If you teach at a community college, please take a moment to read this open letter to a composition teacher by Elaine Maimon, president of Governors State University.
Now let’s talk. This past Monday, I taught Plato’s Republic VII for the Free Minds Program. If you aren’t familiar with it, VII is where Plato gives us one of the most famous moments in all of Western philosophy, the Allegory of the Cave. As expected, I helped my students navigate technical issues, like what the various elements in “the story” correspond to, allegory-wise. But there was a moment in that exploration in which students started to see Plato’s point: Education is not about filling an empty but otherwise receptive container, but about “turning around,” the transformation of the student. The icing on the cake, so to speak, was when I wrote the word education on the board, and broke down the etymology: both “to train or mold” and “to lead out.”
The Cave gives fairly specific answers to questions about that etymology: Who leads, who is led, and of course, out of what. But however one might answer those questions — and however critical one might be of Plato — the thing that sticks with me is the basic role of the teacher as catalyst of transformation, whether you’re on the educare side of the debate, or the educere side. (And if you’re ready to dig into that debate, here’s a nice ERIC reference to get your blood pumping: Educare and Educere: Is a Balance Possible in the Educational System?)
This role — and how we shoulder or abdicate it — is at the heart of so many conversations I have with colleagues, past and present. At the risk of offending readers, let me personalize my message.
As an undergrad at Southwestern University, I majored in history. Now, that is fairly unremarkable, except that I started at SU doing everything in my power to avoid taking history. I even tried to talk the dean of students into letting me count music history courses as my history core — without success. So, where did the history major thing come from?
When I ran out of possible escape routes, I resigned myself and took Medieval History with one Dr. Weldon Crowley. Dr. Crowley taught only early morning classes — the earlier the better — and throughout my university years, I tried to see morning only from the other side.
Nevertheless, I dutifully went to Medieval History that first week, and — I was flabbergasted. After the second class, I asked if I could speak to my professor, and — being young and naive — I asked him flat out: “Is this what history is? I mean, just, generally?”
Dr. Crowley smiled behind his desk, always awash in books and papers and microfilm, and lit another cigarette. (That helps date this story.) “I see,” he said, with a smirk. “Another victim of high school history.”
His diagnosis was dead on. I absolutely despised history in high school, and I still have a grudge against my advisor, who advised me to take AP history because, as she put it, it will be more like college. Let me tell you, friends, if that was more like college history, then history should be abolished. It was nothing but endless lists of dates and people and events, arranged more or less in the most pedestrian chronological sequence imaginable. We had “homework” like this: Put these 50 events in chronological order. The only narrative I could detect was “and then,” repeated ad nauseum.
Dr. Crowley opened a perspective on Medieval History that hit me like that teeming zoo in a drop of stagnant water must have hit Leeuwenhoeck. A few visits later, and I asked Dr. Crowley about dates, partly because his demeanor in class (and on the first exam) showed a general disdain for people who could spew dates but not reasons. Dr. Crowley patiently explained to me that, if you don’t understand what makes a date important, then learning dates is bullshit. Something to fill the time.
Shadows, in fact. As in, on the wall of the Cave.
In retrospect, the magic Dr. Crowley worked was not so much about history, but about me. He and his relationship to history as a living thing turned my mind around, so I could see something I could not see before.
And I majored in history.
