The STATE OF GREEK
October 24th 2008 06:29
THE STATE OF GREEK
IN NSW EDUCATION
Recently changes to the Australian curriculum for English and History teaching were announced. Our Prime Minister also wants to see more teaching of Asian languages.
Most of the suggested changes seem quite sensible judging from the details released so far and certainly we need to have more people fluent in Chinese and Bahasa however what about GREEK?
I have always thought it a strange and cruel irony that despite Sydney and Melbourne probably being the biggest "Greek" cities outside of Greece hardly anyway of our schools taught Modern or Classical Greek at a secondary high school level. Public or private.
Many private (=prep for Americans) schools, teach Latin, and sometimes Greek but almost no public govern schools teach Greek. Yet Classical Greek, and its dialects, is the language of Homer, Sappho, Euripides, Plato, Herodotus, Menander, Theocritus , Polybius, Strabo Plutarch, the New Testament, the Greek anthology and various other historians and philosophers. Most high school student who want to learn it before university have to do it by correspondence.
Basically this means unless your school and local library has a set of the Loeb and Penguin Classics or other translations and you have a very enthusiastic inspiring Ancient History teacher who explains the importance of primary sources that most students have vey little exposure to Classical Literature even in translation until they reach university.
Could the fact they dont know who Euclid or Archimedes or Aristotle is have something to do with their lack of critical reasoning skills or knowledg eof fallacies and logic systems?
We may be teaching ciritical analysis but are we teaching the knowledge of logic and reasoning that underlies a grasp of maths science and good arguements for debates and essays and other written projects.
Who's going to be teaching logic and HOW to analysis. English or sceience teachers?
Perhaps one change that should be made is a COMPULSORY reasoning skills unit introducing the basics of logic and how this is applied to maths science and languages and literature. i say compulsory because while I have seem many complaints form teachers stating them do teach that others (employers and university tutors) are complaining they get high school graduates who can not spell or compose written documents of any type or have any idea what grammar is ?
Learning a language with a more complex grammar system than one's own teaches analysis and logic becasue you have to analyse and break down the words and statements into morphs and syllables and sounds and syntax and then reconstruct them as you translate.
Perhaps a little more Latin and GREEK in the curriculum somewhere would help?
Or we bundle reasoning skills basic logic argument debating and composition along with civics and ethics into one philosophy course for high schools?
Finally here's one more reason to teach more Greek .
Tired of seeing Creation versus Evolution in which it's clear NEITHER side understands what theory and myth is and how they differ form each other and theology? I am!
Or we could just scrap the whole curriculum and make students read thru the entire Oxford or Macquarie dictionary (the Concise versions I'm not a sadist!) for their high school education!
Bringing back the Classics would be kinder?
| 46 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Arnathi
DarkSuggestion
Comment by Julie Vaux
Books Well Read
Strange Situations
The Purple Challenge
(My few fans has probalby noticed and hopefully forgiven my tendency to reverse letters and can tell on which days I forgot to spell check!)
Myth means (sacred) story usually and comes from a Greek word muthos that just meant story!
Theory comes Greek Theoria
"a supposition explaining something"
usually a principle and its not the same thing as a hypothesis either!
So a story is not always an explanation!
Yet I see people using theory as if it meant hypothesis or story and seeing something is just a theory and I see people acting like mythology is the same thing as theology and that myths are doctrine.
Actually doctrines are teachings ABOUT some thing!
The worst offender is the statement "evolution is a myth"
On the other hand though you get atheists who say all myths are fiction made up stories which shows they are also missing the point ...Why were those stories created and meanigful and powerful?
Is there something or one single or plural that inspires them?
Myth and theory I wish people wouldnt muddle the two!