Education: May 2012 Archives
Ace of Spades HQ: Interesting Post at Commentary, on the Vicious Disdain of the Elite
On shibboleths, left-wing academia's disdain for middlebrow culture, and the New Aristocrats: "The important thing, the only important thing, about a shibboleth is that it's not what the commoners are saying. The point of the shibboleth is not reaffirm external truth, but to reaffirm personal identity. It is no wonder they all quickly fall in a line and begin spouting minor variations on the same stupid claim. The point was never, ever to consider the truth of the matter, and subject it to analysis; but precisely to simply repeat what other self-discovered members of the New Aristocrats are saying, because that's how they each know they belong."
Links to this story in Commentary by Fred Siegel, How Highbrows Killed Culture. Far from being a cultural desert, the 1950s were a time of great popular interest in the life of the mind, even on television: "'on March 16, 1956, a Sunday chosen at random,' the viewer could have seen a discussion of the life and times of Toulouse-Lautrec by three prominent art critics, an interview with theologian Paul Tillich, an adaptation of Walter Van Tilburg Clark's Hook, a documentary on mental illness with Dr. William Menninger, and a 90-minute performance of The Taming of the Shrew."
This website, by Gilbert Lawall of the U. Mass. Classics department, is intended to be "a location where [high school] teachers [of ancient Greek] themselves can share what they are doing with other teachers and teachers can learn what others are doing.... I am seeking anything that would be of use to other Greek teachers in the schools, and especially to those teaching Greek in non-traditional contexts: lesson plans, teaching tips, pedagogical strategies, exercises, work sheets, sample quizzes and exams, projects, reviews of books, videos, and computer programs of use to Greek teachers, etc."
