guides, who, no doubt, will, in whatever author you teach, guard your pupils against the influence of any thing that has a tendency to corrupt their principles or morals" and then goes on to show why Vergil is such a suitable author for this purpose.  According to Davidson, "There is a peculiar tenderness and humanity diffused through all his writings, which never fails to make the heart better, and sends away every well disposed mind from the reading of him, equally pleased and improved.  He animates the soul to the love of virtue, by setting before us the most noble examples; corrects the passions, by showing their fatal effects, when indulged to excess, or when directed to improper objects; makes us feel the peace and serenity they bring, when conducted by reason, and regulated within the bounds of prudence and moderation.  From him we learn the force of piety, and what powerful incentives to fortitude, and every heroic virtue, arise from the belief of a deity, and a providence supremely wise and good.  In a word, every image, every description, every character he exhibits; his fables, his allegories, his episodes, all are calculated, not only to please the fancy, but to instruct the judgment, and form the heart."

If that sounds quaint, outdated, or even inappropriate for the modern classroom, we have sad proof of how far we have drifted from the true purpose of education.  It is about far more than teaching mere facts, the sufficient memorization of which can be determined by an exam, and Davidson states this pointedly.  "To teach boys to understand an author's language, is, you know, but the least part of your duty.  To acquaint them with his spirit and virtuous design, to form their taste aright, that they may be able to correct his faults and relish his beauties, feel the force of his pious or humane sentiments, and learn to copy out his heroic characters, and imitate his generous examples; in a word, to teach them to be sound critics on life and manners and to distinguish the true from the false, ... this is your honourable province, and the chief design of education."

Isn't that asking too much of our teachers?  It is if we insist on placing foolish burdens on them under the guise of professionalism.  Earlier in his essay Davidson had explained why he had produced this particular edition of Vergil's works.  "If it gives you some relief from the more disagreeable and burdensome part of your work, it is only to leave you freer and more disengaged in the execution of what is the principal business of education."  Davidson knew, as have most people in most societies through the ages, that education is a grander enterprise than the mechanical drudgery into which it can be corrupted.  He went on to say, "You, by your very profession, are solemnly engaged to teach and exemplify goodness to mankind, at a time of life when they are most capable of being taught, when their docile minds may easily be moulded to every shape of goodness, and are susceptible of the most durable impressions.  [T]he legislature may enact, and the magistrate may execute salutary law; but what will all avail, unless the foundations of national virtue be laid in the right forming of the heart at first?  If the fountains be foul and impure, all the art of man will not make the streams run pure and unpolluted.  The Scripture tells us, that the tree must first be made good, and then its fruits will be good also; but if the tree be corrupt, the fruit likewise will partake of the corruption.  Indeed experience shows us, that the best education is not of itself sufficient to establish the mind in an habitual, uniform course of integrity; yet the same experience evinces, that nothing is of so much importance towards effecting this great end, as to give the mind an early turn and bias to the right side; and that, without this, all other means, humanly speaking, will have but a weak and transient influence."

The legislature may enact, and the magistrate may execute salutary law; but what will all avail, unless the foundations of national virtue be laid in the right forming of the heart at first?  What, indeed.

When Alps on Alps Arise

 

So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try,

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But those attain'd, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lenthen'd way,

Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

The blog post I wrote as I concluded a 30 year-career in public education took its title from a poem, so it seemed only fitting that this, my 200th post and the one reflecting on my first year in private education, should do the same.

I Had No Idea

In the 1997 film adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) becomes the first human to travel through a wormhole to encounter extraterrestrial life.  Dr. Arroway is a scientist who only believes in facts and what can be proven through science.  Yet when she encounters the majesty of the far-flung heavens, she stammers, "I had no idea," as she realizes that perhaps a poet would have made a better first ambassador from earth.

This fairly accurately captures what I have felt throughout this school year.  I had no idea.  I had no idea education could be like this.  I had imagined something like it and had even been told by others that it existed, but until I experienced it for myself, I could not truly appreciate the wonders.

