There is a great focus on what is necessary and unnecessary...in school, in government, in life. Yes, barnacles can grow on a ship and must be scraped off, but if we really tried to live all aspects of life with the bare necessities, our lives would look much different, and I do not think we would like them very much, nor should we.
Art Is The Signature of Man
Aeneas and Dido in Carthage, Claude Lorrain, 1675
In his 1925 book The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton wrote, "Art is the signature of man." I have spoken and written many times about the scene in Book 1 of Vergil's epic poem the Aeneid in which Aeneas and his friend stand on a hill and overlook the building of the city of Carthage. Vergil describes what they see in the chronological order of a developing society. First, they notice the physical construction of buildings and roads, next the establishment of government and laws, and finally the establishment of a theatre. As I always point out to my students, had the Carthaginians stopped before they built a theatre, theirs would have been an abbreviated society. Creating things is what we human beings do. Although some see it so, the artistic act is not an unnecessary one. It is vital to who we are.
Art For a Purpose
Art, and by that I mean graphic art, musical art, and dramatic art, serves many purposes, but for the purpose of this article, let's focus on its purpose in education. We all know people, and perhaps are those people ourselves, who come alive when given a creativity opportunity. In school these are the students who want to draw or write. They would prefer to act out a story rather than take an exam over it. It is band or orchestra or choir that helps them get through algebra and history and P.E.
Woodburning of the Colosseum by one of my students
We must provide as many such opportunities for young people as we can, and to do so, we may need to take money from elsewhere, even from areas whose superiority goes unquestioned however much it may go unacknowledged, such as the STEM subjects and sports. Surely no one would be so monstrous as to say that the needs of one child are less important than those of another or that the abilities of one are insignificant when compared with others, and if we do indeed believe that it would be monstrous to say this, we must put time and money behind our words. Yet there is more, far more, to the role of art in human life.
Ars Gratia Artis
MGM Logo from 1928-1956
Although the lion has changed over the years, the motto of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM, movie studio has remained Ars Gratia Artis, or "Art For the Sake of Art," and there we find the connection back to Chesterton. Art need not have a function. It can, but this is not necessary for its value. It is valuable simply because it is what human beings do. We create. We explore. We imagine. In fact, it is our imagination that makes the hypothetical and the conditional possible. Perhaps electricity can be used to light a home, we say, and from our imagination come the lights we depend on to turn our nights into days. "If I were in Rome," says a friend, "I would visit the Colosseum," and it is the imagination that makes this conditional sentence possible. Yet whether or not anyone ever got around to creating a lightbulb or our friend ever managed a trip to Italy is irrelevant. What matters is our capacity to imagine what is not real. What matters is our capacity for art, and it is in this that Chesterton is correct. It is the signature of the human race.
Be warned. This is an anti-AI blogpost. If you think AI is the greatest invention since sliced bread, this is not for you. You should probably just ask ChatGPT to write you an intriguing article about sliced bread and enjoy your day. If you continue reading, you do so having been warned.
Genuine Pottery
Greek Black-Figure Pottery, Art Institute of Chicago (photograph mine)
Although most etymologists today say otherwise, it has for centuries been suggested that the English word "sincere" is derived from the Latin phrase sine cera, meaning "without wax." To what this phrase referred has been a matter of as much debate, with one theory being that unscrupulous potters would fill cracks in their wares with wax, prompting better artisans to advertise their works as being made sine cera. Regardless of the actual etymology, there is, of course, the desire on the part of artists and craftsmen to promote their efforts as genuine, and there is just as much desire on the part of patrons and customers to enjoy authentic works of art. When we refer to a cheap knockoff, we do not use the adjective "cheap" so much to make a distinction with an expensive knockoff, but rather to denigrate the item as much as possible. "Cheap" in this sense is an intensifier expressing our disgust with an inferior product.
It is in this sense, then, that AI is not sincere. It is a cheap knockoff. Now that it exists, we can put it to some beneficial uses, but at best these are mean and mundane. When it comes to what truly matters, as in art so in all other things, we will always prefer what is real.
A Tale of Two Paintings
Many years ago, my wife and I led a group of high school students on a tour of Italy. While in Rome, I snapped a picture of the rostra, the speaker's platform from which great orators like Cicero once delivered their speeches. The mother of one of my students was an artist and used my photograph as the basis for a beautiful painting that she gave me. It graces my classroom to this day.
