Pay No Danegeld: Teaching Western Civilization Rudyard Kipling's poem is due for a renaissance.

Clayton Cramer:

Why do most colleges require students to take a semester (sometimes two) of Western civilization? We want students to know about the history of our civilization because, amazingly enough, humans keep making the same stupid mistakes. The historian's hope -- well, at least this historian's hope -- is that students will recognize the stupidity of first century BC Rome, and fourth century BC Greece, and Weimar Republic Germany, and about nine zillion other moments in time -- and not do it again! It's probably a hopeless task, but I try.

But there is another reason as well. The West has a rich heritage of faith and reason that we want our students to understand. There are so many historical and cultural references contained in our books and literature that will be utterly mystifying if you do not know from whence they came. My students (well, most of them) now know why "Spartan" as an adjective refers to very primitive or basic services or provisions. They know what "crossing the Rubicon" means -- and whose crossing of that river meant that "the die is cast." They understand the importance of channelization in warfare, because of how the Greeks used it to defeat the Persians at Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis. They know why "Praetorian Guard" often means someone who is as much in charge as the person or institution that they are supposed to be protecting.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 15, 2011 1:07 AM
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