I have a sneaking suspicion that at least half of the reason Western Civ had to go (hey ho!) is because it's arduous and intimidating to grapple with the works of, say, Plato and Aristotle and Dante and Milton etc—the challenge of reading our best books in their entirety and coming up with an intelligent response is difficult enough for a well-read adult, never mind a college kid and their tenured babysitters.
It's much easier to denounce a book or author based on sex and skin color, which allows you to maintain your ignorance but do it with a public performance of self-flattering self-righteous pseudo-virtue—"I won't read the Greeks because I'm protecting minorities!" lol
The American brain has rotted from an excess of cheap moralism in the same way that the American gut and body have swelled and sickened from an excess of cheap calories. People crave unearned moral superiority almost as much as they crave food and sex, and our academy has been happy to sell it to them as long as the funds kept flowing.
Well said. I don't like doing crossword puzzles because they make me feel dumb, and I don't like feeling dumb. A lot of the pampered kids at upscale colleges have been swaddled in default affirmation their whole lives, and don't like feeling dumb either. To truly reckon with the true classics is to be humbled, and they don't want any piece of that.
Maybe none of this would have happened if the Western Civ classes started with Aristophanes—he has enough fart and penis jokes to make anyone raised on sitcoms feel very comfortable.
"To truly reckon with the true classics is to be humbled." Very good point—I think "humble" shares a root with "humility" and humility is just very un-American. We are too rich and too stuffed with delusions of grandeur. Also, in the past 40/50ish years anything that can't be quickly monetized has begun to seem suspicious, in a way that offends the sensibilities of both our Puritan and Marxist wings.
But great books and their study have always been the province of a small minority and are really not suited to mass consumption.
My Latin teacher's trick for keeping us callow high school kids engaged was to have us translate the decidedly NSFW epigrams of Catullus. And that's a good point that monetization of everything in America makes those things that exist beyond market logic to seem suspicious and uncanny.
It's interesting how relatively few people read the great books vs. the numerous people who would like to perceived as the sort of person who reads books. I am convinced that most of the book business upscale of the Baldaccis is about selling people upscale home decor than books that will actually be read.
At first I only had the Loeb version, so I'd never seen Carmen 16 actually honestly translated until a few years ago. It's still hard for me to tell who's fucking who and where exactly ;))
Catullus, Martial and Ovid are just as spicy as any modern stand-up comedian.
Will never forget my first experience of a stage performance of The Clouds. Subsequently, I came to cherish the legacy of Aristophanes in Robin Williams, who himself knew the power of flatulence to induce convulsive laughter.
What feminist would not rejoice in Lysistrata, as it divulges such strategies as might be employed more wisely than those of shouting and sloganeering one's earthly days away.
If I remember correctly, in Lysistra there's lots of jokes about how no man wants to fuck an old and/or ugly woman, which L. considers an intolerable injustice. Now even noticing that would be intolerable!
Our modern feminists are far too dour and prudish for ol' Aristophanes.
Several years ago there was a book published about the new Puritans. Can’t recall the author’s name but I join in the observation that a lot of youth, not just women, are, as granny would say, “fuss budgets.”
What is pronoun primacy but punctiliousness in performative virtue signalling?
True that. You will recall that within recent memory Flannery O'Connor was exiled from a Jesuit college because of her writings about race in the mid-20th century.
By denouncing O'Connor as a racist, no small number of students will remain ignorant of her pitch perfect accounts of how life was at that time, how life was changing, and what transpired as a result. It appeared that righteousness was seen as preferable to rigor, which would suggest reading, then critiquing, rather than condemnation without investigation.
Perhaps it's the never-ending battle between Hobbes and Locke? Just because the Founders leaned on Locke does not mean they eliminated Hobbes. In them meantime, we're commanded to be in the world, not of it.
I did not make my way through the rigors of childhood surrounded by the artifacts of elite educational institutions. Indeed, I endured nativism long before I knew the term. Along with the absence of privilege and the disparagement of social 'betters," it was nevertheless impressed upon me that to gain an education was to gain the world. And so I pursued education, and then more education, and yet more and I am fond of saying, "I am just getting started."
