James Gee’s piece on electronic
gaming postulates it as superior to books for several reasons. One’s identity
is invested, there is interactivity, customization. There are “levels” in this
“rich immersive space”. It involves system thinking, exploration, thinking
laterally instead of literally. Performance is weighted over competence. The
central idea is that it trains the mind to think more dynamically than does the
literal, linear, unilateral activity of reading. But the description is
analogous to reading itself. One’s identity is in fact quite invested in
reading. We identify with characters and the fictional or poetic world becomes
our own. Books are systems, and some describe systems. A good text is indeed
multileveled. And a novel is nothing if not a rich immersive space. So the case
made here is pretty frail.
Reality check: kids that play games all day and
night don’t walk out of there brain surgeons. To me, anyway, the games are
nothing short of stultifying. On the other hand, Ravi Shankar said in an
interview once that his young students are more intelligent these days because
of television and electronic media—the great sitar virtuoso who plays ultra
traditional ancient ragas. If someone so devoted to the past holds such a
futuristic belief, there must be something to it.
Benjamin Franklin said that
chess teaches one foresight, circumspection, and caution. Jane McGonigal’s
brilliant talk makes an awe-inspiring case for the value of electronic game
playing. The implication for education is chiefly to reinforce our concept of
zone of proximal development: the mission is perfectly matched to the player’s
abilities—unlike life, and school. But her emphasis of inspiring stories goes
back to the connection to literature. To my own mind, a child shooting zombies
cannot hold a candle to the Odyssey. I just cannot imagine a video game being
as rich an intellectual and spiritual experience as the Aeneid or the Faerie
Queen.
Niguidula makes a solid case for the usefulness of digital portfolios
which make students producers of knowledge rather than mere consumers. The
“feedback loop” of the potential ongoing interaction of student and teacher
might be a positive innovation. However, I am not sure the multimedia content
is necessarily more informative and meaningful. ‘Stuff I thought was cool’ is
shallow content.
What must not be lost in all this is literacy. Ravi Shankar’s
observation rings true, but I wonder whether kids are indeed smarter, i.e.
quicker and more skilled, but less knowledgeable and less intellectual. Less
learnèd.
I felt that the whole school day on
Friday was an invaluable experience. We were very glad to see our middle school
students at the introductory meeting. Their comments and suggestions for better
teaching were priceless. The first young student to speak spoke quite
articulately when he pointedly exhorted us to teach “creatively”—which set the
tone for the day, both in terms of his articulate speech and by pinpointing the
theme that eventually emerged: collaboration with colleagues in one’s
discipline (and interdisciplinary exchanges of ideas) and imaginative and
informed use of technology really do contribute to a creative approach.
When
we think back on the grand old “Taxonomy”, one of the higher orders of thinking
listed there is creative thought. It is an elusive but crucial teaching skill,
and also an aspect of the “intellectual character” we seek to mold in our
students.
Taxonomies are taxing mentally, so “inventive” might relieve the
very uncreative reiteration of the taxonomic term.
Even better: German
erschöpfungsreich or ‘creation-rich’. Wealth in inventiveness and richness of
content and of materials that support it, are things painfully lacking in the
canons of Latin pedagogy and the proverbially dry topic of Latin vocabulary,
grammar, and syntax. The plethora of on-line resources is a treasure trove of
texts and artifacts that can bring to life a language labeled “dead”. Librarian
Sue Lay was very helpful in guiding our discussion and showing us websites and
search tools. Conversations with her on teaching in general were quite
worthwhile.
An even greater treasury than the web to draw from is the intellectual
treasure house of another colleague’s mind. Musing on Musetta’s insight that
the Sugar Ban is mirrored in the occidentalización of Latin countries, I
realized the connection is constitutive: soda is part of that process. What
are—in turn—the mechanisms and issues involved in France’s ongoing campaign
against l’anglicisation, of which soda, too, is part? The cultural artifacts
she brings to bear, like Inca Cola (see her great blog), make visible and
palpable some material facets of the issue. I started pondering the cultural
aspect in my discipline, and beyond. I wondered, for the first time, what sweet
beverages did Romans drink? Was Viking mead as bad for health as Coke? Is the
syrupy sweet caffeine-laden tea served in the Maghreb a health issue for them?
