{"id":1482,"date":"2014-03-14T13:19:48","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T19:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/?p=1482"},"modified":"2022-02-24T14:26:30","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T14:26:30","slug":"frank-breslin-teaching-the-greeks-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/frank-breslin-teaching-the-greeks-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Breslin: Teaching the Greeks, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\nP { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }\n--><\/style>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><em>This is the second part of Frank Breslin&#8217;s essay on teaching the humanities. <a href=\"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/frank-breslin-teaching-the-greeks-part-1\/\">Click here for part 1. <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">But to return to our story \u2013<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">Okay, now that we\u2019ve solved those questions [muffled laughter], let\u2019s move on to some difficult ones. What happens when one group is absolutely certain that it possesses the truth and encounters another which dismisses that view as nonsense?\u201d Students give a range of opinions, while neither agreeing nor disagreeing with them. I summarize the gist of what has been said: that the one group might pity and feel sorry for the other, think it stubborn or the victims of brainwashing, and try to show why it was wrong to help free its members from error, while the other group thinks the same about them. \u201cWould one group ever convince the other?\u201d A long silence ensues, and students give a range of thoughtful replies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">I want to reframe the question. We have two persons, each of whom is sure that he has the truth. One of them actually does have the truth, while the other one doesn\u2019t, although he thinks he does. Now, if both think they\u2019re right, but only one of them is, what would be the difference in the subjective states of mind between these two persons? \u201d A few answers are given, although it becomes clear that a few students don\u2019t understand the question, so I repeat it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">Then someone says, &#8220;There <\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>would<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"> be no difference! They&#8217;d both have the same state of mind. They\u2019d both think they were right, but only one of them would be.\u201d A brief pause ensues. I ask students to think about what\u2019s just been said and then ask, \u201cThat being the case, if both states of mind are identical, what would that say about the state of being certain?\u201d Long pause, with no student response. I continue, \u201cLet\u2019s now take these same two persons, and tell them that only one of them is actually right, and the other one wrong. How would they know which one was which, without being told?\u201d Students are unsure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">What if they were told, and the person who <\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>was<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"> wrong was told he was wrong. Would he believe it?\u201d One student says, \u201cIt would all depend on what it was. If they could prove it by showing him the facts, he probably would accept it.\u201d Many agree. Then someone says, \u201cBut what if there\u2019s no concrete evidence you couldn\u2019t point to, but has to do with what he believes, something you can\u2019t <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">really prove one way or the other, but just feel it so deeply that you <\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>know<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"> that you\u2019re right? I don\u2019t think he would accept it. He\u2019d probably even think that the people who told him were wrong.\u201d Some students agree, while others aren\u2019t sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">What\u2019s the difference between being absolutely certain and being closed-minded?\u201d Students are silent and then give various answers, but, again, no conclusion is reached. \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between a person with rock-bottom principles and someone else who is closed-minded?\u201d Students again offer different opinions. A third question. \u201cWhat the difference between principles and prejudices?\u201d No responses. I then say, \u201cSeveral years ago, one student said that there wasn\u2019t anything difference, that they\u2019re one and the same thing, that principles are prejudices, and prejudices are principles, and that the only difference is the word which is used. What I\u2019d like you to do is to argue this both ways \u2013 they are and they aren\u2019t the same thing.\u201d Students then attempt to make a case for both sides with varying degrees of success. <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">Is it morally wrong to question things? Or are there things that should never be questioned, off-the-table, non-negotiable items that, in questioning them, some might feel that they\u2019d come undone as persons?\u201d A long pause. \u201cOr should everything be questioned?\u201d Various answers come trickling in and, again, some students are asked to repeat what they\u2019ve said to underscore an unusual point. <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">Are some people hard-wired to question? It&#8217;s simply their nature? They can\u2019t help themselves? Not to question would make them depressed?\u201d Silence. I continue: \u201cAre there others who are hard-wired not to question, but simply accept? It&#8217;s better for them if others just tell them what to believe? That they&#8217;d come undone if they questioned? That they should even be protected from questions for their own good and self-preservation?