Any endeavor conducted apart from or even in opposition to Jesus Christ can seem good and nice.  Hamlet, however, well distinguished between what seems to be the case and what is.  As he famously railed against his mother in Act 1, Scene 2,

Seems, madam!  Nay, it is!  I know not 'seems.'

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,

That can denote me truly.  These indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play.

But I have that within which passes show.

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Indeed, with this first year at Guerin Catholic High School, I have experienced that which passes show, that which goes far beyond the trappings and the suits of academic achievement that amount to little more than new clothes for the emperor and that have brought about more woe than we would like to credit them.  I am talking about education rooted in the person of Jesus Christ and pursued for His glory.

Undoubtedly there are those who are having trouble reading at the moment, so enraged have they become by my comments casting aspersions on taxpayer-supported, government-run institutions of education.  Yet I will stand with Hamlet in preferring that something be rather than that it seem, a sentiment that goes back to Sallust and before him to Cicero and before him to Aeschylus*, and will state again and unequivocally that anything enacted apart from Jesus Christ can at best seem good.  Of course, I am far from the first to say this.  God inspired Solomon in Psalm 127:1 to proclaim, "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain," and Jesus Himself put it more directly when He stated, "Apart from me you can do nothing."

One of the best and most recent articulations of the implications of this truth came from Dr. Helen Freeh in her article "Pursue Truth, Find Her, then Do Something."  In that piece, Dr. Freeh says what has needed to be said for some time.  We cannot continue to hope for a better outcome from our schools merely by re-arranging the pieces of a broken game.  We must rediscover the purpose of education, one that is rooted in objective and transcendent truth, and then not the disembodied concept of truth belonging to the philosophers, but the fully incarnated truth who is Jesus Christ.

Golden Streamers of Glory

Since the day I visited St. Theodore Guerin Catholic High School to interview for the position of Latin teacher, I knew that something was different about the place.  We use the phrase genius loci to describe the atmosphere, the feel, of a particular place, and it was clear even as I waited in the front office for the principal that the spirit here was none other than the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, for as I flipped through Impact, our school's biannual magazine I came across an article by a student who said that the highlight of his career at Guerin was the junior retreat during which he had grown closer to Jesus.  I was struck by the spiritual depth of the young man's comment, and that was but a foretaste of what I would come to experience.

The metaphor I have used most when trying to convey to friends what I have come to sense at Guerin is the image of golden streamers of glory.  It is difficult to put such experiences into words, but time and again I have perceived almost physical, golden streamers blowing through the hallways of our school.  I could point to the happy faces of the students, the genuine joy of the faculty, or the selfless support of our administration and parents as the reason, but then we would have to wonder about even the source of those.  After a moment's thought, the reason for all this is quite obvious.  What else should one expect in a school where Jesus Christ is glorified and the words of the Great Commission to teach all that He has commanded are taken seriously?

Inside the front door of our school

The Sound of Music

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) has been my favorite poet since I discovered him in our Brit Lit class my senior year of high school, and I chose the words from his Essay on Criticism at the beginning of this post to open my valedictory address to our senior class.  The context shows that when Pope describes hills peeping over hills and Alps arising on Alps, he is describing the daunting scene that often confronts us after we have begun an exciting journey, yet I take those lines now in a different way.  I think of Maria in The Sound of Music.  As I conclude my first year of teaching at a Christian school after retiring from public education, I see majestic hills yet to climb, hills filled with the sound of music, and I look forward with renewed vigor and enthusiasm to attempting their ascent with the wonderful students and faculty at St. Theodore Guerin Catholic High School as together we follow the One Who prepares the path before us.

*In Seven Against Thebes, line 592, by Aeschylus we read, "ou gar dokein aristos, all' einai thelei" "οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι θέλει."  "For he wants not to seem but to be the bravest."

Cicero wrote in De Amicitia 98, "Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt."  "For there are not so many who wish to be endowed with virtue itself rather than to seem so." 

In Sallust's Bellum Catilinae 54 we find Cato the Younger being described as someone who "esse quam videri bonus malebat," or someone who "preferred to be good rather than to seem good."

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.