Et cetera.
The interface with the English Language Arts group brought out a
critical difference between our fields. Whereas we focused on fluency skills,
text, and artifact, they geared their lesson toward higher-level proficiency
skills, including body language whilst delivering a speech. The challenge in
World Languages—and Latin in particular—is scaffolding for higher-level
thought, and, yes, inventiveness.
The embedded gem of the day for me, however,
is one I’d like to share with you. Grown weary of our lesson planning, my
Latinist future colleague Dylan and I had a brief chat on the topic of Latin
versus Greek. Which grammar is the harder, I asked this scholar degreed in
Ancient Greek. I had been feeling a similarity between verses from the Greek
Anthology and the prose of an Italian Storia dei papi (History of the Popes)
that I read weeks back (as background to The Borgias series on Showtime).
Ancient Greek read like Italian in my mind, while the (for Latin relatively
unconvoluted) Livy had been impressing (and bewildering) me with the intense
complexity of Latin. Dylan articulated what I had been feeling. Latin is much
more complicated, he said. Once you know Greek, he said, it just gets easier.
But with Latin, its simplicity is only superficial. The more Latin you know and
read, an ever deeper complexity emerges.
Is Latin, therefore, like History or
Physics? The better you know it, the more complex it becomes?
Ask a colleague.
SUNDAY, JULY 1, 2012
The paradigm shift seen in technology’s impact on education is
illusory. I test the hypothesis that the entire manifold of technical
innovations is merely formal against evident reality, and it holds up.
The human communicative apparatus has expanded, while the fundamental purpose
of communication remains the same. Teachers have always been public figures.
Now we are highly public: but the basic fact of being public is
unchanged. Whether your words and actions are noted in wax on a wooden tablet,
or immediately posted on U-Tube: it’s essentially the same thing. The
difference is merely one of degree.
What struck me most in the class discussion was the idea of authenticity,
a consciousness that one’s cloistered academic work interfaces with academia
itself as a larger environment and with the world at large. At first glance,
this interface seems more relevant in the sciences, including the social
sciences, where non-academic applications are clearly at stake.
Latin, on the other hand, is the poster child for irrelevant.
German and French and Spanish have immediate relevance given the millions of
living speakers of those living languages, and world language as a field has
ready application in the crucial role of language itself in society and the
world. But Latin is a dead language, and it is tempting to keep it a cloistered
subject for initiates only.
I see the interface of academic subject and broader world as
parallel to the cognitive function of relating content to the reader’s
experiences outside the text: it only really makes sense once it is brought
into some kind of alignment with reality. Latin writings are surprisingly
sophisticated on the whole, especially those from the Classical period. And the
Romans were extremely—if not quintessentially—political. So something as
seemingly remote to the field as the New York Soda Ban is in point of fact very
close to the heart of Roman thought.
I designed curriculum that first has students interpret raw data to figure out
how sugar arrived in Italy (in the Middle Ages), and, second, to compare limits
on sugar consumption to Roman limits on things as diverse as freedom, tyranny,
Christianity, and paganism. Please read through my plan and give me useful
feedback. Thank you! Preston
This is how I would curricularize for Latin (as a unit over a
few sessions) the article on the New York Soda Ban:
I.
Students
individually read hard copies of the article in class (10 minutes) with the
following three questions in mind: (1) What is to be limited by governmental
measures? [i.e. sugar] (2) What are the reasons for limiting it?
(3) What specific limits of behavior are imposed? Brief teacher-led group
follow-up discussion on questions 1-3.
II.
Teacher
explains that sugar was unknown among the Romans, hence there is no Latin word
for it. But the Italians have had the word zucchero since the Middle
Ages. Teacher provides students with a set of etymological and chronological
facts, and a base map of Eurasia (an outline map) with the following four areas
labeled: India, Persia, Arabia, Spain, Italy. Based on the
etymology and chronology, groups of three reconstruct and date the historical
path of sugar [from ancient India, through Persia, and via the Arabs into Spain
and the rest of Western Europe]. Here are the etymology (from Webster) and
chronology:
Etymology:
Sugar: ME sugre, suger, sucre, F. sucre (cf. It. zucchero, Sp.
azúcar), fr. Ar. Sukkar, assukkar, fr. Skr. çarcarā sugar, gravel; cf. Per.
shak(k)ar.
