Sunday, August 29, 2010
Dear Green Kids,
A couple of things have happened since returning from China that have given me an idea that could help us become more connected as a family. First, I recently started playing Facebook Scrabble with Annie and Spence. It’s fun, even addictive, and also helps keep my creeping senility at bay, to say nothing of the value of staying in almost constant touch with each other. Second, I’ve read a couple of books recently that have given me a keen interest in continuing education: the first one, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, is required reading for Dylan at his new high school, which outlines the conditions that lead to success in life (and they’re not related to IQ); I’m about 1/3 through a second book called The Core by Leigh A. Bortins, a book I wish I’d discovered at the outset of our marriage and family. It is written by a mother who homeschooled her sons and then went on to nationalize her approach to what she calls “classical education,” which involves learning well the ancient trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) of the classical seven liberal arts and applying these learning techniques to primary texts in literature, philosophy, and science. If we’d successfully applied some of her principles to our own family over the years, some things might have turned out differently.
These experiences have reminded me that learning and interaction with curious, intelligent people is one of the true pleasures of this life. And since I think we all would agree that open communication was not always one of the fortes of the Green family in the past, we might benefit from expanding our range of interaction into cyberspace and see what happens. So, being somewhat of a cockeyed optimist, I thought to myself: “Why not see if the Green family might be interested in starting a kind of philosophical dialogue among its members on topics timely and topical that could 1) keep our brains from atrophy, 2) learn from and about each other so our affections and connections don’t wane over time, and 3) learn to become more motivated to increase our common knowledge and (and this is one of the greatest assets) to pass on a love of learning about the Good, the True, and the Beautiful to our posterity.
I’d like to invite any of you who are interested to participate in an unscientific experiment by responding to the following philosophical question: “What did Socrates mean when he said: “No evil can happen to a good man?” Sometime this week send back your response to the question and a tentative reaction to the whole idea of creating a forum for discussion based on issues from primary texts we’d read together. We could call it “The Great Conversation” or “The Little Green Schoolhouse,” or something else. It just might set in motion a tradition of on-going communication that could benefit us all down the generations.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
I am grateful to have finished this long letter to the Green Kids early this morning. Here it is. I wanted to keep it all in one place, even though I split the quiz from the opening paragraphs as an attachment.
Dear Green Kids:
I’m elated, even delirious, over your support of my last week’s suggestion that we all share ideas in a “great conversation” by reading some great documents from the past together. It has been gratifying to receive such an unexpected flood of enthusiastic responses, most of them carefully thought through and some eloquently expressed. It gives my old heart a tremendous lift
to find that my own children, unbeknownst to me, have heartily embraced Socrates’ most famous dictum—“The unexamined life is not worth living”—and have ascribed whole-heartedly to his belief that “our primary duty in life is to discourse on the Good, the True and the Beautiful.”
Seriously, in truth no one responded. Actually, one of you sent a one-word reaction. But one word can mean a lot. One of you wrote “Thanks” in response to an earlier email I wrote. That one word made my day! It was so wonderful to discover that I’d made a small difference for good. But I’ve spent the past couple of days trying to decide “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
It’s possible that no one reads my letters to the Green Kids. Even Mom complains that they’re too long. First clue for you: I have a need to interact with my children beyond small talk (think little old lady in rest home who never gets visited—I have a poignant story about that one if you’re ever interested). If you’re just too busy, I’ll understand, really. Just tell me.
It’s also possible that some read my letters but have no interest in responding, which in a way is even more troubling, because one of the “primary duties” of all human beings is to (see above). Socrates’ statement has been the philosophical mantra of my whole personal and professional life. It’s what drove me to become a teacher and what I tried to inculcate in the lives of my children.
Which leads to the third possibility for the deafening silence. It’s a generational thing. I can understand that, because I treated my own patient, incredibly loving father the same way when I was an adolescent. But I can’t accept that explanation here, because you children are hopefully beyond that black hole condition of human development.
So, where do we go from here? To make this short, if not sweet, please take a few minutes to answer the quiz in the attachment. I will tabulate the results and try to act accordingly in the future (Note: Be honest; I can handle it). For the ten-minute version, add a personal note to the questions you find most compelling or most irrelevant.
[Note: I have omitted the quiz and the pages of responses. It makes the introduction too messy.]
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
I woke up this morning with the impression that I should keep a record of the beginning of a new tradition in the Green family, namely, sharing our insights with each other from reading the classics, which I have chosen to call “The Great Conversation.” I will begin including what I have written and what my interested children contribute to this classical conversation in hopes that their children and our grandchildren will someday see that this endeavor is worth more than all the tea in China for its power to keep the wisdom and truth of the past alive in our present lives and to inform the decisions we make in the future. Only second in importance to a firm foundation in religious truth, learning the wisdom of the past in a family setting binds parents to children and gives children the indispensable tools of a classical education (logic, grammar and rhetoric) that will lead to more fulfilling lives and significant service to humanity. What more could parents want for their children? What greater legacy could parents leave them than this?
I will organize the conversation chronologically, as I have already done with my “Gratitude Journal,” beginning with my first letter to the Green Kids from Sunday, September 5, and proceed to add email responses of those willing to participate in the pages that follow. I’m enormously grateful for the encouragement I have been given so far by the only two who have expressed an interest sharing insights about the great ideas of the past. I trust more will come on board as they see the intellectual stimulation it produces. At least that is my hope.
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