Thread on why I find the whole Boris Johnson thing--what I call the "Dead Poet's Society" model of Classics--so despicable (even beyond his politics).
Some context: as I've been doing for yrs, I just finished explaining to randos at Xmas parties what "Classics" is 1/
Some context: as I've been doing for yrs, I just finished explaining to randos at Xmas parties what "Classics" is 1/
It's tiresome, and nowadays I usually lead with Roman history and Roman archaeology. Those are things I do professionally that everyone usually gets. 2/
By contrast, Classics remain nebulous. We in the discipline "get it", but that's like 15k (a guess) professionals in N. America? We forget how small that world is.
And now this is getting play as an "exciting" thing for Classics: memorizing and reciting a bit of Homer! 3/
And now this is getting play as an "exciting" thing for Classics: memorizing and reciting a bit of Homer! 3/
A discipline which puts forward as paragon the recitation of old poetry is starting by conceding any claim to innovation. That is crazy!!! Let me tell you why 4/
I have colleagues doing so many amazing new things! restoring ancient color, making 3D models, rediscovering ancient social classes we thought were irrecoverable, reconstructing ancient diet or agriculture, digging up gold (sometimes), reading new inscriptions, and on and on. 5/
Yes, we have and will have students (like me, admittedly) who were drawn to classics in part by reciting poetry, in my case Vergil in 10th grade. But those ppl are dwindling. That source just can't be relied on for a durable, healthy discipline over the next decades. 6/
Those are the facts, and yet my experience as a professional in this field is that we privilege a "Dead Poet's Society model" over novelty, while new techniques are marginalized as serving to fill out the world we learn about thru Homer or Vergil, i.e. thru canonical texts. 7/
And still we have to hear BoJo's "exciting" Greek recitation; that's what Classics is!
Ffs, what other discipline shoots itself in the foot like this?
It'd be like a biologist wowing crowds by naming ALL the different species of plants. It's laughable in another context. 8/
Ffs, what other discipline shoots itself in the foot like this?
It'd be like a biologist wowing crowds by naming ALL the different species of plants. It's laughable in another context. 8/
And it's not just ideology. Believe me, I wish it were 2004 and universities spent like back then, and I wish we had better public funding for whatever secondary education we'd like. But we don't. And a field that delights in rehearsing oldies-but-goldies is going to die. 9/
To be clear: I am not advocating for eliminating those who love poetry! But a field that makes all new approaches or new results auxiliary to old ways of doing things is not going to survive. I can't think of another discipline which is so trenchantly invested in doing this.
