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Reason # 5,078 to Homeschool

So your college aged student can handle her 
Sophist- icated professor. 
Dear Daughter is taking honors English at the local university and surprise- they are studying Greek Lit.  

Suppose you are the college professor tasked with instructing students who actually want to study Odysseus, Sophocles and the philosophers of ancient Greece. What will be the emphasis? Perhaps an analysis of historical, oratorical and philosophical prose? Or shall they compare / contrast the dialects of the Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians?  Maybe they will contest the existence of the material world. No, no, no, my dear. The focal point of all discussion will be love. But not just any love.  Why waste time on  Agape, Philia, or Storge when the professor is obsessed with Eros? Yes indeed, we shall listen to lectures that are an amalgamation of the following bibliography: The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, Plato's Republic and Feminism, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece.


Sounds very similar to Safe Education Czar, Kevin Jennings' reading list for Middle Schoolers.


Never mind that a sophist teaching Plato is analogous to an atheist teaching Christianity. Forget that the richness of the classics is being reduced to a Freudian obsession with eros. What will your new graduate learn from this enlightening experience in the real world?  Will she join The New Thought Police and buy into the Newspeak? Or perhaps she's previously read Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Plato,  even John Paul II, and she can argue that it is the desire of the human heart to be the subject of another's love rather than the object of his gratification. And maybe she will join forces with 3 other students to propose that love is sacrificial rather than utilitarian in nature. And she may even be bold enough to assert that objective truth does indeed exist; though one's experiences may shape her perception of truth, it does not alter the reality of truth itself. Even then, the sophisiticated professor may retort with, "You people are beginning to bore me," because she has no logical refutation to the  students' propositions.  So much for Socratic dialogue. *sigh*


Silly college student, this class isn't concerned with the mechanics of grammar or proper MLA form. Those rules are so high school. Creativity and expression are preferred, as long as you manage to express the professor's opinion in 1200 +/- words of regurgitated lectures.  


So we will proceed by putting Plato into a box. A Cracker Jack box. And the prize is a condom. Pull it over your head and proceed into the cave. 
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Comments

Rachel Keppner said…
Oh, THAT is good-- I loved this!!! Sounds to me like this professor didn't know enough about the subject to understand what her enlightened students were talking about! *hee!*
March 11, 2010 at 10:29 PM
Just Mairs said…
ay yi yi...sounds like most of my graduate courses at a well-known ivy league named for a drab color...
April 20, 2010 at 1:23 AM
Lisa Marie said…
LOL the award... too funny. WOW... so your child is wiser than the professor... nice! great post :) maybe she (and hopefully if not her, someone like her!) can go on to teach these things better than this lame professor! ;)
May 12, 2010 at 9:11 PM
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