Modern Age articles from March 2003

Modern Age archives from March 2003

Sweet Lucy Gray--And Ms. James.(Poem)
March 22, 2003... SWEET LUCY GARY -- AND MS. JAMES The young lad squirmed as Ms. James read A poem about Lucy Gray. Her icy voice seemed as dead As sweet Lucy on her last day. Oblivious of lyrics' beauty, Ms. James to Wordsworth did her duty: ...

Remedying the ills of American education.
March 22, 2003... At BEST THE PRESENT STATE of American education is problematic. The rapid emergence and spread of a techno-secular culture exacerbates the situation; and the hard realities of pluralism and multiculturalism make it more complicating to impose...

Restoring the sacred house of education.
March 22, 2003... WE ARE ACCUSTOMED to reading in essays on the dangers of specialization in education that it separates the specialist from the deeper spiritual and intellectual springs of his cultural tradition. (1) In The Revolt of the Masses, Jose Ortegay...

Orality literacy, and the tradition.
March 22, 2003... I WANT TO DISCUSS what I take to be the basic, or the deep, justification of the traditional curriculum. By "the traditional curriculum," I mean the Greek and Roman classics, the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and items from modern and...

Vocation and the liberal arts.
March 22, 2003... EVEN WHILE REMAINING in the university's core curriculum in vestigial form, the liberal arts appear to the average university student, even to the graduate student, as wholly detached from any vocational meaning. They are the stuff of record...

"Reforming" the college English curriculum.
March 22, 2003... IT IS IRONIC that our would-be "reformers" of the college English curriculum believe it to be deficient in "multiculturalism" and "diversity." I have previously written on the "multiculturalism" of Western Literature, commonly taught in...

Reflections of a head master.
March 22, 2003... HAVING JUST RETIRED after forty-five years as a head master, I should, I suppose, be able to reflect back on what has happened and on what I have seen and experienced. I do, however, fear that the salient fact is that after forty-five years I...

Democracy and elite.
March 22, 2003... IF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HOLDS as self-evident truth that all men are created equal, there is considerable evidence to refute this assertion. Surely experience tells us that we are not equal: some are rich, some are poor; some are...

Freedom and authority: Burke and Sartre in dialogue.(Edmund Burke, Jean-Paul Sartre)
March 22, 2003... BURKE: In an earlier dialogue we spoke of "Tradition and Radical Individualism." Of course, M. Sartre, you are nothing if not the philosopher of freedom. All of which is most perplexing when we discover in your later thought your flirtation...

Q.D. Leavis's criticism: The human core. (Reconsideration).
March 22, 2003... IN THE PRESENT RECONSIDERATION of the literary criticism of Q.D. Leavis (1906-1981), I wish to discuss three related topics. First, I want to show that, independent of her collaboration with her famous husband, F.R. Leavis (1895-1978), Q.D....

The Refreshment of the Humanities.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education, by Jeffrey Hart, New Haven. Yale University Press, 2001. 288 pp. THERE WAS A TIME, not so very long ago, when the political and cultural pronouncements of...

Humility and Method.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... The Humanities in the Age of Technology by Ciriaco Moron Arroyo, Washington, D. C., The Catholic University of America Press, 2002. xiv + 26.3 pp. The Humanities in the Age of Technology is a profession of faith in the humanities as a...

A Weaver treasury.(Richard M. Weaver)(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963, edited by Ted J. Smith III, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000. xlviii + 813 pp. UNTIL NOW, A SCHOLARLY EDITION of Richard M. Weaver's writings has been...