It is not wrong to critique the Western canon but it is wrong and intellectually defective to demand that all prior thought and evidence of Western culture must be destroyed in order to crown the latest thing supreme. This is silly, of course, yet no one dares to say it, lest litigation ensue. It is sillier still that in the eyes of the new (and largely self-selected) guardians of civilization, some cultures remain sacrosanct for their "authenticity," or some other unfathomable, yet not particularly special, quality.
Learning is difficult. Many long nights will not be applauded, for it will only be the student who bears witness to the task. Material is complex. This week I came across a meme captioned "Even I was confused." -- Immanuel Kant.
I'm old enough to have studied classical history and Western Civ in high school. I never really got it, though. It never made much sense, and I think the reason is the lack of any reference to Christianity and its accomplishments. So, it's good to see some rigor return to the Ivies, but I'd like a more convincing view of history.
I'm not familiar with how the high school curricula used to work, but the Hankins book goes into depth for hundreds of pages discussing the rise of Christianity and the importance of the fused Classical-Christian tradition that kept "the golden thread" alive. My review didn't get into that as much, in part because I was nearing my word limit and in part because I have a lot more grounding in pre- and non-Christian Greco-Roman civilization from before Constantine, Justinian, the Byzantines, the medieval church, etc. to be able to comment critically on Hankins' presentation. I'd say check the book out, I think you'd probably be satisfied.
That's why it's way premature to declare that "wokeness" has been vanquished, since the roots go back so many decades. While "political correctness" became a punchline and receded in the 90s in the broader culture, within academia it remained the default polite conventional wisdom that only became more and more hegemonic in terms of the jobs and funding pipelines. Whether one refers to it as "woke" or "PC," it would take decades of academic chemo to bring that totalizing, metastasizing ideology to heel.
To be more precise, they chanted "Western Civ has got to go." They referred to a required course instead of Western culture itself. The college administrators gave in because at American colleges it is safer to dumb down the curriculum than to have a famous race hustler accuse you of racism.
At Columbia in the late 80s and early 90s, there were similar protests to either dump the "Core Curriculum" entirely or to transform it beyond recognition. The "Western Civ has got to go" became well-known because of Jesse Jackson and Stanford, but I think it's safe to say that it took on a life of its own and that it was probably in the mix of Columbia protesters' chanting repertoire.
They wanted western civ to go in 1987, which is why homeschoolers today still use the 1983 edition of the Poetry anthology (classic curriculum), instead of the DEI-editions
I'm sure glad that exists on tangible paper rather than an electronic file that can be surreptitiously edited from afar. Fahrenheit 451 is a lot easier when you don't even have to start a fire.
The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition sounds like a good read. While I ended up getting a degree in English, I did enjoy the Greco-Roman Classics. I never understood the retreat from teaching Western Civ. It was one of my favorite classes and kind of a gimmie in terms of grading. Lol, maybe I've been out of step with the in crowd longer than I thought.
Elsewhere in the comments, Clever Pseudonym has a great analysis of why Western Civ kind of had to go because it's just too challenging for contemporary students' attention spans and colleges are more in the business of keeping its customers happy rather than making kids uncomfortable by actually trying to educate them.
The trend of treating students like customers has been one of the worse developments in higher education, and to me speaks more to a lack of integrity to the purpose of higher ed, than something prospective students would find to be a deal-breaker.
Now I'm suddenly curious if any market studies were done on this account, or if leadership did a gut check and went with it.
A good example of what you're talking about is grade inflation. When you sell education, you set academic standards high. When you sell credentials, you set them low.
So I read the first line about 1989 and the first flush and I am thinking "I was there, I don't remember any...." and then I read the rest of the paragraph and got a jolt of memory about the spray painted sheet banner! I was not at commencement, but I recall that it was up there for a little whle at least. Thank you for that memory.
My first job at Columbia was handling the centennial of the Journalism School, so I needed to study the entire university's history so that I'd know how the J-School fit in. The banner incident came up a lot and always as a proud wonderful enlightened stand that should be celebrated forever more. On a couple of occasions the stunt has been repeated with university backing and it was mentioned in a bunch of admissions materials and so forth as a key part of the wonderful exciting tradition of righteous protests at Columbia. Now that the protest culture has blown up in Columbia's face, I expect the banner incident to be memory-holed to some extent, they probably won't be hanging any more university-sanctioned banners on Butler for many years to come.
