Fragment -- #313

[March 2006 journal entry]

The 4 March 2006 Commercial Appeal included an op-ed column by David Brooks -- ‘Headed to Harvard? All is not lost’ -- re becoming truly educated. His proposals –

1. read Reinhold Niebuhr,
   
2. read Plato’s Gorgias,
   
3. take a course on ancient Greece,
   
4. learn a foreign language,
   
5. spend a year abroad,
   
6. take a course in neuroscience,
   
7. take a statistics course,
   
8. forget about your career for once in your life.
   

I have been thinking about his question and his proposals. Here is part of what I think I might propose (not in any particular order) to undergraduate students re becoming educated –

1. a course on the decade of the 60s (United States and international),
   
2. a course on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (Reinhold Niebuhr would be a good United States theological point of reference because of his adapting his theological and ethical views to political realities, but I would prefer Dietrich Bonhoeffer),
   
3. A course on Middle East history since the late 19^th century,
   
4. A course on ancient Rome (ancient Greece would be in the background, but the United States today is much more evident in ancient Rome),
   
5. a course about the Human Genome Project,
   
6. a course on appreciating art, music, dance, poetry (international),
   
7. a course on history (any period) seen from the perspective of the powerless, the victims, the losers,
   
8. a course on the link between fundamentalism (not limited to Christianity, not limited to religion) and violence,
   
9. a course on the nature/limits of language,
   
10. a course on Camus’ The Plague,
    
11. create a discussion group in which each member reads the entire New York Times every day,
    
12. keep a journal of all substantive conversations. I will stop the list at this point.