Key:
Ar.: Arabic
cf.: compare
F.: French
fr.: from
It.: Italian
ME: Middle English
Per.: Persian
Skr.: Sanskrit
Sp.: Spanish
Chronology:
753 B.C.: Romulus founds the city of Rome.
510 B.C.: Death of Tarquinus Superbus, the last king of Rome.
Brutus founds the Roman Republic.
59 B.C.-17 A.D.: Life of Livy (Titus Livius), author of the
history of Rome entitled Ab urbe condita.
c. 1 A.D.: Sugar used in India.
303-311 A.D.: The emperor Diocletian’s persecution of the
Christians.
264-340 A.D.: Life of Eusebius of Caesarea, author of De
Martyribus Palastinae.
438 A.D.: Issuance of the Theodosian Code.
711 A.D.: Arab conquest of Spain.
1150-1550: Middle English spoken.
1472: Publication of Dante Alighieri’s Italian masterpiece La
Divina Commedia.
1478: Publication of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Middle English
masterpiece The Canturbury Tales.
III. Using the
projector, teacher navigates to an on-line original Latin version of the
Theodosian Code, which among many other laws bans pagan worship. The class
collectively translates Cth.16.10.0. De paganis, sacrificiis
et templis. Incl.: 16.10.2: “Cesset superstitio, sacrificiorum aboleatur
insania.” [“Superstition must end, the insanity of sacrifices must be
abolished.”] 16.10.6: “Poena capitis subiugari praecipimus eos, quos operam
sacrificiis dare vel colere simulacra constiterit.” [“We command that those who
perform sacrifices or worship cult statues shall be subjected to capital
punishment.”] Students are directed to the Theodosian Code on-line (at http://ancientrome.ru/ius/library/codex/theod/tituli.htm)
and are directed to open TITULI EX CORPORE THEODOSIANO. Working individually,
students peruse the Code and find laws that ban other behaviors. They translate
phrases and short passages from their chosen selection.
IV.
As homework assignments, students are directed to read
distributed hard copies of the following short Latin texts. For each text,
students write an answer to the same three questions as posed in reference to
the article on the New York Soda Ban: (1) What is to be limited by
governmental measures? (2) What are the reasons for limiting it? (3) What
specific limits of behavior are imposed? The texts:
a. Livy’s Ab urbe condita I..xlix. [Livy’s description of
the repressive rule of archaic Rome’s last monarch, Tarquinus Superbus].
Additional questions: What does Livy mean when he writes that Tarquin governed
“domesticis consiliis” (“from his basement”)? To what extent might you detect
this style of governance at play in the New York Soda Ban (or not)? [In Livy,
freedom is banned via tyrannical measures.]
b. Ab urbe condita I.lix. [suicide of
Lucretia, Brutus’ vow to rid Rome of monarchy “by fire and sword”] and i.lx.
[Brutus establishes the Republic, end of Book I]. [Here monarchy is
banned.]
c. Latin excerpt from Eusebius of Caesarea’s De Martyribus
Palastinae describing Diocletian’s persecution of the Christians.
[Translated sample: The first of the martyrs of Palestine was
Procopius, who, before he had received the trial of imprisonment, immediately
on his first appearance before the governor's tribunal, having been ordered to sacrifice to the so-called
gods, declared that he knew
only one to whom it was proper to sacrifice, as he himself
wills. But when he was commanded to offer libations to the four emperors,
having quoted a sentence which displeased them, he was immediately beheaded.
The quotation was from the poet: “The rule of many is not good; let there be
one ruler and one king.”]
d. Theodosian
Code XVI [banning paganism].
V.
In class, groups of three students make continuum diagrams
in response to the following questions:
a. Where would your group locate on a spectrum ranging from harmful
to harmless the following banned items based on the reading selections:
sugar, freedom, monarchy, and religion?
b. Where would your group locate on a spectrum ranging from tyrannical
to just the following governmental actions:
i. The New York Soda
Ban.
ii. Tarquin’s
suppression of freedom.
iii. Brutus’ destruction
of monarchy.
iv. Diocletian’s
persecution of Christians.
v. Theodosius’ banning
of paganism.