A Valediction

I recently came across some items from high school, including pictures...yikes!...and found my high school commencement program, which included my valedictory address.  Although I had always remembered the lines from Pope with which I had begun, I did not remember my own words.  Reading them now, with nearly three decades of teaching experience, I saw several things that struck me in that youthful speech, which ran as follows.

"So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky.
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes.
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!"

     These words, which were written in 1711 by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism, have a special meaning for us tonight.   When we began our educational careers twelve years ago, the world was new to us, and we were eager to learn about it.  We came across both sad and joyous occasions.  As our bodies grew and horizons expanded, we looked to our high school graduation as the culmination of our work and determination.  This was to be the top of the mountain we had been climbing for twelve years.
     Now that we have reached the top of our mountain, we look out and see that there are more hills to climb.  We have not so much ended a journey as we have embarked on a new one.
     We have learned many lessons throughout the years.  Many have been taught to us in classrooms, while others have been taught to us by living life.  Let us take these lessons--the ones that have brought us here tonight--wherever we go and apply them as we make and attain our goals.
     Let us also remember and thank those who have taught, guided, and befriended us along the way:  God, family, teachers, and friends.  Without them, our journey here would have been impossible.
     May God bless us in all that we do.

As I looked back at my own words, I could not help analyzing them for style.  I'm a Latin teacher...what else would you expect?  The first thing that struck me was my penchant for pairs.  "The world was new..., and we were eager...."  "...both sad and joyous...."  "As our bodies grew and horizons expanded...."  Absent was what has become my fondness for threes, apposition, and asyndeton.  Yet two aspects of that youthful speech have remained in much of my writing and speaking throughout the years, the grounding my thoughts in the writings of others and a deep sense of connection with people.

My senior English teacher, Mr. John Richardson, introduced me to British poetry, which, especially the works of Alexander Pope, captivated my heart and mind.  Pope's words in his Essay on Criticism were particularly appropriate for graduating seniors, and my use of them reveals my core philosophy of education.  Education is, at its most fundamental level, understanding that this is that.  It is, in essence, the making of a connection, and applied education is making use of that connection.  Pope poetically expressed an idea, and my 18-year-old self said, "This is that.  What we graduates are experiencing is what he has described."  I then made use of that connection as the basis for my valedictory remarks.

For me, however, it goes even deeper than that.  It is not enough that I alone make a connection or even that I use that connection in further work.  I am keenly aware of the connections among people, and this produces two effects.  The first is gratitude.  I genuinely love giving credit where credit is due.  The second is my passion to connect people, both with each other and with connections of understanding that I have discovered, and this forms the essence of what I do as a teacher.  Nothing thrills me more than to connect students with authors and ideas, with programs of study and scholars in the field, with universities and career paths.  Side note...did you see what I did with the grouping of three and asyndeton in that last sentence?  But I digress.

In that teenage speech lie the seeds of what I do and how I do it, but there is something more.  It was my first significant speech in front of large audience.  Our graduating class was listed at 455, and with guests at commencement it would be safe to assume the audience numbered around 1500.  I was a shy young man, and the thought of delivering a memorized speech in front of such a crowd was daunting, so I memorized a couple of other passages from which I drew strength as I practiced my speech at home.  "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Philippians 4:13, "and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus," Philippians 4:7.  And He is still guarding my heart and mind, giving me peace, and strengthening me as I continue to climb the hills and Alps of the lengthened way.

Ok...here is one of those old pics from high school. Here I am with my grandma at her house.

Teach What You Know

A teacher must be both a magister and a paidagogos, both a master of subject content and a leader of students.  The latter sense of a teacher's craft is explored through pedagogy, and while this is important, it seems to be the focus of many professional educators at the expense of subject expertise.  Many blogs and podcasts, workshops and professional development activities, focus entirely on how to teach, and even the sessions at content-specific conferences often present tips and strategies and ideas on the presentation of that content.

