The Crito

Is doing injustice to an unjust city an injustice?

Such was our discussion matter yesterday in freshman comp, and although I did better responding to the actual shape of the discussion in 9:00, both classes had good things to say about duty, freedom, and justice.

(One discipline that I've yet to master is keeping previous teaching sessions out of the one I'm conducting. I've found myself more than once this semester attempting to force 10:00 into the same discussion that 9:00 had. Afterwards I realize that very good things could have come from what the folks in 10:00 actually said, but as I noted, I'm no master of that discipline yet. --A pretty good reason not to cut TA teaching loads.)

Okay, so I used a Nietzschean aphorism-dash. Yes, I'm derivative.

Anyway, back to Plato. Although we lacked the time to do hard-core discussions about duties and privilege and such, we did start to explore Plato's absolutism and its tendency to sit ill with our preference for self-determination.

This week we're doing peer revision, but next week, we get into Republic, and we begin with Thrasmychus's claim that morality is a tool of the strong that serves to keep the weak in their place. Not as sophisticated as Machiavelli or Marx or Nietzsche or Freud or Foucault or Greenblatt, admittedly, but I figure I'll let them have a run at the punching bag before they start to read the ones that punch back.

The Apology

Yesterday's classes went well. It's amazing what a difference the class's text makes. A year ago, trying to take seriously restaurant reviews and essays about blue jeans, I had to reiterate nearly every class session why we were in fact doing the freshman English thing.

A year later, I replace the MTV-esque FYC anthology with Plato, and every freshman is taking the class seriously. Perhaps I'm going cultural-conservative as I approach my thirtieth birthday, but as long as I'm teaching incoming freshman, I'm going to treat them as college students, not as consumers. They'll read Plato because it's good for them, and if they drop the class, it's because they're not ready for real education yet.

Wow, am I ever on a power trip...

Back to school

Well, the summer blogging thing didn't really pan out.

Now I'm back at UGA, taking two language classes and one poetry class, teaching two classes on Plato, and finally succumbing to peer pressure and setting up a FaceBook page.

Nothing lengthy or profound now; I've got to get over to Park Hall and teach. We're doing Plato's Apology today, so I might start doing the professo-blog thing and documenting the experience.

Or not.

When did he start dressing like this? 

Micah sports his new overalls 

The tough kid has become a photoshop... 

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!