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hum 110 is a year long course required for all freshmen
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<p>Well, there's no doubt that freshmen will have read gracious plenty on ancient Greece!</p>
<p>One problem I have with that required course is that it doesn't even sniff at the other ancient civilizations. I guess it would be all new for Chinese students.</p>
<p>The other problem is that most of these kids have spent half of their high school years reading ancient Greek literature and history. Is reading the Iliad for the third time really the best way to get incoming freshmen truly engaged and excited about learning?</p>
<p>I agree interested dad
They would get it- if they are going to be history majors of course- but I think it could also be helpful to see whatelse was going on elsewhere in the world at the time.( which I think is touched on in the lectures- and I know that outside of class the students discuss it quite a bit- but Reed is also fairly Caucasian- and I think it would benefit the school as well as the students if the curriculum was a bit more PC- or at least broader in focus- but I don't see Reed changing their curriculum in order to attract more students)
My D read the Odyssey, three times- once in middle school Latin, once in high school english, and once at Reed.</p>
<p>The Illiad they read during the summer and are supposed to come ready to discuss it, but all I remember are the jokes about the ships.</p>
<p>I do think that reading something more than once can be beneficial, when you look at it a different way, with different knowledge.</p>
<p>I imagine that other schools, even with Great books sort of requirements, have other courses that touch more on contributions by other than dead white men.
Her sisters school, possibly because it is very diverse, also has had more emphasis on texts from other cultures.</p>
<p>But I can also see the point of, it isn't the texts themselves so much as having a common body of knowledge shared by the freshman class, that gives them a place to start </p>
<p>Some of the other schools- that are larger with maybe 6 classics classes and students chose 3, seem very different. The small size of Reed ( 1300) and having all freshman take the same class, with seemingly the same reading list they had 15 years ago, is what makes Reed Reed.</p>
<p>( I am giving my own opinion- I really don't know Reeds reasoning- although they are coming to Ds high school tommorow- perhaps I will ask- when my oldest began looking at Reed, I was really too intimidated to ask many questions)</p>
<p>Heh -- when I saw that reading list, all I thought was...not many freshmen are really going to read it all. IMHO, it wouldn't be easy to get through the Iliad in a week even if you were only taking that one course! CC parents' children excepted, of course. ;)</p>
<p>With the exception of the secondary texts and Hesiod, I think I read everything (or parts of everything) on the Fall required reading list, and more, my 1st semester in college, although it was divided between a Classics survey course and an Introduction to Philosophy course (the Plato and Aristotle).</p>
<p>I think my kid would barf if someone made him read the Iliad again, though. He's been through much of it three times already.</p>
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I think my kid would barf if someone made him read the Iliad again, though. He's been through much of it three times already.
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<p>I don't know if mine would barf (although he's read the Iliad and the Odyssey at least a couple of times) but there are many other texts one could read from other cultures that were contemporary with Ancient Greece and Rome that one most probably did not read in high school (at least in the US). There are other texts as well from the Western Civ canon that high schoolers did not get to read 2 or 3 times.</p>
<p>Of course there are valuable texts from the Western Civ canon that high schoolers don't read. No one made me read the Iliad in high school, either, but it seems very popular right now. My son has had the Iliad in class three times in five years, and the Odyssey (which I think of as more accessible) not at all. Fashions change. I don't think he's read any Greek drama other than Sophocles, either, although his sister did.</p>
<p>Which classical non-Western texts contemporaneous with Greece and Rome would you have kids read, marite? I will admit to pretty utter ignorance on that front, except for Gilgamesh (which is much older, I think), and the Hindu epics.</p>
<p>Well, one could read the Tao Te ching, the Analects and Mencius and the Buddhist Jataka Tales, the Book of History. I've also long thought it would be interesting to compare Thucydides, Caesar and Sunzi on war.</p>
<p>When my Ss were in middle school, they had a half-year long unit on China. One assignment was to compare the perspectives of the Confucians, the Legalists and the Taoists on the appropriate role of government and laws. </p>
<p>Currently on the Harvard faculty, there is a prof who's done work on Ancient Greeks' and Ancient Chinese perspectives on the body and health. Fascinating stuff. I'd love to break down barriers between Western Civ and the rest.</p>