So let's talk about the importance of content mastery for a moment.  This means more than reading the chapter the day before the students do, and while we can certainly acquire good material from our colleagues, I am talking about more than asking your neighbor to send you the PowerPoint slides on a lesson you both teach.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

In 1711 Alexander Pope published his poem An Essay On Criticism about the relationship of the literary critic to the poet, yet many of his lines speak to education and the importance of content mastery.  Early in the work he writes,

Let such teach others who themselves excell.  (line 15)

We talk a lot in education about student-led approaches to learning, and this is fine, but at the end of the day, the teacher should be the content master, the magister.  Yes, students can access raw data from the Internet.  Yes, students can teach their teachers, and I have certainly learned much from mine.  Yet I must be a recognized master of my content for one very important reason.  My students need to have confidence in me.  Not only must they be confident that I what I teach them is accurate, but they must also be confident in approaching me with questions.

So how does one become a content master?  Is a college degree in that area sufficient?  At best it is a starting place.  There is simply no substitute for deep, ongoing reading.  

Be Homer's Works your Study, and Delight,
Read them by Day, and meditate by Night,
Thence form your Judgment, thence your Maxims bring,
And trace the Muses upward to their Spring;
Still with It self compar'd, his Text peruse;
And let your Comment be the Mantuan Muse.  (lines 124-129)

Commentaries are good, but read the text.  Read the laws and the primary sources if you are a history or social studies teacher.  Read the poems and the novels if you teach English or a world language.  Listen to and perform the music of great composers, contemplate the great artists and create your own masterpieces.  Come to understanding through other great works within your discipline, not merely through the study guides and commentaries and lesson plans of your contemporaries.  When Pope counsels comparing the text of the Mantuan muse, by which he means the Roman poet Vergil, with itself, he is suggesting exactly this.  As a teacher, a magister, you want the richest possible understanding, and this comes from drinking deeply of the original springs.

By doing this, a teacher moves beyond mere instruction and discovers the art and craft of the calling.

Musick resembles Poetry, in each
Are nameless Graces which no Methods teach,
And which a Master-Hand alone can reach.
From vulgar Bounds with brave Disorder part,
And snatch a Grace beyond the Reach of Art.  (lines 143-145, 154-155)

When Pope speaks of art, he is using the word in the sense of its Latin origin, meaning a skill.  Skills can be taught, and every craftsman must first learn them.  Yet true artists in any endeavor move beyond the "vulgar bounds" of mere methodology.  Teachers do this when they have become what they teach, when they embody the content and students can no longer tell where the content ends and the teacher begins.

You may be asking whether an 18th century British poet truly has anything to offer the connected, modern educators preparing students for jobs yet unknown as visions of technology dance in their heads.  This question betrays one of the most regrettable aspects of contemporary education.  We value nothing that was said more than five minutes ago.  With staggering arrogance we assume that we know more than those who have gone before us, yet with regard to what Edgar Allan Poe would later call "the glory that was Greece and that grandeur that was Rome," Pope cried,

Oh may some Spark of your Coelestial Fire
The last, the meanest of your Sons inspire
To teach vain Wits a Science little known,
T'admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!  (lines 195-196, 199-200)

Humility is a key disposition for learning, and if teachers are to become the content masters they are called to be, they, like their students, must be willing to learn from those who know more and whose knowledge has been tested and proven by the passing of time.  No matter how robust the data supporting the latest published strategies, nothing is as valuable as time-tested, time-approved wisdom and understanding.

It is human nature for each person to think he or she knows it all.  It is, and there is no point in denying it.  Pope certainly did not.

We think our Fathers Fools, so wise we grow;

Our wiser Sons, no doubt, will think us so.  (lines 438-439)

Yet he leaves us with a wistful, hopeful plea that continues to call out to educators today.  Perhaps you can be one of those magistri who will answer it.

But where's the Man, who Counsel can bestow,

Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?  (lines 631-632)

How To Start the School Year

I have never been so eager for the start of a school year.  In particular, I can hardly wait to see my Latin III, IV, and V students, for we will begin those upper level classes with a plunge into one of the greatest experiences of my life.  I did something this summer that I have longed to do for more years than my students have been alive.  I was able to see and touch the one object in the world I have wanted to encounter more than any other.  It relates to their studies, and many of them know about this passion of mine, so it will be appropriate that I share it with them.  Yet there is another reason why I am going to start the year with this experience.  I will say more about that reason and the experience itself shortly, but for now, a bit of literary and historical background.