Now, let's take a look at what AI can do. I typed the following prompt into ChatGPT, "Create a watercolor painting of the rostra in the Roman forum viewed at ground level from the perspective of a person looking slightly to the left." This is what it gave me.
It is not bad, of course, and had I played around with the prompt, I could probably have coaxed it into producing something like the painting my student's mother created, but no matter what, it would be, at best, a cheap knockoff. It would be insincere. My student's mother had used the photo from her son's teacher on their trip to Italy as the basis for her own conception of the scene, a conception she brought into reality from her desire to give a gift. Her painting was a human endeavor from start to finish, and not only does the fact of the humanity make all the difference in the world, but that humanity is reflected in the final product.
That's Not What I Asked
Not long ago I was doing a bit of research on the Latin words indignata, vita, and Aeneid in JSTOR, the online repository of academic journals. I was not aware that a new AI button had been installed, much less that it could be switched off, so I was surprised when an AI summary popped up to the right of the page.
Now, here is my beef. First, it took my three-word search and turned it into a question that I did not ask.
You: How is "(((indignata) and (vita)) AND (Aeneid)) AND disc:(classicalstudies-discipline)" related to this text?
Second, I had not been aware of this feature or the fact that its default setting was to be turned on, thus my feeling of intrusion into my research. Finally, the serendipitous nature of research is that one can be scanning an article for one thing and discover something else useful. An AI summary robs me of that. Of course, I will turn off this feature, but given that it is the default, this troubles me for our students.
What Is It Good For?
In his famous 1970 protest song "War," Edwin Starr asked, "War, what is it good for?" I would not go quite so far regarding AI as to give his answer of "absolutely nothing," but mine would be close.
AI can crunch data. It can discover patterns. It can create things that serve certain basic functions. But when we want that which expresses truth, goodness, and beauty, the best expressions come from those uniquely created to understand, appreciate, and share them...you and me.
Susannah York as Margaret More in A Man For All Seasons
In the 1966 film version of Robert Bolt's play A Man For All Seasons, King Henry VIII pays a visit to the home of his Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More. When the More family comes out to great his highness, there is an amusing exchange in which More's daughter Margaret upstages the king with fluent Latin, but it is their opening exchange that speaks to me most.
King Henry: Why Margaret; they told me you were a scholar.
Margaret: Among women I pass for one, your grace.
Margaret More sells herself quite short here, for she was one of the most learned people of her day, composing works in Latin and translating both from Latin to English and from Greek to Latin. I think often of her humble response to the king, for it is easy for my high school students to think that I know a lot of things. Then again, they are in their teens and I most certainly am not, and so to those who think I am a scholar, I would borrow More's words and reply that among teenaged students I pass for one. In fact, it would be closer to the truth if I were to quote another legendary film character and admit, "I know nothing."
Why Stars Fall and Birds Do Not
Varinia (Jean Simmons) and Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) in Spartacus
In the classic 1960 film Spartacus, the former slave gladiator, played by Kirk Douglas, has a quiet moment with his wife, played by Jean Simmons.
Varinia: What are you thinking about?
Spartacus: I'm free. And what do I know? I don't even know how to read.
Varinia: You know things that can't be taught.
Spartacus: I know nothing. Nothing! And I want to know. I want to-I want to know.
Varinia: Know what?
Spartacus: Everything. Why a star falls and a bird doesn't. Where the sun goes at night. Why the moon changes shape. I want to know where the wind comes from.
There are, of course, things about which I am conversant at the drop of a hat. We all have those areas about which we can speak readily and intelligently. For me those tend to fall along the lines of the Latin language, Roman history, certain authors, and particular strands of philosophy and theology. I can also entertain friends with quick knowledge of film lines and song lyrics, in both cases mostly from the 1960s through the early 1990s. And although my knowledge in those areas can be at times rather broad and deep, a brief consideration will reveal just how circumscribed my expertise really is. I would be embarrassed to admit what I know about cars, plumbing, electricity, chemistry, physics, astronomy, botany, biology, economics, marketing, computer science, art, opera, musical instruments, musical composition, cooking, sewing, meteorology, psychology, medicine, blacksmithing, the stock market, and farming. And, when you get right down to it, even in my chosen field of Classics and preferred areas of knowledge, there are now and certainly were in ages past many who knew more. I am no Theodor Mommsen, of whom Mark Twain once remarked upon observing him at a celebratory function, "Here he was, carrying the Roman world and all the Caesars in his hospitable skull, and doing it as easily as that other luminous vault, and the skull of the universe, carries the Milky Way and the constellations."
