The Advantages of a Decent Education
Mar. 25th, 2025 07:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgePaul Krugman, today on Substack, talking about voters blaming governments for conditions (specifically inflation) out of any individual country's control: "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet electoral victory to parties with good policies; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
Koheleth is always apposite in some way, especially in the Authorized Version, or maybe the Vulgate. (Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.)
This touches on my reactions to posts elsewhere about people who have never heard of the Odyssey. Although there is actually no obvious reason, given today's education system, that one should have run across Homer at any time during elementary or high school, it enriches one's experience to have read the Nekuia, or the recognition of Odysseus by means of an old scar (a passage chosen for discussion in Auerbach's Mimesis), or the destruction of the suitors, or indeed almost any other passage. (Plus it's a foundation for reading other texts.)
(My daughter, who has three years of Latin and also has a Greek Myths component in her English curriculum but clearly only a glancing familiarity with Homer, called me up a few weeks ago asking about the Odyssey. I told her to read it in a decent prose translation. She asked if she could borrow my copy, and I told her that it wouldn't do her much good, as it starts with ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε μοῦσα...)
Koheleth is always apposite in some way, especially in the Authorized Version, or maybe the Vulgate. (Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.)
This touches on my reactions to posts elsewhere about people who have never heard of the Odyssey. Although there is actually no obvious reason, given today's education system, that one should have run across Homer at any time during elementary or high school, it enriches one's experience to have read the Nekuia, or the recognition of Odysseus by means of an old scar (a passage chosen for discussion in Auerbach's Mimesis), or the destruction of the suitors, or indeed almost any other passage. (Plus it's a foundation for reading other texts.)
(My daughter, who has three years of Latin and also has a Greek Myths component in her English curriculum but clearly only a glancing familiarity with Homer, called me up a few weeks ago asking about the Odyssey. I told her to read it in a decent prose translation. She asked if she could borrow my copy, and I told her that it wouldn't do her much good, as it starts with ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε μοῦσα...)