From 1715 to 1720, Alexander Pope published in six volumes his translation of Homer’s Iliad.  These six volumes were produced at great expense by Bernard Lintot and were sold by subscription to some of the most important names of the early 18^th century.  Pope arranged a deal for himself unheard of at that time for a writer and secured his financial future.  A little later he published his translation of the Odyssey, but with the help of two uncredited poets named Fenton and Broome.

The Iliad had, of course, been published in English prior to pope, most notably by George Chapman in rhyming fourteeners and by John Ogilby in heroic couplets.  Pope himself was taught to read by a loving aunt from the large, illustrated version by Ogilby.

With the Aeneid having been translated into English heroic couplets just a few years before by JohnDryden, and with Pope’s literary star on the rise, he was encouraged to take on Homer, and so he did.  The great 18th century biographer Samuel Johnson, in his Life of Pope, said this of it.  "It is certainly the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events in the annals of learning."  Consider the majesty of the opening lines of Book I.

Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring

Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!

That wrath which hurled to Pluto’s gloom reign

The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain,

Whose limbs, unburied on that naked shore,

Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.

While great Achilles and Atrides strove,

Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.

Or consider these from Book V in which the acts of my favorite of the Greek warriors, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, are depicted with such raging force.

Thus toiled the chiefs, in different parts engaged;

In every quarter fierce Tydides raged.

Amid the Greek, amid the Trojan train

Rapt through the ranks, he thunders o’er the plain;

Now here, now there, he darts from place to place,

Pours on their rear or lightens in their face.

Thus from high hills the torrents, swift and strong,

Deluge the plains and sweep the trees along

Through ruined moles the rushing wave resounds,

O’erwhelms the bridge, and bursts the lofty bounds!

The yellow harvests of the ripened year

And flatted vineyards, one sad waste appear

While Jove descends in sluicy sheets of rain,

And all the labours of mankind are vain.

So raged Tydides, boundless in his ire,

Drove armies back, and made all Troy retire.

I have collected a fair number of translations of Homer and Vergil, but Pope’s version of the Iliad is still the one to get my blood pumping!

For years I have wanted to see a first edition of Pope’s Iliad translation.  I have found them in rare bookstores on the Internet, but have never seen or held one in person…until our family vacation.  We had stopped in Midtown Scholar, a delightful bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  It was enormous, with three floors of used, rare, and new books.  I had ventured to the basement and, after perusing aisle after aisle, turned a corner into another store housed within the larger store.  It was called Robinson’ Rare Books and Fine Prints.  Most of the works were in locked, wood and glass cabinets arranged by century.  I asked the man working there if they had any Pope, and he checked his computer to find that they had a nine-volume set of his collected works, so I asked him to show it to me.  As he was unlocking its cabinet, I spotted the volumes of Pope’s Iliad and Odyssey nearby and asked if I could see one.  I withdrew the first volume of the Iliad, nearly shaking and with my heart beginning to beat fast.  I took it to a table where I could look at it and quickly opened to its frontispiece.  My eyes raced down the page whose reproduction I had seen so often, and there I found the date.  1715.  I was holding and looking at a first edition of my most sought-after book in the world.

I quickly called for my wife and children to join me, and our son took several pictures of me with the book.  It was in astoundingly good shape for being exactly 300 years old, and I thrilled to see the original opening lines that Pope changed for later versions.

The wrath of Peleus’ son, the direful spring

Of all the Grecian woes, o goddess, sing!

           

I had had only one other experience like that with a book and, unsurprisingly, it was with another edition of Pope’s Iliad.  When we were living in Texas, Melissa and I had visited a perfectly ordinary bookstore.  I was perusing the Classics section, and suddenly my eyes lit upon a Penguin edition of Pope.  It was October 26, 1996, and I recorded the moment on a note I now use as a bookmark in that volume.