Theodor Mommsen, 1817-1903
Tantalizing Ignorance
Ignorance can be daunting or it can be tantalizing, and for those who enjoy learning, it is the latter. As Kirk Douglas's Spartacus said, I want to know, and this is why I love to read in subjects outside my expertise and enjoy talking with people who can help me learn. It is thrilling to ask questions of friends at lunch or over coffee or at dinner and to follow the delightfully labyrinthine path of discovery. There is a time in our life, to be sure, when we care more about appearing foolish and do not want anyone to realize what we do not know, and this leads us not only to avoid asking questions but even to put on airs and pretend to knowledge we do not possess. Hopefully most of us move beyond that stage as we mature and come to see that it is more important, in the words of Cicero and Sallust, esse quam videri, to be rather than to seem.
It is complimentary when students think their teachers know something, and the kind comments I have received from students mean the world to me. Yet one day they will find that there was much more their Latin teacher did not know than that he did, and hopefully their own ignorance about the world will be more tantalizing than daunting, drawing them on along the never ending journey of learning.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744), portrait by Michael Dahl c. 1727
Despite my regular use in the classroom of a smart board, the Internet, and other technological inventions of the modern age, mine is a pedagogy steeped in history and, as recent reading and reflection have shown, are papal, although not in the sense you may be thinking. Be warned, however, for what follows may take you into waters far from the current educational current.
A Papal Perspective
The adjective "papal" derives from the Latin word for "pope," which is papa, but my use of it here refers not to the Bishop of Rome but rather to the poet Alexander Pope, whose work I first used to open a speech nearly forty years ago and who has remained my favorite English poet all my life. In the definitive, indeed magisterial, biography of Pope, Maynard Mack explores in one section the Essay on Criticism, which was published in 1711. If you will, please indulge an extended excerpt from pages 170-174.
[T]he steady expansion of forms of individualism...[fractured] traditional consensuses, leaving most lines of authority apart from personal self-assertion tentative and insecure. Partly, at least, in response to all this, the Essay shows a pervasive concern for corporateness: for the responsibility of the individual member, whether a person, idea, work of art, or critical term to some sort of community or whole. [The Essay on Criticism acknowledged] that the idiosyncrasies of individual intelligence must be tried, and normalized, against the collective principles of the community of educated men.
For since the ancients participate with the modern in this universal and permanent Reason and have left behind them works whose permanent and universal character many centuries have proved, ancient literature must likewise be considered one of Nature's manifestations: "Nature and Homer were, he found the same" (line 135). This in turn meant that the Rules -- the principles of effective writing that a long line of critics had derived from Homer and other poets -- were by no means impositions of a dead hand upon the present....
Pope does not intend by this a theory of servile imitation. He means rather that every new generation must strive to assimilate the art of those whose success in rendering our common humanity...time has demonstrated; the individual talent must steep itself in the tradition; and in Pope's day, when the only internationally accepted literature was that of Greece and Rome..., Homer and Vergil naturally comprised the heart of this tradition. Pope knows, of course, that criticism cannot afford to let a live tradition degenerate into formulae, dictating "dull Receits how Poems may be made" (line 115); or lose the contemporary élan...that alone enables it to discern and applaud the "Beauties...no Precepts can declare" (line 141). But he knows with equal firmness that the individual writer's imagination must be guided by his judgment, reflecting the collective experience hived up in the principles of good writing....
[T]he positives...are humility in the presence of what is greater than ourselves and intelligence to rectify our personal vision by collective wisdom.