It's been too long since I read a really good and sweeping history book. This looks like it will fit the bill. Thanks for recommending. Release date is late August so will have to wait.
I had originally pitched reviewing The Golden Thread to the Washington Examiner mag about a month ago as something to review when Vol. 1 comes out in August, never imagining that they'd like the idea and want the piece by early June! As you might imagine, the last number of weeks were a bit of a crunch. I found the book erudite but brisk and accessible, and expect that you'll enjoy!
$95 for the Kindle! If it’s good it’s well worth it but I’m anchored by the prices I’m used to paying. Strange that they’d want the review so well in advance of availability. Are you connected to Ross at The Metropolitan Review and sam Kahn at the Republic Of Letters for future reviews you may want to do?
I too saw the price and said, "Yep, it's a textbook, all right."
But I'll be ordering a copy, and in hardcover (like in caveman times). This looks like it would be best enjoyed/savored while holding an actual hardcover book, rather than reading it on a thin electronic screen.
Usually when I'm going to review a book the publisher will send me a physical galley, but in this case they furnished a link so I could only read the book on my computer or tablet. So I don't know for sure what the physical book will look and feel like, but it's 1100 pages, probably hardcover, and extensively illustrated in color. I suspect the elevated price point even for the Kindle edition is connected to the likelihood of a lot of classical academies using the books in their curriculum.
I am indeed acquainted with Ross and Sam, I've written for Sam at Persuasion before and am a paid subscriber to the Metropolitan Review, have been meaning to pitch them at some point!
I have a sneaking suspicion that at least half of the reason Western Civ had to go (hey ho!) is because it's arduous and intimidating to grapple with the works of, say, Plato and Aristotle and Dante and Milton etc—the challenge of reading our best books in their entirety and coming up with an intelligent response is difficult enough for a well-read adult, never mind a college kid and their tenured babysitters.
It's much easier to denounce a book or author based on sex and skin color, which allows you to maintain your ignorance but do it with a public performance of self-flattering self-righteous pseudo-virtue—"I won't read the Greeks because I'm protecting minorities!" lol
The American brain has rotted from an excess of cheap moralism in the same way that the American gut and body have swelled and sickened from an excess of cheap calories. People crave unearned moral superiority almost as much as they crave food and sex, and our academy has been happy to sell it to them as long as the funds kept flowing.
Well said. I don't like doing crossword puzzles because they make me feel dumb, and I don't like feeling dumb. A lot of the pampered kids at upscale colleges have been swaddled in default affirmation their whole lives, and don't like feeling dumb either. To truly reckon with the true classics is to be humbled, and they don't want any piece of that.
Maybe none of this would have happened if the Western Civ classes started with Aristophanes—he has enough fart and penis jokes to make anyone raised on sitcoms feel very comfortable.
"To truly reckon with the true classics is to be humbled." Very good point—I think "humble" shares a root with "humility" and humility is just very un-American. We are too rich and too stuffed with delusions of grandeur. Also, in the past 40/50ish years anything that can't be quickly monetized has begun to seem suspicious, in a way that offends the sensibilities of both our Puritan and Marxist wings.
But great books and their study have always been the province of a small minority and are really not suited to mass consumption.
Thanks!
My Latin teacher's trick for keeping us callow high school kids engaged was to have us translate the decidedly NSFW epigrams of Catullus. And that's a good point that monetization of everything in America makes those things that exist beyond market logic to seem suspicious and uncanny.
It's interesting how relatively few people read the great books vs. the numerous people who would like to perceived as the sort of person who reads books. I am convinced that most of the book business upscale of the Baldaccis is about selling people upscale home decor than books that will actually be read.
Ahh the old Catullus strategy!
At first I only had the Loeb version, so I'd never seen Carmen 16 actually honestly translated until a few years ago. It's still hard for me to tell who's fucking who and where exactly ;))
Catullus, Martial and Ovid are just as spicy as any modern stand-up comedian.
