Presented at the TCCTA conference, March 5th 2022.

1. The Surprising Ways
Students Relate to the
Classics
Dr. Ashok Karra, Dallas College

2. Key Takeaways: Define "Classic"
What is a “classic?”
What do you consider “classic,” what are you already teaching/using in that vein?
If you realize you treat something with reverence, does that change how you present it?

3. Key Takeaways: Student Experience
What kinds of experiences do
we associate with “classics?”
What are best practices for
making a curriculum?
How to best structure classes,
market, recruit?

4. Key Takeaways: Problems with
"Classics"
What should we strive to avoid? When do “classics” become a problem?

5. Bibliography
 Roosevelt Montás, "Rescuing Socrates." Princeton University
Press: Princeton, 2021.
 William Deresiewicz, "Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of
the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life." Free
Press: New York, 2014.
 Emily St. Martin, "To teach the classics, or not teach the
classics? That is the question."
https://www.ocregister.com/2021/10/05/to-teach-the-
classics-or-not-to-teach-the-classics-that-is-the-question/
 Steven Mintz, "Can the Humanities Truly Transform
Undergraduates'
Lives?" https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-
gamma/can-humanities-truly-transform-
undergraduates%E2%80%99-lives
 Louis Menand, "What's So Great about Great-Books
Courses?" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/20
/whats-so-great-about-great-books-courses-roosevelt-
montas-rescuing-socrates

6. Towards
defining
"Classic"
What do we mean by “classic?”
It has a narrow focus but a broad sense. It’s an artifact out of
which a tradition has grown.
E.g. “Macbeth,” Charlie Chaplin films, Metallica, The Legend of
Zelda.
For purposes of curriculum: problems of the field should be
traceable to classics. E.g. mind-body or radical skepticism from
Descartes' "Meditations"

7. High School &
Classics
Cannot discount our students' prior experience. What was
the function of "classics" in high school?
If we say a "classic" is a matter of narrow focus (e.g. we're
looking at one work), then in high school and college
education, the narrow focus becomes extremely narrow.
We build based on standards prescribed by law, tradition,
or what can be discussed in a textbook.

8. What counts?
 Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are classics. So is Robert Frost or Einstein’s miracle papers. Or,
more pertinently, the Federalist Papers, the newspaper editorials written by Hamilton and
Madison to advocate for adoption of the Constitution of 1787.
 What doesn't count? Some would say a recent book like Cathy Park Hong's "Minor Feelings." It
details the ingenuity and struggle of her father making it in America, presents lessons learned
about race from Richard Pryor, and makes a strong case for what’s at stake in avant-garde art. (I
personally think this is a classic.)
 The problem is obvious: what happens when the work that doesn't have "classic" status is timely,
necessary, and lasting in its own right.

9. What counts (but more dramatic)?
 Ilya Kaminsky: “At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? / And the answer
will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”
 What are the chances students will ever encounter these lines, or anything like these, in
their lives? —Consider high school English classes; think about the rarity of contemporary
poetry classes. (Not to say we're not trying to introduce students to more.)—
 Problem of using standards as a bludgeon.

10. What counts? (but really more dramatic)
Kaminsky on Twitter, Feb. 27th:
"Me, writing to an older friend in Odessa: how can I help, please let me know I really want [to]
help
He writes back: Putins come and go. If you want to help, send us some poems and essays. We
are putting together a literary magazine.
And, that is in the middle of war. Imagine."

11. The Curriculum, the “Tradition,” and the Debate.
 "Classics," "liberal arts," "humanities," "Great Books" -- often, used more
or less interchangeably, though they are not the same
 The usual debate: practicality vs. whatever this is
 We're focused on "Classics" and "Great Books," b/c of my experience; b/c
they are a specific case that illustrates a lot of related phenomena; b/c
their appeal is intuitive
 Sample curricula: University of Dallas; St. John's College. (Contrast with
distribution requirements)

12. Great Books Idealism
Louis Menand on how Great Books is supposed to work (from the New Yorker):
"In a great-books course of the kind that Montás and Weinstein teach, undergraduates read primary
texts, then meet in a classroom to share their responses with their peers. Discussion is led by an
instructor, but the instructor’s job is not to give the students a more informed understanding of the
texts, or to train them in methods of interpretation, which is what would happen in a typical
literature- or philosophy-department course. The instructor’s job is to help the students relate the
texts to their own lives. For people like Montás and Weinstein, it is also to personify what a life
shaped by reading books like these can be. “The teacher models the still living power of the book,”
as Weinstein puts it."