The 21st Century Classroom
With this I could not agree more. As I have written, I share my classroom with a vast number of teachers, most of whom are dead, for Homer and Vergil, Aristotle and Cicero, Aquinas and Montaigne and Pope, all teach with me. As Mack wrote above, we do not go in for servile imitation. My students have their own voices and their own ideas and insights to express with them, yet it is my task and calling to help them do so in the best way. Again, this does not mean following "dull Receits," but it does mean introducing to these young thinkers that how a thing is said can help it be heard with greater or lesser effect. It means pulling back the heavy curtain of prosaic, mundane communication and revealing the intricate beauties of language that have been developed and perfected throughout the ages by the poets and philosophers, the authors and orators whose works have stood the test of time. Yet again, Mack rightly points out that Pope's vision is to help us develop humility in the presence of that which is greater than we and the intelligence to rectify our own visions, which is quite literally to make them right and straight, with the collective wisdom drawn from the centuries of the human race.
Where Such Teachers
Alexander Pope, attributed to Jonathan Richardson, c. 1736
Toward the conclusion of this section of his biography, Mack quotes a few lines, with which I will conclude, from Pope's Essay as an ideal, one that applies to teachers as well as to literary critics. He goes on to observe, "Pope shared with most us a total inability to attain this ideal; yet it is touching to see it so vividly sketched." Unattainable it may be, but I have known many teachers who have spent their lives reaching for it, and whether or not they grasped it, their students were the better served for their trying. Then again, as Robert Browning put it, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's a heaven for?" ("Andrea del Sarto, 97-98)
But where's the Man, who Counsel can bestow,
Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbiass'd, or by Favour or by Spite;
Not dully prepossesst, nor blindly right;
Blest with a Taste exact, yet unconfin'd;
A Knowledge both of Books and Humankind. (lines 631-634, 639-640)
I do not know whether the sound of humans screaming at each other is the same as that of doves crying. In 1984, the musician known as Prince seemed to think so. I do know that it does not accomplish much when we blame others for our lot in life and that there are better options.
Stoic Wisdom
Errant...qui aut boni aliquid nobis aut mali iudicant tribuere fortunam: materiam dat bonorum ac malorum et initia rerum apud nos in malum bonumve exiturarum. Valentior enim omni fortuna animus est et in utramque partem ipse res suas ducit beataeque ac miserae vitae sibi causa est.
"They make a mistake...who judge that fortune gives something either good or bad to us. Fortune gives the raw material of good and bad and the beginnings of things that will come out among us either good or bad. Stronger than all fortune is the mind and it itself leads its own affairs in either direction and is the cause of a happy or wretched life for itself." Seneca, Epistle XCVIII
My students and I discuss this passage from one of the letters of the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 B.C. -- 65 A.D.) in our third-year Latin class. It seems an apt reminder in an age in which blame seems the name of the game, although that does not greatly separate our current age from any other, and it came to mind when a middle-aged friend recently emailed me the following.
"My sister used to blame everything wrong with her life on our parents, my father especially. I explained to her that Mom and Dad weren't perfect parents, and neither were we, and screaming [at him] won't solve anything. Our parents have left us with problems to deal with, but our parents weren't able to fix those problems, so they're 'our' problems now. Hopefully we can add a few pieces to the puzzle so our children won't have to deal with the same problems we had to deal with. Also, never forget that while our parents dealt with those problems, they still loved us enough to raise us to the point where we [were] mature enough to deal with such problems, just as we will do for our children.
"Our parents are human, with all the human frailties and glorious potential of the next person. We think of them [as] perfect beings when we are children, which is appropriate for a child's development, but, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, 'When I became a man, I put away childish things.' Unless they were simply monsters, our parents did the best they could most of the time, although sometimes not reaching the mark of what they could have achieved in their own lives or ours, but again, no one does."
Chain-Breakers and Legacy-Makers
Turkey Run State Park
When our son was a teen, he and I went away for a few days each fall to Turkey Run State Park in western Indiana. We hiked the trails and talked of what it meant to become a man and in particular, a man of God. As I planned something special for the autumn when he turned eighteen, I asked him who were some of the men who meant the most to him, and he quickly named four. I then invited each of them to join us on one evening of our annual trip to share their own thoughts about manhood with my son.
One of them spoke to him about those who are chain-breakers and those who are legacy-makers. Rob explained that some people will be the ones to break the chains of abuse or addiction or the many other curses that afflict families and often continue across the generations. Others, he said, will be the legacy-makers, those who live lives of fullness in Christ and pass on His life and light to their descendants.
It is far easier to blame others for the things that are not working well in our lives. Some of those people may indeed be the cause of the worst that we experience, and not blaming them in no way exonerates them. Not blaming them, however, frees people to become the chain-breakers and legacy-makers that help themselves and others live the lives for which we were made and to which we are called. The choice, of course, is always our own to make.
