[B-Greek] Casualties of the Beginning Greek class
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 4 08:13:00 EST 2010
With me it was the fact that I really wanted to be able to read the text of the scriptures in the original coupled with the fact that when I was in college you didn't get into seminary without knowing Greek (at least well enough to pass).
george
gfsomsel
… search for truth, hear truth,
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth,
defend the truth till death.
- Jan Hus
_________
________________________________
From: Martin F. Daly <pastor at ruggleschurch.worthyofpraise.org>
To: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
Cc: B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thu, February 4, 2010 5:30:24 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Casualties of the Beginning Greek class
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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>
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