13. Great Books Idealism
Failing
Helen Vendler, via Stephen Mintz, against
Great Books: "...an amateurish bull session, in
which nonspecialists, with no special expertise,
introduce undergraduates to a rather arbitrary
selection of classic texts in translation without
contextualization and devoid of serious,
sustained attention to aesthetics, metaphysics,
epistemology, logic or moral reasoning."

14. Questions of
Class, ala the
Classics
Montás: "When making the case for liberal education to low-
income students and families, I often point out that there is a
long tradition of steering working-class students toward an
education in servitude, an education in obedience and docility,
an education in not asking questions. The idea that liberal
education is only for the already privileged, for the pampered
elite, is a way of carrying on this odious tradition. It is a way of
putting liberal education out of the reach of the people who
would most benefit from it—precisely the people who have
historically been denied the tools of political agency. I ask them
to take a look at who sends their children to liberal arts colleges
and at what liberal arts college graduates go on to do with their
“useless” education. Far from a pointless indulgence for the elite,
liberal education is, in fact, the most powerful tool we have to
subvert the hierarchies of social privilege that keep those who
are down, down."

15. John Singer-Sargent,
"The Daughters of
Edward Darley Boit"

16. Franz Kafka,
"The Top"
A certain philosopher used to hang about wherever children
were at play. And whenever he saw a boy with a top, he would
lie in wait. As soon as the top began to spin the philosopher
went in pursuit and tried to catch it. He was not perturbed when
the children noisily protested and tried to keep him away from
their toy; so long as he could catch the top while it was still
spinning, he was happy, but only for a moment; then he threw it
to the ground and walked away. For he believed that the
understanding of any detail, that of a spinning top, for instance,
was sufficient for the understanding of all things. For this reason
he did not busy himself with great problems, it seemed to him
uneconomical. Once the smallest detail was understood, then
everything was understood, which was why he busied himself
only with the spinning top. And whenever preparations were
being made for the spinning of the top, he hoped that this time
it would succeed: as soon as the top began to spin and he was
running breathlessly after it, the hope would turn to certainty,
but when he held the silly piece of wood in his hand, he felt
nauseated. The screaming of the children, which hitherto he had
not heard and which now suddenly pierced his ears, chased him
away, and he tottered like a top under a clumsy whip.

17. From
Machiavelli's "L
etter to Vettori"
 ...it is time to eat; with my household I eat what food this poor
farm and my minuscule patrimony yield. When I have finished
eating, I return to the inn, where there usually are the innkeeper,
a butcher, a miller, and a couple of kilnworkers. I slum around
with them for the rest of the day playing cricca and
backgammon: these games lead to thousands of squabbles and
endless abuses and vituperations. More often than not we are
wrangling over a penny; be that as it may, people can hear us
yelling even in San Casciano. Thus, having been cooped up
among these lice, I get the mold out of my brain and let out the
malice of my fate, content to be ridden over roughshod in this
fashion if only to discover whether or not my fate is ashamed of
treating me so.
 When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the
threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and
dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out
appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients,
where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that
food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am
unashamed to converse with them and to question them about
the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human
kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no
boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I
am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely.

18. Conclusion: Success with the Classics
 Relatability ("Antigone"--family & religion; Machiavelli's "Letter"--being down on your luck;
Singer Sargent—the strangeness of being a sibling)
 Accessibility (Shakespeare is hard for me, too)
 Ideas you can use/bounce around (Wittgenstein's "game" definition is good here)
 Ideas that demand tremendous respect
 Why won't the classics go away, even when they're not ideal? The very act of teaching is
creating a classic