[B-Greek] Casualties of the Beginning Greek class
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Feb 4 08:22:24 EST 2010
On Feb 4, 2010, at 7:30 AM, Martin F. Daly wrote:
> 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.
I think I may have answered this question -- perhaps piecemeal -- at points
in past discussions here. The question is a better one than several of the
questions that are routinely asked about ancient Greek pedagogy here. I'm
not sure I can set this forth briefly, but I'll try.
(1) Character trait: curiosity. Aristotle says that this is universal in humanity:
πάντες ἄνθρωποι φύσει ὀρεγονται τῆς ἐπιστήμης (PANTES ANQRWPOI
FUSEI OREGONTAI THS EPISTHMHS), but John H. Randall, Jr. said,
with some justification, that Aristotle never met the American university
student. The kind of curiosity one needs is one that goes well beyond the
desire to learn something that is instrumental to another end, I think: it's
not enough to want to read the the NT in Greek; rather it has to be a consuming
passion to understand not only the hows of ancient Greek but, as far as
possible, the whys as well. I don't know how to instill that sort of curiosity,
but I've certainly tried to nurture and urge it along whenever I've seen it.
But there must, I think, be more than a utilitarian attitude toward learning
Greek. There has to be, I think, a passion to understand the how and why
of the way the Greek spoke and wrote. It cannot be just a matter of
deciphering cryptograms; rather it must have something to do with
realizing that human beings spoke and wrote this language and that it
can communicate to us because we too are essentially the same kinds
of human beings: they can speak to and write for us to understand.
(2) Style of teaching and study. I've spoken of my first-year teacher of
blessed memory, Joe Billy McMinn, a grad student at Tulane when I first
met him in the fall of 1952, recently graduated from Louisville Baptist
Seminary and taught in the tradition of A. T. Robertson there. He had a
Texas drawl, was infectiously affable, would digress any second into a
rambling account of why the third person active ending is -EI rather than
-ETI as it once was, or -ESI as it later was. He gave our little class of
four students a choice to begin with Classical Attic, Homer, or NT Koine.
Since two of the three wanted Koine (not I), that's what we did. We used
a wretched textbook written by a certain Rife, but that was more for
consultation; we worked with the GNT and the gospel of Mark and
learned the forms of words and how and why they worked -- in terms
of morphology, syntax, lexicography, and context to deliver the
meaning to be read from them in sequence. We didn't make any
effort to write out a translation so much as to understand what the text
says; it seems we spent most of our time talking about how and why it
means as it does.
There's obviously a lot more to the questions you raise than just this.
I've come to think that even a wretched textbook can work if teacher and
student interrelate meaningfully. I think one can learn on one's own, but
a remarkable teacher really does, I think, make a huge difference; even if
one spends hours on one's own satisfying one's curiosity and practicing
one's reading or writing, one needs to have someone to talk to about the
questions ones wants answers to and doesn't know where to find them
readily or doesn't have access to an adequate library. But passionate
curiosity fueled by driving industry on the part of the student is a
primary factor in what success I had.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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