\u201d Many opinions are offered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">All the answers you\u2019ve thought were true to the many questions we\u2019ve been considering so far, how do you know that they\u2019re the answers you really believe in and not simply what you want to believe, or what you were raised to believe arethe true answers, and these may be the real reasons why you believe as you do?\u201d Long pause, with no one responding. <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">A somewhat larger question. Every culture has its own unique way of looking at the world, its system of beliefs and values, the things it considers true and false, right and wrong, important and unimportant. Let\u2019s call this its \u2018reality,\u2019 its conceptual and emotional prism or grid through which each culture views human existence, and every culture has its own \u2018reality,\u2019 which differs from the \u2018realities\u2019 of other cultures.\u201d I pause to let the idea slowly sink in. I then repeat this again, and students become intensely focused.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">Now let\u2019s flesh this out a bit. Let\u2019s say we have six different cultures, with six different \u2018realities,\u2019 and that each of these \u2018realities\u2019 seems true to everyone within each culture because that\u2019s all the people in that particular culture know and grow up with. No one in each of these cultures has ever left their culture, their \u2018reality,\u2019 or has ever met anyone from another culture.\u201d Another long pause.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">Now, what if one of these cultures began to send out ships to establish colonies and farm fertile land in various places around the entire Mediterranean basin because there wasn\u2019t enough land to sustain its ever-growing population. Over the centuries, hundreds of these colonies trade with the native populations, and get to know these peoples, their religions, beliefs, general outlook, their \u2018realities.\u2019 They also send back word to their homeland the news about all these strange cultures with their different beliefs and customs. Question: how would these colonists react to all these different peoples with their different \u2018realities\u2019?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\">Student reactions range from the colonists being surprised or shocked that these other cultures differ so markedly from that of their own, wondering about how they could possibly believe in such preposterous notions, feeling sorry for them because they hadn\u2019t had the good fortune to be born in the colonists\u2019 culture. A few students say that people of the other cultures might also be thinking the same thing about the colonists.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">This experience of being taken aback and disoriented in the face of a strange world is called \u2018culture shock\u2019 and is a feeling that is intensified if one must cope with this new culture on a daily basis. What do you think would be some of the positives of having to deal with \u2018culture shock\u2019?\u201d One student responds, \u201cWell, life would certainly never be boring. [general laughter] It would also be interesting and exciting in having to rethink all one\u2019s beliefs and entire outlook on life, which would keep one from becoming intolerant and closed-minded toward other people and ideas.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">It could also be very threatening ,\u201d says another student, \u201cbecause one would now have to rethink everything one had ever been brought up to believe, and it would take a very strong person to be able and willing to do this, since most people would be terrified at having their world turned upside down.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">So how do you think our colonists would react when coming upon these different cultures and \u2018realities\u2019?\u201d \u201cI think they\u2019d be in denial,\u201d says a student. \u201cThey\u2019d simply say that these people didn\u2019t know any better, were superstitious, brainwashed, or crazy. They probably would also want to change the minds of these peoples so they wouldn\u2019t feel threatened.\u201d Another student says, \u201cWell, it wouldn\u2019t have to be because they felt threatened, but because they sincerely wanted to help these people, enlighten them, because they felt they were wrong.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">But that\u2019s just it, isn\u2019t it,\u201d interjects another. \u201cWhile saying they wanted to help these people, they might at the same time feel so threatened that they\u2019d convince themselves that they simply wanted to help these people out of the goodness of their heart, whereas what they might really be doing is wanting to silence their own doubts by convincing them they were wrong.\u201d A long, thoughtful silence descends on the class. \u201cIt could be either one,\u201d says another, \u201calthough I really don\u2019t see how you could know, since there\u2019s no way you could actually prove it one way or another.\u201d Another student adds, \u201cI suppose you could even hate this other group because they would threaten you by their very existence, especially if they seem to be decent people. So you might be tempted to disparage them in some way by looking down on them, calling them names, making up all manner of things about them just so you wouldn\u2019t have to take them seriously.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">But aren\u2019t we forgetting something?\u201d says somebody else. \u201cThere\u2019s another kind of reaction to all of this. Isn\u2019t it possible to think that all of these different \u2018realities\u2019 could be right?\u201d \u201cBut how\u2019s that possible,\u201d asks another, \u201csince you\u2019d then have several contradictory ways of viewing the world, so how could they all be correct? I\u2019m not saying that all these peoples couldn\u2019t have different beliefs and think that only theirs was right and all the others were wrong, but that they all couldn\u2019t be objectively right! This desk I\u2019m sitting in either exists or it doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s either here or it\u2019s not. So if you have two cultures, and they both look at the world differently, only one of them can be right and the other one wrong, since they can\u2019t both be right. And if you\u2019re talking about more than two cultures, then it\u2019s even more impossible that they could all be correct, when only one of them can?