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cjet79  3mo ago (text post)   1194 thread views

Tinker Tuesday

This was really popular last week, I was really impressed with how many hardworking hobbyist type people we have here. It got me motivated to do some of my own things.

As a reminder, this thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers. We can coordinate weekly standup type meetings if their is interest.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

Also naming the thread. Tinker Tuesday or taskmaster Tuesday, or something else? I switched the thread to Tuesday instead of Monday because the culture war thread refreshes on Monday.

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Class Prep - Great Books

I'm a teacher (high school history/literature) so my 'tinkering projects' are mostly in the class design/class prep category, which is kicking into another gear due to how soon the school year starts up. I'm designing two different 'Great Books' classes, one for ancient lit, the other for ancient/medieval, so that's been most of my focus for the past week. I've mostly finalized the books we'll be reading, but my goal for the next few days is to finalize the specific reading assignments for each week (I plan the year ahead of time) and specific discussion questions to cover each week.

Re: 'Ancient Literature', the plan is to start with Homer's Iliad, then the Book of Job (from the Bible), then Sophocles' Antigone, then Plato's Republic, then Virgil's Aeneid, and ending with Augustine's Confessions. I was hoping to include some Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in there, but I'm not sure it'll fit. Also wanted to include Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, but there's probably not enough time and it'd fit better with next year's Medieval Literature class anyway, even though Boethius is still Late Antiquity.

Re: 'Great Books' (covering ancient/medieval), I'm looking at Antigone, Republic, Confessions, Consolation of Philosophy, then Dante's Inferno and one of Shakespeare's plays. Still figuring out whether I can fit another book in there.

If anyone has good discussion/roundtable questions for any of these books, feel free to send them my way.

The Ancient literature plan seems like a solid list, although I'm curious if you will just be doing readings from some of the longer works. Even for me as a fairly motivated reader, I found the Republic to be quite daunting just to get through, let alone begin to comprehend. At least for a intro class, a collection of Plato's shorter dialogues seems more optimal and a better introduction. Hard to go wrong with the classic Trial and Death sequence (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo). Lots of good discussion to be had in those four.

Also interested to know why you went for Antigone instead of starting with Oedipus Rex.

Here are a couple cool websites for Dante specifically; commentary and illustrations that might be helpful for students: http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/ (this one has study questions at the bottom of each section) https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/ (commentary, side-by-side Italian/English)

Second the recommendation of the trial and death sequence. The Republic is a very daunting text, whereas those are more engaging and comprehensible. I'd suggest, if that frees up space, to add Xenophon's Apology alongside Plato's. That can start a discussion about how to read Plato's portrayal of Socrates critically - e.g. Xenophon's Socrates is much funnier, explicitly making jokes. A couple possible questions that could get students reading critically, particularly regarding the dramatic framing of the dialogues (which often goes unquestioned, but is extremely important):

  • Why does Socrates decide, right before his trial for impiety, to publicly play games with a priest?
  • Did Socrates want to die, and if so, why? (This connects to the themes of glory in the Iliad, if you raise the explanation that perhaps Socrates wanted a death that was glorious in its own way, which would ensure the immortality of his legend and of philosophy itself. Also to the Job/Antigone question of bad things happening to good people, if Socrates has found a way to turn the bad to his good)
  • How serious is Socrates? Is it different from the way we would think of a philosopher or teacher as serious? Can joking or even trolling be a way to be serious about something higher?
  • Plato was the founder of the Academy (and, in some ways, closer to a startup founder than the dean of a modern university), whereas Xenophon was a military man who lived outside Athens and had little fear of their authorities. Does that show up in the way they write their Apologies? E.g. Plato provides a magnificent speech showing off his rhetoric (which could be yours, for a small fee), whereas Xenophon makes Socrates more relatable.
  • Were the authorities right, from their perspective, to execute Socrates? Was philosophy destabilizing to Athens? Is youthful ambition inherently dangerous to the powerful? (connects to Iliad and to some extent Antigone)

Here's an interesting article about teaching the Iliad to Chinese high schoolers: https://scholars-stage.org/how-i-taught-the-iliad-to-chinese-teenagers/

As far as History of the Peloponnesian War, maybe make that the first half of your Friday class or similar? Also, Landmark Thucydides kicks ass as an edition.

Maybe try and force consistent translations for the epics? Fagles did a great job.

It's a bit unorthodox, but you could try to teach the kids to skim read properly, the funeral games in the Aeneid and also some of the same-y parts in Italy.

In the medieval course, I'd throw in Beowulf or Song of Roland. Going from Boethius to Dante is too much of a historical gap imo. Maybe also selections from Canterbury Tales or Decameron?

Open class discussion or even brief personal essay on "Why Bad Things Happen To Good People" before tackling Job might make the text more interesting, having articulated their personal beliefs.

Song of Roland is an excellent companion to the Iliad. The parallels are strong enough that it can be a great set-up for a discussion on the differences between ancient and medieval warrior culture - roles of kingship, religion, loyalty, violence, etc.

I was in a Great Books class in high school and very much enjoyed it. Each day was a presentation on a different book. There was a lecture, a reading, and a test. What was unique about this class was that a majority of the lessons were conducted by the students themselves. At the beginning of the semester, everyone chose which book they would present on and we began to go through them in publication order. Unfortunately, I don’t have any suggestions for your class, but I wish you luck.

I wish I'd gone to your school.

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