May 24, 2007 5:39 PM
Alex Nazaryan teaches literature at Brooklyn Latin HS.
Sitting in a seminar half-circle, busily leafing through “The Aeneid,” my class is in fruitful disagreement about Virgil’s vision of war. One student compares Aeneas to President Bush, aware of the human costs yet willing to see destiny through. Another quickly counters that Virgil’s imagery — no less graphic than video footage of Iraq — cautions readers about the dangers of unchecked aggression. Pages rustle and hands shoot into the air. It is all too easy, in such moments, to forget that these are freshmen at a public high school in Brooklyn.
I am often reminded, however, that our traditional approach is thoroughly at odds with the norm. Visitors wonder why our students take four years of Latin and read Socratic dialogues instead of, say, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” After all, our student body epitomizes the diversity that New Yorkers celebrate as one of the city’s inalienable strengths. Why would anyone stifle variety with an adherence to the Dead White Male tradition?
This unfortunate argument has always bothered me and I suspect that it has much to do with the persistently low literacy rates of our high schools. Doubtlessly, there are social and economic factors contributing to this rut and reformers have tirelessly sought solutions for our ailing public schools. At the same time, my experience as an educator has convinced me that until we reinstate the ideals of classical learning in the classroom, we can expect students to come away with lackluster reading and writing skills.
Of all the cures proffered to fix public education, a return to the classics may seem misguided, if not downright reactionary. As the thinking goes, the likes of Homer and Virgil belong in tony Manhattan prep schools or outer-borough parochial academies, while the overcrowded mills that confound educators have little use for the stuffy canon.
But such reasoning ignores the ability of the classics to form lasting habits of mind by providing the background necessary to understand our society, empowering students regardless of race, class or gender. Far from alienating anyone, the classics unify by offering equal access to the tensions — mind and body, war and peace, freedom and servitude — that have shaped Western civilization.
There are practical benefits, as well. The study of Latin improves vocabulary acquisition and elucidates the grammatical structures that are crucial for good writing, while analyzing the tightly structured arguments of Plato fortifies the reasoning skills students will need on college entrance exams.
Implicit in progressive approaches currently in vogue is the poisonous assumption that New York’s students — many of them black and Hispanic — simply cannot read the same works as their white suburban counterparts. The classics are consequently discarded in favor of texts that, while nominally more relevant, deprive minority students of the intellectual opportunities that have long been their due. Sure, cultural sensitivity has its place, but not at the expense of intellectual advancement, which — in my perhaps idealistic opinion — stands the greatest chance of leveling the playing field of our society. [A story about Brooklyn Latin HS, one of the city’s most unusual schools, is on pages 36-37.]
Of course, not all educators are as lucky as I am to teach attentive and self-motivated students. In many classrooms simply getting bodies into seats is an impressive feat. Nevertheless, if we are serious about improving our schools, we should start by reintroducing the works that inform the fundamental ideas today’s children will grapple with as adults. It is about time that our city, ever eager to look forward, takes a little wisdom from the ages.