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">Well, let me put it another way,\u201d the other replies. \u201cSay there\u2019s 20 of us here in this room, and we all come from different parts of the world, from different cultures, with different religions and ways of viewing the world. Everybody would have a different outlook on life, a different \u2018reality,\u2019 which we\u2019d all think was right. Why? Because all of these outlooks have worked for us and the cultures we come from. All these different \u2018realities\u2019 make sense within each of our cultures. So that, getting back to the colonists and the cultures they encounter, we\u2019d have the same situation \u2013 everything makes sense within each of those cultures, but not within the other cultures. Of course, those other worldviews would seem wrong to foreigners, but only because they hadn\u2019t been raised in those cultures, but if they had, those other \u2018realities\u2019 would begin to make sense.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: large;\">I see what you\u2019re talking about,\u201d says the other student, \u201cbut that still doesn\u2019t address the question of which culture is objectively right . . . .\u201d at which point, the bell rings for the end of class, and the students turn to me. I hold up the text of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>The Greek Way<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"> and say, \u201cWelcome to the Greeks! We\u2019ll continue tomorrow where we left off today,\u201d and the class files out. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3 align=\"JUSTIFY\"><em>A few thoughts about teaching College-Prep and Advanced Placement British Literature to American high-school seniors in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century: Students today grow up in such a fragmented and aimless world that, unless schools provide them with some idea of where the modern world has come from as a tradition, schools themselves become part of the problem of modern meaninglessness. Not that students necessarily should accept that tradition, but that they should at least understand what it is and its wellsprings, which for over 25 centuries have shaped and nourished the Western mind.<\/em><\/h3>\n<h3 align=\"JUSTIFY\"><em>It\u2019s always unwise to accept or reject what one doesn\u2019t understand \u2013 especially to accept the past simply because it is old, or to reject it for the same reason. The past could very well have been a confining dungeon of bigoted darkness, or a vast treasure trove of radiant wisdom, or even, perhaps, a little of both, but students will never know if they just blindly accept or reject it, but only if they look for themselves.<\/em><\/h3>\n<h3 align=\"JUSTIFY\"><em>This concern about modern meaninglessness caused me to create a senior English humanities course that would give students an overall sense of cultural context within which they could better understand the world of today. The course would introduce 17-year-olds to what the past has to offer, beginning with what the Greeks had to say about the human condition and where one could find the strength to endure it; the meaning of life, if it had any; the limits of the possible and the beauty of struggle; the wondrous achievements of our common humanity and its marvelously empowering collective delusions.<\/em><\/h3>\n<h3 align=\"JUSTIFY\"><em>In essence, this humanities course tried to suggest the Big Picture, which would give students a way of telling truth from falsehood, right from wrong, the valuable from the cheap and the tawdry in ways that would help them make sense of a world that might otherwise strike them as having little meaning at all.<\/em><\/h3>\n<h3 align=\"JUSTIFY\"><em>It has been said that the best education consists of three books or visions of life \u2013 the Greeks, the Bible, and Shakespeare, not for the answers they give, but for the questions they raise. There is also a fourth, Modernism. Not that it is true or false, but that it exists in the modern world as a significant presence and a powerful force, and students must learn what it is, for it suffuses everything.<\/em><\/h3>\n<h3 align=\"JUSTIFY\"><em>These four ways of viewing the world, each in its own way, provide not only a partial perspective through which students can reflect upon life, but also cultural continuity with the past, whose larger historical framework cannot help but contribute a more coherent and meaningful understanding of the modern world in which students will have to live for decades to come.<\/em><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the second part of Frank Breslin&#8217;s essay on teaching the humanities. Click here for part 1. But to return to our story \u2013 \u201cOkay, now that we\u2019ve solved those questions [muffled laughter], let\u2019s move on to some difficult ones. What happens when one group is absolutely certain that it possesses the truth and <a href=\"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/frank-breslin-teaching-the-greeks-part-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">&#8230;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Frank Breslin: Teaching the Greeks, part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plato"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Frank Breslin: Teaching the Greeks, part 2 - PLATO - Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Frank Breslin: Teaching the Greeks, part 2 - a post from PLATO - The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/frank-breslin-teaching-the-greeks-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Frank Breslin: Teaching the Greeks, part 2 - 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