On Education and Justice

I was struck by two things in this week's readings: our ideas about education and about justice.

Education
In Book VII of the Republic, we read that "man ought not to learn any study slavishly. . .don't use force in training the children in the studies, but rather play. In that way you can also better discern what each is naturally directed toward." (page 216) Given all the things that Plato writes about education, it may seem silly to focus on this small nugget. But I think that Plato was on to something.

We can interpret this in two ways. On the one hand, Plato can be telling us that people need to be taught through genuine interest and discovery. This is not at all how our current educational system is structured, though it does call to mind my own utopian view of home schooling. What better way to learn than to be curious about something and be in the company of a teacher who encourages and fosters discovery of that topic?

The second way to interpret this is much more literally. All people - young and old - need time to play. Society doesn't place nearly enough emphasis on the importance of play. I used to work for an organization that had (and still has) a game room. Here you'd find comfy couches, lots of natural light, video games, puzzles, books, and small tchotchkies on which you could while away some time when you were particularly flustered by a task. Playing is not a bad thing. Sometimes, we need to not be productive in order to ultimately be productive.

Justice
Disclaimer: I believe in right and wrong, but not in society's ability to define those categories.

I really enjoyed the interview with Amartya Sen, and found specific threads of the conversation that I was able to apply to my own personal experiences, and to the scholarly issues with which I grapple as an anthropology student.

• Sen talks about the idea of global justice, about whether or not some official global justice entity would be a good thing. I can certainly see how global justice could be useful. However, it could also be very dangerous. Laws and practices exist within individual cultures, and to suggest that there can be a global justice is to deny the defining characteristics of a time/place that called for those specific laws. Of course, I'm not thinking about basic human rights like the right to food and clean drinking water. I'm thinking of moral hot-button issues like female genital mutilation, abortion, capital punishment, and the like. Would we really want to be subject to laws agreed upon by an international group?
• Sen addresses my fear somewhat by claiming that we have to be open to ideas that don't necessarily come from within our own local communities. To develop a complete and reasonable understanding of justice, we have to be able and willing to adopt international ideas that further the basic notion of justice. Reason will prevail, or at least make a significant dent in any argument that could lead to an abuse of a global system of justice.
• My favorite concept from this interview is this: It is important that we not ask what a perfect justice looks like. Rather, we need to focus on identifying injustices that exist, and remedying those one at a time. This seems like a manageable way to bring about positive changes - both in our local communities and in the world. Nevertheless, making justice "bite-sized" like this is not to make seeking justice any less daunting. Pockets of injustice can be found throughout the world. Can it ever really be possible to address them all?

Finally, I'll close with a somewhat disconnected thought. It this week's readings, we read about Justice, Society, and Education. And I struggled with this a bit because I feel like we lost sight of the ideas of justice, society, and education (lower case). I don't think about justice as a single entity that is or is not present in society as a single entity. Rather, I operate on a daily basis in lots of mini-societies. I work in New York. I live in New Jersey. I am part of a community of women, of lesbians, of the larger queer community. I am a student, a democrat, a cyclist. All of these things with which I identify are societies that both perpetuate and defend against their own unique injustices. How are we to understand these micro-societies and the notion of justice in the context of this week's readings?

Voiceless Women

In this week's readings, I was most struck by the way women were treated by the men around them and portrayed by the writers who wrote about them. Helen is nothing if not a villain for Euripides, and Clytemnestra is a murderous whore for Sophocles. But it is Electra who suffers the most for her biological gender. The reader should feel bad for her because she is unmarried, a virgin, a weakling who relies upon the men in her life. For Euripedes, she is a maternal character who dotes upon her sick brother and relies upon him and his criminal activity to save her from death. For Sophocles, she is a victim of circumstances around her, powerless to change her life until her heroic brother Orestes rescues her. In both plays, Electra's voice advanced the plot. And yet, Electra doesn't really have a voice, at all.

I discussed this with Martin earlier in the week, and we had to agree to disagree. He thinks that the playwrights were challenging gender stereotypes by exposing them to such an extreme degree. A true challenge to societal norms, in my opinion, would have been to make Electra a confident, assertive, even aggressive woman who is able to avenge her father on her own. Merely writing about sex discrimination - or any kind of discrimination - isn't enough to combat that in society which needs to change.

I think many people who are discriminated against can relate to different aspects of this play. If you are an immigrant, or if you look other than white, then perhaps you can relate to the slave in Euripides, who is spared by Orestes after a humiliating and humbling encounter with him. If you are a woman, then perhaps you know what it is like watch the men around you succeed, despite your own attempts in the same arena. If you are a (gasp!) single woman, then perhaps you know the sting of being reduced to your relationship status. The episodes of discrimination about which we read this week aren't so very far removed from the way society operates today. The disappointment, for me, is that the discrimination in the plays is never remedied - or even countered.

