Marketing the Classics to Today's Students

Sacred Heart University Review Volume 9 Issue 2 The Greeks Institute Article 5 Spring 1989 Marketing the Classics to Today's Students Dale P. Woodiel Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview Recommended Citation Woodiel, Dale P. (1989) "Marketing the Classics to Today's Students," Sacred Heart University Review: Vol. 9 : Iss. 2 , Article 5. Available at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol9/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the SHU Press Publications at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sacred Heart University Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact . Marketing the Classics to Today's Students Cover Page Footnote This article is based on a lecture delivered at the The Greeks Institute, a series of lectures presented to secondary school teachers in the Bridgeport Public Schools during the spring of 1989. Co-sponsored by the Connecticut Humanities Council, Sacred Heart University, and the Bridgeport Public Schools, the purpose of the institute has been to provide teachers with an interdisciplinary exploration of classical Greece for the purposes of professional enrichment and curriculum development. This article is available in Sacred Heart University Review: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol9/iss2/5 Woodiel: Marketing the Classics to Today's Students D A L E P. W O O D I E L Marketing the Classics to Today's Students Jacques Barzun, noted Columbia University historian and author of Teacher in America, commented in a recent address on the use of classics today. "Obviously, "said Barzun, "the first service that a classic does is to connect the past with the present by stirring up feelings akin to those that once moved human beings — people who were in part very much like ourselves and in part very unlike."1 He went on to suggest that studying the classics often ends up "mere bookishness,"lacking in "imagination," which he defined as "making a successful effort to reconstruct from words on a page what past lives, circumstances, and feelings were like."2 Two recent experiences have reinforced for me the truth of Barzun's observations. The discovery of some old family papers and a trip to the movies have provided evidence of the cherished place the study of the classics once held in the lives of young learners in America and, more important, the power which the classsics still maintain even in a world dominated by visual communication media rather than "words on a page." When we introduce the classics to students in our high schools today we are destined for less success than that attained by television programs and films simply because we are restricted to the use of the written word, a far less impressive medium for communicating with today's youth than the visual image. It is instructive, however, to remember that it was not always so. There was a world before film, a world in which love and respect for the written classics was central to a young person's education. Some nineteenth-century correspondence among my wife's family papers brought this fact home to me. In a letter dated May 13, 1836, a middle-aged Alfred Hennen writes to his teen-aged daughter Ann Marie regarding the attention she must pay to her studies:My dear Child, I am very happy to learn that you are going on diligently with your studies — getting 100 lines of Published by DigitalCommons@SHU, 1989 1 Sacred Heart University Review, Vol. 9, Iss. 2 [1989], Art. 5 DALE P. WOODIEL 67 Virgil at a lesson — giving no trouble to anyone. I hope you will continue to press on with all the ardor in your power. Recall your Latin and Greek as fast as possible and advance, steadily and resolutely, in your knowledge of them both. I wish you to receive as good an education as any young lady in the United States. Remember that Miss Skinner told you at New Haven, last fall, that you might soon read Greek with as much facility as she, then, did. Determine to do so, and I know you can. You have such an excellent instructor in Mr. Johnson. His recitations will be very instructive to you.3 Her father goes on to advise that in her "leisure hours" she could read French. Although he recommends first "two sacred tragedies of Racine,"he allows eventually that "in the heat of the day," when she is fatigued, she might divert herself "with a few pages of Gil Bias." He concludes with the admonishment, of course, to "rise early" and "study your Bible" in order to "become wise unto Salvation." Clearly the last 150 years have brought some changes, not only in the conventional relationship between fathers and daughters and the degree of respect held by both for their teachers, but also in the role of the classics and the value placed on learning in the lives of young people. However, the importance of the classics evident in those days of the last century may not be totally lost to today*s teachers and students. Perhaps it is only the approach to the classics, not the classics themselves, which requires attention. This point came to me at a recent viewing of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in a theater filled with "children of all ages." It occurred to me how perceptive film artists such as Steven Spielberg and George Lukas are with respect to the power of the archetypal themes evidenced in the classics. The subject of The Last Crusade is the search for the Holy Grail, and as was the case following Raiders of the Lost Ark, some educating of an interested but ignorant viewing public has been necessary. Just as news articles appeared informing the public about the Ark of the Covenant after Raiders, a rash of media bits has recently appeared informing viewers about the Grail legend. A cartoon version of Le Morte D'Arthur is no doubt being planned! http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol9/iss2/5 2 Woodiel: Marketing the Classics to Today's Students 68 SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY REVIEW Yet, when one's cynical impulses are overridden, it is clear that an archetypal theme such as the heroic quest — a theme early evident in Greek classical literature in myths such as that of Jason and the Golden Fleece — has tremendous appeal for today's mass audience, if properly marketed. It is doubtful that it occurred to young Anna Marie Hennen to question the value of her father's recommendations or those of Mr. Johnson, her teacher. In fact, the written word was sacred in the America of 1836 — in New Orleans, where Alfred Hennen wrote from, as well as in the area surrounding Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, where Ralph Waldo Emerson was about 33 at the time and where a literary renaissance was germinating. Certainly Emerson — or even his protege Thoreau — could not have envisioned the decline of the written word 150 years down the road. As the twentieth century wanes, we as teachers continue to be dragged slowly into an expanding ar (...truncated)