[B-Greek] Casualties of the Beginning Greek class

Martin F. Daly pastor at ruggleschurch.worthyofpraise.org
Thu Feb 4 07:30:24 EST 2010


Can I ask what was it that caused you (or causes you) to press on 
through and continue to the level you are now?

Was it a character trait that was instilled in you that wouldn't let you 
quit?
How can this kind of character be formed in others?

Was it a word of encouragement from a mentor or role model?
How can mentoring and encouraging be furthered?

Was it a particular style of teaching or study that allowed your mind to 
grasp and hold the taught and studied?
Are those styles still available for others today?

My question is from a genuine place of wanting to learn, and I hope is 
not too forward.
As a wounded-but-not-quitting-greekling, I can use all the help I can get.

En Xapiti,
--- marty ---

Carl Conrad wrote:
> This morning the 'Old Curmudgeon' -- Laudator Temporis Acti cites 
> Hanson & Heath, _Who Killed Homer_ on the dropouts, week by week, 
> from the first-year Greek class, as they encounter first-declension masculine 
> nouns and three meanings of AUTOS ... What makes it funny and pathetic 
> for any veteran teacher of Greek is that it rings so true (of course students of 
> French encountering irregular verbs and verbs with à and de may complain 
> but they do become inured to them through conversation). The following 
> piece cited at 
> http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2010/02/come-on-in-you-wounded-greeklings.html
> = http://turl.ca/brgpnyk
> =====
> After the first three weeks of the beginning Greek class, 20 percent of the 
> students are unfortunately conked, casualties of the masculine nouns of 
> the first declension. Others are DOA thanks to the pronoun autos. The
>  find that the autos monster can mean three altogether different things 
> ("him/her/it/them," "-self," or "same"), depending on both its case and 
> its position in a sentence. Students do withdraw from an introductory 
> Greek class before they taste Plato or the Gospels, these bored, annoyed, 
> and exhausted ninteen-year-olds, those very prospects who you once hoped 
> would go on to Thucydides—and perhaps be one of the 600 each year in 
> America who still major in Classics. They slide now across the hall to squeeze 
> into the university's over-enrolled Theory of Walking, Rope Climbing, and 
> Star Trek and the Humanities, which will assuage and assure them that they 
> are, all in all, pretty nice kids, classes that will offer the veneer of self-esteem 
> but will guarantee that they will probably lose what little sense of real 
> accomplishment they had carried within to begin with. You can nearly hear 
> those doctors of therapy, those professors of recuperation at the lecture-hall 
> door: "Come on in, you wounded Greeklings. It's not your fault. They had 
> no business subjecting you to all that rote; we do things a lot differently here.
>  Relax, sit back, breathe deeply, and tell us how you feel."
> ======
> And what's the American seminary equivalent? Classes in exegesis based
> upon your favorite version or interlinear?
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
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