Explain the relative location of each item on your
continuum diagram. Collective class discussion of results.
Brilliant
piece. Speaking honestly, I know it would have been way over my head in high
school, but I would thoroughly enjoy such a lesson at this point in my life,
knowing what I know now. I like how you went back to questioning the limits of
government. I have not designed my lesson yet but in my blog I did something similar,
going a little higher and asking about the purpose of government (which, once
established, would question the limits of government...or it could possibly
even be done concurrently). My lesson will center around ancient writings as
well, though I am certainly not as versed as you.
I love the way that you constantly
relate Latin to history. I think that makes the language feel alive! I also
like how you relate the soda ban to history rather than getting into a
discussion about current politics I think it is difficult to keep your views or
biases out of the discussion. That being said, I would agree with Ryan that the
lesson is a bit complicated. For example, depending on the age group that you
are teaching, even something as simple as having students read the article on
the NY soda ban might require more time. Similarly, (as we've discussed in
other classes) you would want to ensure that students had the appropriate
background knowledge. Nevertheless, if students were advanced and you knew they
had prior knowledge or Roman history this would be a very enriching few
classes.
Just food for thought: is there a way that you could enrich the lesson
plan by adding the use of technology? If so, how would you do so?
Having the students
go to the website for the Theodosian Code uses technology, but really more for
convenience and paperlessness. When we go over Latin texts in class, we always
use a smart board, which works really well, because you can bracket
parenthetical phrases, block off the sentences and whole passages, annotate,
etc. and save these markings to post on the school's equivalent of C-Tools for
review. On-line lexicons are really useful. I would also use visual images in
conjunction with the lesson, from a (soon-to-be-built) massive file of images
from Ancient Roman civilization. You can even go on Google Earth and go to the
very sites of some of the events involved. You are right that I should have
included the technological dimension in the curriculum, and it definitely would
be a big plus. Thank you!
Delete
.
Um…WOW! What an
interesting read…However, I agree with Ryan, in high school, would have been
over my head and I would have been lost. While I was in high school, I studied
both Latin and Spanish and Latin was indeed treated as a dead language. Which
always surprised me, since in my church, Latin was used during the services. I
think your explanations would be aided with colorful PowerPoint presentations
illuminating the screen behind you. You use words so eloquently that I can
“see” what you’re saying in this piece but I know high school students would
need to actually see what you were trying to say. I am picturing a low sounds
in the back ground and big colors on the screen as you lead the student through
the pantheon of learning. You know, for some reason, I always think of Stan Lee
when I hear you speak. I am always intrigued with the process that you employ
in answering posed questions.
You're getting some great feedback
from your colleagues, Preston, so for the moment I'll share just two reactions.
First,
I LOVE the way that you convey a sense of language as a living and evolving
thing. It's a brilliant move, and I'm sure that there are any number of ways
that your students could make connections to their own use of language, and
what they've witnessed as participants in a fluid linguistic culture. This
strikes me as a particularly elegant means of responding to the "dead
language" critique, and the interdisciplinary spirit of using politics,
culture and history to bring this home is really marvelous, Preston.
The
second reaction is one that as a college educator I am confident that you've
had, and that I would wish for you as a secondary school educator. It's a great
feeling when your students take an assignment and breathe vibrant, creative
life into it as you do here...thank you.
Preston, I found your method of
addressing the soda ban in a Latin class to be brilliant! How interesting for
students to consider the arrival of sugar within a culture and how real events
shape a language. I do have a question, however, and this could be a reflection
of my distance from world language curricula. Considering our desired approach
is backward design, what are the learning objectives for your students in this
lesson? This question alludes to topics we discussed today at lunch but I
suppose I need more clarification. What do you desire for your students to take
away from, specifically, this lesson and, in a more broad sense, your course in
Latin as a whole?
p.s. I love the knowledge you bestow upon your readers! I
find etymology to be a highly rewarding field of study but one that I have
rarely explored. I don't believe I have to urge you to do this but please carry
on with your informative blog posts! I am particularly intrigued by the deeper
complexity of Latin. How is this? Is it something I would have to experience in
order to understand? And how do you plan to prepare your students for this
continual unveiling of complexity?