I blogged very little in 2024 in part because I was working on the publication of my latest book, The Golden Waffle Principle: Finding Meaning In Teaching. Now that it is set to come out later this month (see my website for more information), I look forward to blogging on a more regular basis.
In 2006, Rocky Balboa came out of retirement. After sixteen years since the previous film in the Rocky franchise, Sylvester Stallone explored the challenges facing an aging athlete who wanted to see whether he still had what it took to go the distance. Seven years before Rocky climbed back into the ring, a computer programmer who thought his name was Thomas Anderson discovered that he was actually Neo, The One long awaited to free captive minds from The Matrix. Taken together, both of these films, along with a poem from 1842 based on an event from Roman antiquity, have something to tell us about facing the challenges of daily life.
Getting Hit
In Rocky Balboa, the sixth film of the award-winning boxing franchise, the former heavyweight champ talks straight with his son, now a young businessman.
Rocky: [W]hen things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much can you take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers, saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him or her or anybody! Cowards do that, and that ain't you! You're better than that!
We all know this, but, like Rocky's son, we need to be reminded from time to time, yet that is not the point of this post. I want to look at the kinds of punches life throws. There are times when it seems as if life is trying to take us out with one knockout punch, perhaps through a devastating loss or a betrayal or catastrophic news. More often, however, we seem to be the victim of a rain of body blows, those jabs to the torso that do not K.O. boxers, but that weaken them to the point they cannot continue. But if a boxing metaphor is not to your taste, consider a hailstorm of bullets.
Neo Against the Agents
In the philosophical/theological/sci-fi film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is the target of malevolent programs personified as Agents. After one of them kills him, a character named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) expresses to him her love, by which he is resurrected as Neo, the savior for whom many have been waiting. Multiple Agents then discharge their weapons toward him, but now he merely looks curiously at the bullets as they freeze in the air and then fall to the ground. When his chief nemesis Agent Smith rushes to attack him, Neo fights him almost casually, more fascinated by watching his own hands move than by any threat from Smith.
I want to be like Neo. When I think about the hits that life dishes out, they seem to me more like body blows than a singular, knockout punch. They are the small bullets of annoyance and frustration and burden rather than a nuclear bomb of devastating power. Yet how does one do what Neo did? How does one face enemies with strength rather than with stress? In his case, it came from knowing who he truly was. Once the love of Trinity restored him to life, and the biblical parallel here is unmistakable, his clear and grounded identity as The One allowed him to see threats for what they really were, and when it came to their source, Agent Smith, he did not so much as deign to look at him.
Ignoring the Craven Ranks
In 1842 Thomas Babington Macaulay published a book of poems titled Lays of Ancient Rome, the most famous of which is "Horatius." It tells in rousing verse the story of Horatius Cocles, the Roman hero who, with two friends, defended the bridge into Rome against an invading army in the late 6th century B.C. As the three warriors hold the far side, those on the Roman end work to hew down the bridge, and as it totters above the boiling tide, two of them run back before the boards crash into the waves. The invading king invites Horatius to surrender, for he is now trapped on the bank with no way back to Rome. Horatius, however, as with Neo, pays his enemy no regard. In the words of Macaulay,
Round turned he, as not deigning
Those craven ranks to see,
and dove into the river, still wearing his armor and bleeding from the fight, and swam across to the cheering welcome of his countrymen.
Horatius, Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644)
I, for one, want to do just that. I want to turn round and not so much as deign to look upon the craven ranks of stress, anxiety, worry, fear, pressure, and all the pretended fierceness of the things that would distract me from that to which God calls me each day. This is only possible when I operate from an unshakably grounded knowledge that I am a friend of Jesus Christ and along with Him a beloved child of God. It was in His unshakable identity as the Son of God, which had just been proclaimed for all to hear, that Jesus with cool strength and disregard for His enemy stood against Satan in the desert.
In one of the most stirring parts of the poem "Horatius," the titular hero calls out to his fellow Romans,
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?
As we enter the new year, I want to stand in the strength of my identity in Christ against all the attacks of life. Jesus Himself shows it can be done, and we have such rousing examples in our literature and dramatic tales. Will you be one of those to stand with me?
The Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C. -- 17 A.D.) tells the story of the sculptor Pygmalion in Book X of his Metamorphoses. Appalled by the immoral behavior of the women of Cyprus, Pygmalion resolved not to marry, but ended up sculpting a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it. Enter Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, and before you know it, the statue came to life, and the two lived happily ever after.
Although Ovid does not give a name to the statue, later sources called her Galatea, and the story has been unendingly popular. Just a quick glance at Wikipedia will give you an overwhelming list of poems and plays and artwork that the story has inspired. Humans have long been fascinated with the idea of creating the perfect version of our own kind, and it would seem we still are.
Galatea and The Awkward Teen
My good friend and colleague Jason recently shared with some of us an article from the website Ditch That Textbook called "Protecting Kids from Unhealthy AI Relationships." You must read it if you have any interaction with young people. I won't go into the details here because you really should read the article itself. Suffice it to say that Galatea 2.0 is here, and the dangers are real, so real in fact that they include the death of one young teen.
Some remember their teen years with fondness, and others would not revisit them with an all-expenses-paid trip through the space-time continuum. Most of us, however, can recall at least some moments of social awkwardness during those times and we can imagine how powerful the pull would have been to have an AI friend who was always there for us, always available for a talk about anything, and always willing to take us as we were without a trace of judgment. In fact, the idea of such a friend may be a strong pull for adults. How much more would it be for the young person struggling to find his or her way in the world?
Real People
I am not Chicken Little. I am not running around while frantically screaming, "The sky is falling!" Nor am I a Luddite or technophobe. Yet there is a profound, important difference between the interactions human beings have with each other and those they have with chatbots and the like, and it is vitally important that adults who have any responsibility for the care and development of young people nurture their relationships with real people.
Let's start with parents. We cannot shove a device into the hands of our children so that we are then free to do the things we want. The first relationships children develop are with their parents, but if their parents are presently absent, which is to say they are in the same room yet miles away in their own minds, children quickly learn what is important and that they are not it. Many times I had to put off until later, or never, things I really wanted to do when our children were at home. That was simply part of the job of being a parent. I have written before that my mom believed strongly in looking children in the eye and giving them your full attention. She knew how important it was for a child to feel important.
Now let's move on to teachers. As all educators know, "ain't no tired like teacher tired, 'cause teacher tired don't stop." If there is an academically sound reason to use technology, then we should use it, but if we bring out Kahoot or Blooket merely because we are exhausted enough to convince ourselves of their pedagogical value, then we have indeed taught something, but perhaps not what we intended. Nothing can replace the direct, human-to-human interaction between teachers and students either for depth of academic engagement or richness of social development. As I say so often, education is a distinctly human endeavor, and we do not serve well the humans in our charge when we farm them out to non-humans.
A Limited Menu
Those restaurants that serve the most carefully prepared foods are typically those that have few items on the menu. They devote their time and resources to offering the best, not the most. If a restaurant offers everything from rack of lamb to hotdogs with foie gras and fried mozzarella sticks on the side, it is less likely that any of the dishes will be done to perfection.
I had to say that because I want to conclude by advocating for extracurricular activities for children, yet I am in no way calling for additional busyness. In fact, our children are often involved in far too many activities, but that is a topic for another essay. Here I want merely to say that children do need to be involved with other, real human beings, and that this often happens well when they participate in sports, join music or drama programs, or become involved in extracurricular clubs. When used properly, these opportunities are not merely places to warehouse young people after school and before bedtime. They can be avenues through which they develop meaningful, human relationships, the kind that will last longer and contribute to richer life than can be hoped for with Galatea 2.0.
What do a Diet Coke and a stack of student work to be graded have to do with each other? They both represent the unbridled thrill of making connections.
Hundreds of Letters
One of the perks of the job, at least for me, is having the opportunity to write letters of recommendation for students. I have written close to four hundred so far and for everything ranging from jobs to scholarships to university acceptance. I consider it a perk of the job because it allows me to make a connection between a student and the world beyond the school. The letter of recommendation allows me to brag a bit on students I have come to know well and in whom I see so many wonderful talents that I cannot help but be excited to introduce them to others in the hope that they, too, will see what I see and help those students on the next part of their journey.
