History Text

History Text and Friend Making Incantations

By John Taylor; 13 January, 2006

Lean On Me

I saw an inspiring teacher's film called "Lean on Me," yesterday,
about a real-life teacher in New Jersey who is appointed principal of
a hell-hole called Eastside Secondary School and turns it around. The
actor, Samuel L. Jackson, clearly believes in what the script has this
principal tell his boss in city hall at one point, that Blacks in the
United States are being turned into a permanent underclass and only
firm action, a huge effort combined with pride and self-respect will
turn them around. Race comes up more than once. In one characteristic
act, this reforming principal fires a White music teacher, perhaps the
most qualified teacher in the school, who is too intent on teaching
Mozart for an upcoming festival, and not intent enough on what will
help these students succeed in the real world. Then he has the White
kids in the school stand up at assembly and points out to the whole
school that they have to be here, if they had any option they would
already be long gone, so they are all in the same boat. In a memorable
speech he tweaks the pride of the students and persuades them to try
to succeed. After much dramatics the principal learns to moderate his
autocratic zeal a little while his students learn to see him as the
father that too many of them never knew. They all buckle down and
prove themselves by passing a required basic skills examination.

When I see a film like that I think about how education can improve.
This year in Ontario the curriculum has changed completely. A new
system was evidently brought in a few years ago and there was
criticism that First Nation peoples had been short changed. The
textbooks ignored them completely. So this year to my surprise, the
educational powers that be turned that around completely and put
Natives front and center in all textbooks. On superficial examination
of Silvie's Grade Six Social Studies textbook, this seemed ridiculous.
Students seemed to be learning more now about the names of certain
Indians who made good in certain walks of life, such as entering
parliament or becoming head of a corporation, than about major events
in world history, or even Sir John A. McDonald. This, I thought surely
means that what I know will not be of much help to Silvie and that
will broaden the generation gap.

Then I looked closer at her textbook and saw that _methodologically_
the text was, in fact, a huge improvement. I studied history
throughout school, including college, and I remember taking one course
in historiography that examined closely the difference between a
primary and a secondary text -- the same document I learned can be
primary for some purposes and secondary for others. This, thought I,
should be taught to everybody. It should be common knowledge, for not
knowing it trips us up constantly, especially in religion. As Baha'is
this is something that we have to learn fast, for we have good reason
to distinguish between scripture and not-scriptural sources. Of all
the history courses I took throughout my schooling, this one on
historiography was the most valuable by far.

And lo and behold, throughout this ostensibly aboriginal obsessed text
book of Silvie's I saw constant emphasis on what I learned way back in
that historiography course. It was constantly pushing kids to think of
the difference between a primary and secondary source. When I saw
that, and several other good features of this text book, I was
reassured. It is vastly better than the boring, dumb junk "social
studies" texts I had to stick my nose in during my primary school
years, silly books which turned me off history until I was saved for
history by becoming a Baha'i and reading the Guardian. I am now
reassured that with time teachers are learning something, they are
getting better at what they do, and their material is improving. This
educational system may even actually be worth the prodigious funds
spent on it.

Here is the next installment in our series on friendship as taught by Socrates.

Making friends by incantation
From Memorabilia, by Xenophon, Book II, Part VI

Cri. Good! and when we have discovered a man whose friendship is worth
having, how ought we to make him our friend?

Socrates. First we ought to ascertain the will of Heaven whether it be
advisable to make him our friend.

Cri. Well! and how are we to effect the capture of this friend of our
choice, whom the gods approve? will you tell me that?

Not, in good sooth (replied Socrates), by running him down like a
hare, nor by decoying him like a bird, or by force like a wild boar.
To capture a friend against his will is a toilsome business, and to
bind him in fetters like a slave by no means easy. Those who are so
treated are apt to become foes instead of friends. Hate rather than
friendship is the outcome of these methods.

Cri. But how convert them into friends?

Soc. There are certain incantations, we are told, which those who know
them have only to utter, and they can make friends of whom they list;
and there are certain philtres also which those who have the secret of
them may administer to whom they like and win their love.

Cri. From what source shall we learn them?

Soc. You need not go farther than Homer to learn that which the Sirens
sang to Odysseus, the first words of which run, I think, as follows:

Hither, come hither, thou famous man, Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans!

Cri. And did the magic words of this spell serve for all men alike?
Had the Sirens only to utter this one incantation, and was every
listener constrained to stay?

Soc. No; this was the incantation reserved for souls athirst for fame,
of virtue emulous.

Cri. Which is as much as to say, we must suit the incantation to the
listener, so that when he hears the words he shall not think that the
enchanter is laughing at him in his sleeve. I cannot certainly
conceive a method better calculated to excite hatred and repulsion
than to go to some one who knows that he is small and ugly and a
weakling, and to breathe in his ears the flattering tale that he is
beautiful and tall and stalwart. But do you know any other
love-charms, Socrates?

Soc. I cannot say that I do; but I have heard that Pericles was
skilled in not a few, which he poured into the ear of our city and won
her love.

Cri. And how did Themistocles win our city's love?

Soc. Ah, that was not by incantation at all. What he did was to
encircle our city with an amulet (or wall) of saving virtue.

Cri. You would imply, Socrates, would you not, that if we want to win
the love of any good man we need to be good ourselves in speech and
action?

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com