Ineffable was the feeling when by the grace of God I chanced upon this volume of Pope’s Iliad.  The edition is indeed nothing remarkable, and yet when I happened upon it quite by accident in the most commercial of bookstores, I was rendered truly senseless.  My sense of balance lost, I was forced to support myself upon a nearby bookcase.  Quite truly the sight of that volume, there, unobtrusively standing amidst other great works, whose bookshelf was itself surrounded by a sea of vain publications, “eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te, Papa, aspexi, nihil est super mi, lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus flamma demanat, sonitu suopte tintinnant aures, gemina teguntur lumina nocte.”*

This is what it means to say education is a shared journey of discovery.  I want to kindle in my students the spark of learning's passion by drawing them close to my own burning flame.  These upper level students know of Greco-Roman epics, and the Latin V students have read Vergil.  They know of Pope and they know of the challenges and the artistry of literary translation.  They know the excitement of discovery through archaeological finds and through their own experiences with Classical literature.  It is important that they know their teacher is no less passionate and is in fact wildly excited about the field of their study.  This is how to start the school year.

*These lines are from Catullus 51, which he wrote upon falling in love at first sight, albeit from across the room, with Clodia Metella.  The only word I changed was the name of the addressee.  "It snatches my senses from me, for as soon as I have laid eyes on you, Pope, there is nothing left for me, but my tongue grows numb, a slight flame runs down my limbs, my ears ring with their own pounding, and my eyes are covered with darkness."

Drink Deep or Taste Not

Alexander Pope, 1688-1744

A little learning is a dang'rous thing.

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

"Essay on Criticism," Alexander Pope

While some would take Pasteur's famous dictum that "chance favors the prepared mind" to be a defense of the well-structured lesson plan, I argue that we must be careful not to get lost in the details.  Am I prepared to teach my classes?  I am in that I know my subject matter extremely well and understand how teenage students learn best.  Do I walk into a class with everything scripted?  God forbid.

Take a recent A.P. Latin class.  We were reading the scene in Aeneid, Book VI, in which the hero, Aeneas, enters the underworld.  Vergil describes the Styx, a river on which the gods trembled to take an oath.  He talks of the souls that had to wander its banks for a hundred years because their bodies had not been buried.  All of this prompted questions from the students.  What would happen if the gods swore by the Styx, yet broke their promise?  If someone died by being eaten by a lion, would that count as burial, or would the person have to wait until the lion died and was buried?

We discussed that questions like these are often asked by those who are used to consulting a sacred text on such matters.  Look it up in the Bible or the Koran, we say.  Such textual authority for what amount to rather legalistic questions, however, just does not exist with regard to the Greco-Roman mythology.  Yet I began to wonder.  To what extent was logical or philosophical or theological thought brought to bear on the Greco-Roman divinities and their interaction with the world?  Was there any sort of systematic theology relative to Greco-Roman myth?

So I asked.  I asked friends of mine, including Joe Day (Professor Emeritus, Classics, Wabash College), Stephanie Larson (Professor, Classics, Bucknell University), and Betty Rose Nagle (Professor, Classical Studies, Indiana University).  I immediately got back responses.  I received a discussion on "efforts to organize what was, in religious reality, a vast polytheistic, localist non-system into a more or less coherent system or pantheon" by the likes of Homer and Hesiod and a link to the writings of Xenophon against the traditional Homeric and Hesiodic portrayal.  I even got an answer to what would happen if the gods did not keep their Styx-bound word.  They would suffer ten years of death-like suspended animation.

And then I took that back to the classroom where my students and I spent a bit of time talking about ancient theology before progressing with the Vergil text.

This is education at its finest.  It is as I have so often described it a shared journey of discovery.  I have read the Aeneid countless times, yet every time I read it with students it is new.  We explore together the mysteries and glories of the world.  Classical scholar G.P. Goold once wrote, "An elementary teacher, to reach in due season the end of his curriculum, must every hour turn a [blind] eye to serious problems and refrain from pursuing truth beyond the charted boundaries of the textbook."  ( “Servius and the Helen Episode.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 74 (1970): 115)  I could not disagree more.  The true teacher, the magister can never be so bound, but must, along with the students, pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful, no matter how anfractuous the path.