It is always a joy when students tell me how things turned out...whether they were offered the job, received the scholarship, or were accepted into the university of their dreams. Such was the case recently when one senior came to tell me that she had been accepted into the top university on her list. I was nearly as excited as she was and added her name, university, and intended major to the list on our dry-erase board. She then gave me a beautiful, hand-written thank you note and a 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke, which I saved until this afternoon to enjoy while doing some work. The drink is delightful, and I will treasure the note, but the biggest thrill was in helping connect this student with the next institution on her educational adventure.
Philosophy and Family
Because I love connections, I experience deep joy every year when my Latin III students read the writings of the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca. After translating and discussing selections from his epistles, they must compose a philosophical letter of their own in which they offer advice as he did to his friend Lucilius. They must also submit a paper in which they respond to various prompts that allow them to reflect on what they have read and explore how this ancient wisdom might be applied in their own lives.
There is no point in my trying to convey just how rich most of the writings of these students are. This blog post would turn into a small book of its own were I to include every paragraph of well written and well thought reflections by these students, and to select only a few would be nearly impossible. Should I include the one in which a student shared with her mother Seneca's wisdom about not burdening yourself with work while on vacation, a bit of wisdom her mother accepted and that allowed the family to have a more pleasant time away from home? Should I include the advice that two students wrote to their own future children, advice based on the writings of a philosopher twenty-one centuries in their past? It would seem unfair not to include all the ways in which students wrote of their own, significant transformations as they have taken charge of their lives and the challenges in them by applying the thoughts of this famous Stoic.
But Wait! There's More!
If stories like these inspire you and cause you to remember that there can be true joy in teaching, if they help you to see beyond the pressures of the daily classroom, keep an eye out for my book The Golden Waffle Principle: Finding Meaning in Teaching, which comes out in December. Watch stevenrperkins.com and follow @stevenrperk on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for lots of great things leading up to its release and great content once it comes out. Until then, I look forward to seeing you on the shared journey of discovery that is education.
There is a reason I have not been blogging much lately. In fact, my previous post came out exactly seven months ago, so it is time for me to share with readers what is going on.
Writing a Book
I remember telling the Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives at the 2014 Teacher of the Year banquet that I was not interested in an award that would sit on a shelf. If being named INTOY would open doors for me to do more for students and the education profession, then so much the better, and I am pleased to say that it has.
2024 marks the tenth anniversary of my receiving that honor, and a lot has happened over those ten years. During that time I have been blessed to work with colleagues from across the United States and beyond, to speak at numerous events, and to continue writing. There were academic articles, the second edition of Latin For Dummieswith my friend Clifford Hull, and this blog. Along the way we experienced a global pandemic, I retired from public education, and I began teaching at a Catholic high school. Now it seems time to acknowledge some of that in a formal way, and so I have been engaged in the process of writing a book, which took me away from regular blogging. Hopefully the tradeoff will be worth it.
Looking Back to See the Future
I enjoy a good look through a picture album as much as the next person, but if this book were merely a retrospective or for that matter focused on me, it would have little appeal and would be akin to the dust-gathering trophies about which I am not particularly interested. Instead, this book is a collection of essays drawn from thoughts and writings and conversations across the past decade. Although it does make frequent reference to the past, such references are to the wisdom of the ages expressed in the poetry and philosophy and art that have inspired the human race for thousands of years, and this is done with the goal helping us see a better educational experience for our children.
We need to recapture the thrill and excitement that come from a grand vision of education. Education is a supremely human endeavor. It is conducted by human beings with human beings, and we were created for more than is often experienced in our schools today. Yet there have been glimpses of that grand vision through the ages. We have known what it meant to seek and to discover the true, the good, and the beautiful, and many of us do so even today, for the natural curiosity of a student, whether at age six or age sixty, if guided well, leads to life, and that is the true measure of education.
Sine Quibus Non
A sine qua non is something that is essential. A literal translation from the Latin is, "without which not." To make the expression more personal, I have restated it as sine quibus non, or "without whom not," and this book, coming out in December, is indeed a sine quibus non. In it are some of my favorite people, such Homer and Plato, Cicero and Vergil, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. There are my own, wonderful teachers from Kindergarten through graduate school, all of whom find mention in the book, and there are many colleagues beside whom I have been so blessed to teach and with whom I have enjoyed countless scintillating conversations over the years, discussions so exciting that I was sure the very particles in the air around us had become electrified.