Will never forget my first experience of a stage performance of The Clouds. Subsequently, I came to cherish the legacy of Aristophanes in Robin Williams, who himself knew the power of flatulence to induce convulsive laughter.
What feminist would not rejoice in Lysistrata, as it divulges such strategies as might be employed more wisely than those of shouting and sloganeering one's earthly days away.
If I remember correctly, in Lysistra there's lots of jokes about how no man wants to fuck an old and/or ugly woman, which L. considers an intolerable injustice. Now even noticing that would be intolerable!
Our modern feminists are far too dour and prudish for ol' Aristophanes.
Several years ago there was a book published about the new Puritans. Can’t recall the author’s name but I join in the observation that a lot of youth, not just women, are, as granny would say, “fuss budgets.”
What is pronoun primacy but punctiliousness in performative virtue signalling?
Bueller?
True that. You will recall that within recent memory Flannery O'Connor was exiled from a Jesuit college because of her writings about race in the mid-20th century.
By denouncing O'Connor as a racist, no small number of students will remain ignorant of her pitch perfect accounts of how life was at that time, how life was changing, and what transpired as a result. It appeared that righteousness was seen as preferable to rigor, which would suggest reading, then critiquing, rather than condemnation without investigation.
Wait till they cast eyes upon Faulkner! ;)
Perhaps it's the never-ending battle between Hobbes and Locke? Just because the Founders leaned on Locke does not mean they eliminated Hobbes. In them meantime, we're commanded to be in the world, not of it.
I did not make my way through the rigors of childhood surrounded by the artifacts of elite educational institutions. Indeed, I endured nativism long before I knew the term. Along with the absence of privilege and the disparagement of social 'betters," it was nevertheless impressed upon me that to gain an education was to gain the world. And so I pursued education, and then more education, and yet more and I am fond of saying, "I am just getting started."
It is not wrong to critique the Western canon but it is wrong and intellectually defective to demand that all prior thought and evidence of Western culture must be destroyed in order to crown the latest thing supreme. This is silly, of course, yet no one dares to say it, lest litigation ensue. It is sillier still that in the eyes of the new (and largely self-selected) guardians of civilization, some cultures remain sacrosanct for their "authenticity," or some other unfathomable, yet not particularly special, quality.
Learning is difficult. Many long nights will not be applauded, for it will only be the student who bears witness to the task. Material is complex. This week I came across a meme captioned "Even I was confused." -- Immanuel Kant.
And so I laughed and carried on.
I'm old enough to have studied classical history and Western Civ in high school. I never really got it, though. It never made much sense, and I think the reason is the lack of any reference to Christianity and its accomplishments. So, it's good to see some rigor return to the Ivies, but I'd like a more convincing view of history.
I'm not familiar with how the high school curricula used to work, but the Hankins book goes into depth for hundreds of pages discussing the rise of Christianity and the importance of the fused Classical-Christian tradition that kept "the golden thread" alive. My review didn't get into that as much, in part because I was nearing my word limit and in part because I have a lot more grounding in pre- and non-Christian Greco-Roman civilization from before Constantine, Justinian, the Byzantines, the medieval church, etc. to be able to comment critically on Hankins' presentation. I'd say check the book out, I think you'd probably be satisfied.
Great writing with good cause! And, yes, there are a lot of dumb people who go into debt to be told, “we think you are smart”! Thanks
"Hey Hey Ho Ho, Western culture's got to go."
So chanted Jesse Jackson at Stanford in the 1980s, coordinating with students and faculty who obligingly changed their core curriculum.
That's why it's way premature to declare that "wokeness" has been vanquished, since the roots go back so many decades. While "political correctness" became a punchline and receded in the 90s in the broader culture, within academia it remained the default polite conventional wisdom that only became more and more hegemonic in terms of the jobs and funding pipelines. Whether one refers to it as "woke" or "PC," it would take decades of academic chemo to bring that totalizing, metastasizing ideology to heel.
To be more precise, they chanted "Western Civ has got to go." They referred to a required course instead of Western culture itself. The college administrators gave in because at American colleges it is safer to dumb down the curriculum than to have a famous race hustler accuse you of racism.
