Der Führer in the Classroom

I woke up smiling this morning, thinking of the tragic sense of life, treasuring the fact that the ancient Greek word "tragoidia" from which it all derives means "goat song," a weird enough source for so great a subject, and the sort of meaningless but possibly deeply meaningful fact that one could cuddle to one's chest and mull over.  I am planning to teach a course on ancient Athenian tragic drama in a school for adults set up in Sarasota which is thriving enterprise with remarkable attendance in a great range of subjects from the sciences to the arts and to literature.  I have enrolled in a number of them but have almost always dropped out, so my project of teaching is fraught with no little anxiety.  There is a common thread that runs through the offerings of the courses I have found which is that the instructors promote discussion.  It stands to reason, of course; these are not children sitting there, but very very mature men and women of some accomplishment.  Hey, living into your eighties in excellent health, still able to stand on the tennis courts for hours or knock a ball around a field of grass, relaxed in the knowledge that you had been successful enough in life's earnings game to have made a very handsome retirement income for yourself, gives you the sense that you are something other than a callow youth picking his pimples sitting in the front row of his first college class.  A small portion of the faculty are retired professors, but more often they are simply another elderly person who has somewhere along the line just taken an elaborate interest in the subject he or she is teaching and wants to share this--shall we call it expertise?--with some others, and is generally much interested in what those who are listening to his/her remarks have to say about them.  That last was the reason I invariably dropped out.  I could not tolerate the chit chat, as it always seemed to be.  As an academic I have always enjoyed learning from someone who knew more than I and the only interaction I cared to have was if I had to, asking questions for clarification.  But that is not how these adult courses functioned.  The students came with interest in the subject, but little factual substance nor informed viewpoints--naturally, one would think, since that is why the students sat there facing the instructor.  Again and again I would hear their questions posed with a qualifying "it seems to me."  This phrase was the opening salvo generally in a home made disquisition on the subject which the instructor was developing.  I should be charitable, but will not be.  Persons not educated in the subject for which they have signed up, thirsting to learn more, are as a rule laboring under a burden of misapprehensions, ill formed theories, ugly untruths, everything else that divide the learned from the ignorant.  That is why they are squelched in college courses by the sheer weight of the system of authority.  In a college course, if a question is asked by a student, the first obligation of the professor to whom it is directed is, if necessary, to disabuse the questioner of the validity of the question.  Otherwise countless minutes are given over to wandering down dead roads.  But in these adult learning courses where everyone is equal, and learning is a pleasantry, and one's own thoughts may be the key to unlocking the group's conscious understanding of the subject, all is game.  It made me grit my teeth; in the classroom I believe in authority, research, published results, well argued theses, peer review.  It is also true that I believe in a relaxed atmosphere, wit and amusement, style and shine, but above all else I believe in authority.  Authority with entertainment.  A difficult combination but one I have always striven for in the years of own teaching.  So this is what I want to do again, and I will be vigilant and firm in editing classroom participation.  I can't wait to get on to the "tragic sense of life," first and foremost which goes against the grain of everything America stands for, to dig right in to the utter incompatibility of Christianity and ancient tragic theater, to rouse up the glories of the ancient Mediterranean sense of fatality, that wonderful grim world where women wear black always, because always they are in mourning for some member of the family, where death is the constant visitor, and there is nothing that will get rid of the ring around the collar.