Frank's Prompt

Write 3 sentences, each one representing an idea of importance for you related to Aeschylus and our discussion. Do not write more than one sentence. If it helps, make believe that you are deciding what 3 sentences will remain of a larger work which no longer exists with the remaining sentences existing in no autograph manuscripts but only quoted by later thinkers. This is in addition to your normal journal ideas.

1. Faith is most important when confronting a challenge.
2. Even the most well-intentioned revolutionaries must suffer the consequences of their actions.
3. Don't mess with gods/God.
   

On Prometheus Bound

1. Prometheus Bound in a Global Context

This may seem like a stretch, but Prometheus Bound brings to mind (for me, anyway) the current print revolution in which we are living. "It was a bad play because the structure was episodic, the characters extravagant and improbable, the diction uncouth and wild" (pg 132). The structure of our own print material has changed dramatically. Pages-long newspaper articles have been replaced with brief blog posts. Our multimedia and data mash-ups are nothing if not improbable. And where Aeschylus' writing is episodic, our own writing has been reduced to 140 character tweets. Sometimes, the ground-breaking departure from standard storytelling isn't recognized as a positive change until the audience has the perspective that comes with the passing of time. Prometheus Bound was like that. Perhaps tweeting will be like that, too, one day.

2. Prometheus Bound in a Personal Context

One a personal level, I was struck by two things: 1) the verses in Prometheus Bound that are suggestive of contemporary experiences and 2) the simultaneous similarities and juxtaposition of Prometheus and Jesus Christ.

On Contemporary Expressions:

"It is an easy thing for one whose foot
is on the outside of calamity
to give advice." (pg 149)

How often does someone give us advice, to which we rejoin "Sure. That's easier said than done."

"Worship him, pray; flatter whatever king
is king today." (pg 174)

How often do we cast our lots with he or she to whom some connection confers a degree of power or importance upon ourselves?

On Comparisons to Christ:

The religious allusions throughout the poem were fascinating. One moment, Prometheus was like Christ. The next moment, Christ's polar opposite.

". . .do not sorrow for my present sufferings;
alight on earth and hear what is to come. . ." (pg 149)

This sounds like something Jesus might have said to his followers, or even as he died on the crucifix. But religious thoughts were hard to maintain, especially in light of verses such as

". . . I, a God, suffer
at the hands of Gods - " (pg 143)

While it may have been true, this is decidedly not something that Jesus would have said.

Diving Into Classics

1. Homer, The Iliad, Richard Lattimore, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), Book 1, pp. 59-75.

This is my first encounter with The Iliad, and as such, I had a variety of reactions to it. I was struck by the similarities between the stereotypical gender roles of today and of yesterday. Men are war-hungry and power-hungry. They settle misunderstandings with threats or acts of violence. The women in their lives fulfill one of two roles; they are either trophies from whom they seek sexual satisfaction or mothers who sooth bruised egos. The women in The Iliad who have a voice use that voice to seek divine intervention or to counsel patience instead of violence. Although Havelock writes that the domestic code is broken in The Iliad (p. 79), the gender stereotypes nevertheless remain. I am reminded of Rachel Simmons' book Odd Girl Out in which she explores the socialization of young boys and girls. Boys engage in physical conflict. Girls fight with words. If this is a gender divide that has always existed, is it something that can (or should) ever be changed? Or is it just the way things are?

2. Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), Chapters 4 and 9.

In Chapter Nine, Havelock writes of the poet, "[t]o control the collective memory of society he had to establish control over the personal memories of individual human beings." (p 145) If we accept this statement, then poets are not very different from historians. History has two meanings: that which happened, and that which is said to have happened. The historian's job is to gather evidence in the former category and construct a narrative of events for the latter category. Anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot categorizes the process in this way (Silencing the Past, pgs. 2, 6):

Here, we can substitute the word "poet" for "historian" and we have Havelock's perspective of poets, memory, and history. For me, this underscores the fact that history (whether told by a poet or historian) is one fiction among many. It also reinforces the importance of the role that poets play in chronicling historical events.

3. Personal Reflection

One thing I found personally interesting in this week's reading is the reference to prayer in The Iliad. "Over and over the old man prayed as he walked in solitude." (verse 35) In this world of mortals and gods, it is fascinating that some characters still resort to the "traditional" notion of prayer: one-way communication to a deity believed to have the power to intervene in one's affairs, in the affairs of others, indeed, even in global affairs. I think of the title of this course - The History of Communication - and wonder what role prayer plays in this history. Prayer is certainly a varied form of communication. Some people pray alone; others pray in groups, in traditional ceremonies. People pray to a god that they have not met, and prayer (unlike other forms of communication) is a monologue. Is prayer a legitimate form of communication?