BY ROOSEVELT MONTÁS
I am deeply grateful for the attentive and penetrating readings of Rescuing Socrates by María Bullón-Fernández, Patricia Grant, Michael A. Zampelli, and Michelle Maldonado. I am especially thankful because each has put something of their own intimate selves into their review. It’s clear to me that what draws us to this subject is a personal investment in what education can do for the inner and outer lives of our students.
I am also gratified to find so much agreement in our perspectives. We recognize the central value of liberal education in realizing the transformative potential of college. We also share a concern that the liberal education we offer reaches our actual students, in all of their diversity and complexity. Foremost in all of our minds, it seems, is how to bring this education to students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds.
Yet as scholars, we cannot simply agree. Our intellectual vocation calls us to find areas of differences—even if they are only differences in emphasis—and to dig deeper there, seeking agreements where possible and clarity about our differences where not. In that spirit, I will address, ever so briefly, some of the difference in emphases in our emphases.
My book argues for the unique value of required general education courses based on the study of great books. By “great books” I mean, roughly, the traditional canon, beginning somewhere close to Homer and extending to the present. My conception of the “great books” differs somewhat from the traditional one in that it isn’t exclusively Western, in that it is concerned with the recovery and foregrounding of voices that have been marginalized, and in that it emphasizes the inclusion of diverse authors as we approach contemporaneity.
One recurring theme in the reviews is a concern that my vision might not make sufficient room for diverse voices, that it might present too restrictive a version of “greatness”—to the detriment, possibly, of the experience of First Gen and other underprivileged students. I suspect that my sensibility differs from that of some reviewers not in our concern for an expansive canon, but in my valuation of the study of the past. There is no way around the fact that the further we go into texts from the past, the less diversity we will find and the fewer places there will be where students see their identities reflected.
Where should we draw the line between giving students a sense of the historical development of the world in which they live and presenting them with works that more closely reflect their own lived experience? How do we decide, for example, whether to teach Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton or Aristotle’s Poetics in, say, a required first-year seminar? Hamilton moves and inspires. It is, in my view, a work of genius. Aristotle’s Poetics on the other hand, is a dry, alien, and difficult text that discusses plays that don’t even exist any more. In the best case, we can teach both. A student’s experience of both works would be enriched by their parallel consideration—by, for example, seeing how Hamilton uses conventions and narrative modes that lie deep in the foundations of Western culture. Aristotle would also become more alive and more relevant when seen in this context.
“Where should we draw the line between giving students a sense of the historical development of the world in which they live and presenting them with works that more closely reflect their own lived experience?” In his response to reviews by María Bullón-Fernández, Patricia Grant, Michelle Maldonado, and Michael A. Zampelli, S.J., Roosevelt Montás leans toward a traditional canon because tending towards the “direction of affirming individual particularity” is often “accompanied by a kind of intellectual condescension that does our students harm.” Photo courtesy of the University of San Francisco.
But let’s imagine that we can’t teach both, that we must to choose between them. There is no universal right answer here. But all else being equal, I would lean towards Aristotle, in part on a bet that students will find their way to Hamilton on their own and that they will be better equipped to appreciate it in its fullest dimensions for having labored through the Poetics. I am less confident that the reverse is true.
Lastly, I would highlight a difference in emphasis that concerns the ability of First Gen and low-income students to see themselves in works that don’t reflect their cultural or class identities. I speak from my own experience as one such student and from years of work introducing low-income students to foundational texts in the Western tradition. Though it carries a larger pedagogical burden, students can recognize themselves in Macbeth’s lust for power and in Raskolnikov’s inner turmoil, they can grasp the radical power of John Locke and the human frailty of Montaigne. And it is just as important that they see themselves in the universality of human experience as it is that they see their individual particularity affirmed in the curriculum.
In the contemporary academy, we tend to err in the direction of affirming individual particularity. This is usually motivated by a desire to reach our neediest students, but it is also often accompanied by a kind of intellectual condescension that does our students harm, even when they can’t see it.
Roosevelt Montás is senior lecturer in American studies and English at Columbia University and author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Lopez Robin via Unsplash.