It is de rigueur to thank those without whom one could not have done a thing, but the worry is always that someone will be left out. Please know that if you have ever been my teacher, my student, or my colleague, I am grateful for the time we have spent together on the shared journey of discovery that is education. Here, now, I must name a very few.
I offer my deepest thanks to Ed Coleman, David McGinness, Kathy Nimmer, and Kate Smith for offering kind words to be used on the book jacket, and their full statements of support are within the book. When I asked the girl who would become my wife for what would be our first date, I was well and truly surprised when she said she would go out with me. The next word coming over the phone from my end after she said "yes" was "really?" I had the same reaction when each of these extraordinary educators agreed to lend their name and approbation to this project.
Special thanks go to my dear friend Gary Abud, Jr. We met when he was the 2014 Michigan Teacher of the Year and we have covered some solid ground together. Not only am I grateful for his remarks on the book, but also for the sheer delight of working with him and his company CoGrounded to see it market.
I would not be a teacher were it not for so many of my family members who traveled the hallways of Indiana schools before me, and I talk about that in the book. My dad died in 2009, but I was able to share with my mom that I was working on this book before she passed away late last year. I can see traces of how they lived out their callings as teachers, and my dad as principal, every single day in my classes.
I am grateful to my children Austin and Olivia for allowing me to serve a calling even higher than that of teacher. In particular, I must offer heartiest thanks to Austin for his work with CoGrounded and me on the cover of the book and the design of stevenrperkins.com. There is no greater thrill than working on projects with one's own adult children.
Finally, I will conclude by expressing my deepest appreciation for my wife Melissa in the words that I used in my speech the night of the 2014 Indiana Teacher of the Year banquet. "She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, that, as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not but by her." The Governor of Indiana and the Speaker of the House were most eager to ask me for the wording of what I said that night, for they thought it a fitting line to say to their own wives. I confessed then as I do now that the words were not mine but Shakespeare's from Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7.
What is the role of design in the modern world? Does it only apply to decorating your bedroom, or could it be about something more? Industrial Design is a highly interdisciplinary field, and I recently had the opportunity to see some of the most recent designers who are about to shape how we interact with the world.
What Is Industrial Design?
Mine is the world of nouns and verbs, of poetry and philosophy, and specifically as these all played out two thousand years ago in ancient Greece and Rome. When our son decided to major in Industrial Design at Purdue University, I had to go to the department website to see what it was all about. That, of course, was but a first step, and over the years that my wife and I visited campus and saw what our son was doing, I began to gain a better understanding.
My first realization that our son's undergraduate program of study would not be like mine was when he took us to one of his classrooms during his freshman year. My experience of collegiate study involved classrooms with desks and the main library on campus, especially in the 870 and 880 section of the ninth floor. His was a workshop. This would be a hands-on course of study, one that involved math, art, history, and much more.
He and his class would learn to sketch and ideate, design using the latest software, and then realize their ideas in wood and metal, plastic and cloth, and of course, 3-D printing.
Design Daze
Each year the senior class of the Industrial Design Department hosts a day-long event to showcase their work. They fill a gallery in Yue Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts with their work and present throughout the day in sessions in a nearby auditorium to an audience of industry professionals, their own ID professors, and delighted families and friends.
As I listened to these young designers share their creations, all of which had been created to address particular needs, from a variety of medical issues to safety concerns in sports, from advancements in military technology to better ways for us to interact with the natural world, several things became clear. Design is about far more than merely making a product attractive. The field of Industrial Design is about solving problems. It is about listening to people and applying science and art and creativity to making their lives better. As I work with my own students and talk with them about their dreams for the future, Industrial Design has become an area that I have shared with them and will continue to present as a possible course of study for those with the imagination to help design our future.
Special Note
I love talking with the parents of my students, but it was a treat like no other to be on the receiving end when Steve Visser, ID Professor and Program Coordinator, and Assistant Professor of ID Jung Joo Sohn both made it a point to talk with my wife and me about our son. They knew him as more than a faceless student and spoke to his work and his preparedness for entering the world of Industrial Design. Thanks to their efforts and all of the Purdue faculty, our son has enjoyed two internships during his undergraduate career and has been hired by Midwest Studios for a position he will begin after graduation.