At Columbia in the late 80s and early 90s, there were similar protests to either dump the "Core Curriculum" entirely or to transform it beyond recognition. The "Western Civ has got to go" became well-known because of Jesse Jackson and Stanford, but I think it's safe to say that it took on a life of its own and that it was probably in the mix of Columbia protesters' chanting repertoire.
They replaced the core with "Culture, Ideas, Values" (CIV) to avoid upsetting the alumni.
They wanted western civ to go in 1987, which is why homeschoolers today still use the 1983 edition of the Poetry anthology (classic curriculum), instead of the DEI-editions
I'm sure glad that exists on tangible paper rather than an electronic file that can be surreptitiously edited from afar. Fahrenheit 451 is a lot easier when you don't even have to start a fire.
The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition sounds like a good read. While I ended up getting a degree in English, I did enjoy the Greco-Roman Classics. I never understood the retreat from teaching Western Civ. It was one of my favorite classes and kind of a gimmie in terms of grading. Lol, maybe I've been out of step with the in crowd longer than I thought.
Elsewhere in the comments, Clever Pseudonym has a great analysis of why Western Civ kind of had to go because it's just too challenging for contemporary students' attention spans and colleges are more in the business of keeping its customers happy rather than making kids uncomfortable by actually trying to educate them.
The trend of treating students like customers has been one of the worse developments in higher education, and to me speaks more to a lack of integrity to the purpose of higher ed, than something prospective students would find to be a deal-breaker.
Now I'm suddenly curious if any market studies were done on this account, or if leadership did a gut check and went with it.
A good example of what you're talking about is grade inflation. When you sell education, you set academic standards high. When you sell credentials, you set them low.
Superb example!
So I read the first line about 1989 and the first flush and I am thinking "I was there, I don't remember any...." and then I read the rest of the paragraph and got a jolt of memory about the spray painted sheet banner! I was not at commencement, but I recall that it was up there for a little whle at least. Thank you for that memory.
My first job at Columbia was handling the centennial of the Journalism School, so I needed to study the entire university's history so that I'd know how the J-School fit in. The banner incident came up a lot and always as a proud wonderful enlightened stand that should be celebrated forever more. On a couple of occasions the stunt has been repeated with university backing and it was mentioned in a bunch of admissions materials and so forth as a key part of the wonderful exciting tradition of righteous protests at Columbia. Now that the protest culture has blown up in Columbia's face, I expect the banner incident to be memory-holed to some extent, they probably won't be hanging any more university-sanctioned banners on Butler for many years to come.
It's been too long since I read a really good and sweeping history book. This looks like it will fit the bill. Thanks for recommending. Release date is late August so will have to wait.
I had originally pitched reviewing The Golden Thread to the Washington Examiner mag about a month ago as something to review when Vol. 1 comes out in August, never imagining that they'd like the idea and want the piece by early June! As you might imagine, the last number of weeks were a bit of a crunch. I found the book erudite but brisk and accessible, and expect that you'll enjoy!
$95 for the Kindle! If it’s good it’s well worth it but I’m anchored by the prices I’m used to paying. Strange that they’d want the review so well in advance of availability. Are you connected to Ross at The Metropolitan Review and sam Kahn at the Republic Of Letters for future reviews you may want to do?
I too saw the price and said, "Yep, it's a textbook, all right."
But I'll be ordering a copy, and in hardcover (like in caveman times). This looks like it would be best enjoyed/savored while holding an actual hardcover book, rather than reading it on a thin electronic screen.
My old eyes need the light of the screen. Plus I like the search function.
When I finally finished it on my thin electronic screen I felt tremendously edified, like I'd just gone to the cognitive gym.
Usually when I'm going to review a book the publisher will send me a physical galley, but in this case they furnished a link so I could only read the book on my computer or tablet. So I don't know for sure what the physical book will look and feel like, but it's 1100 pages, probably hardcover, and extensively illustrated in color. I suspect the elevated price point even for the Kindle edition is connected to the likelihood of a lot of classical academies using the books in their curriculum.
I am indeed acquainted with Ross and Sam, I've written for Sam at Persuasion before and am a paid subscriber to the Metropolitan Review, have been meaning to pitch them at some point!