Update: See postscript for the school's lamentable decision to capitulate to the demonic pencil-pusher's insistence on the correct translation of the school's motto.
A TIMELY PROPOSAL
FOR THE ERADICATION OF
a little truth
THAT THREATENS THE REPOSE, GOOD FELLOWSHIP, REPUTATION
AND POTENTIALLY THE BOTTOM LINE OF OUR SCHOLARLY COMMUNITY
There is in our midst a sad figure of a man, immediately recognizable by his scraggy beard and stony gaze, well along in years, who appears to be bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders in addition to a tattered knapsack stuffed with books that no one else would ever want to read. (Let’s take a peek: Carmina Catulli, Pervigilium Veneris, De Partibus Animalium, Apologia Platonis et Fragmenta Socratica, De Patavinitate Sociorum Nostrorum, three volumes of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, and -- o sweet child of mine – here at the bottom of it all is the infamous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. I can assure you a more incomprehensible and dangerous book has never been printed!) How shall we give relief to this man whose suffering is for all sensitive souls a pathetic sight to witness at a time when we have already enough troubles of our own to bear. We see him in the classrooms and on the walkways and in the dining hall at all hours and seasons monotonously droning on about the demise of Latin at our school and bemoaning at every opportunity that the official translation of our sacred school motto, Scientia ad faciendum, three otherwise harmless words, is completely and shamefully wrong. The school says the slogan means, “Knowledge by doing”; he, “Knowledge for doing”. This old man is to all appearances willing to spend his last, quibbling breath on the meaning of that mercifully short preposition ad. That’s all he’s got: ad. At least the school can say that by using ‘by’ to translate ad instead of ‘for’, it has the advantage of accurately reflecting the number of letters in the original Latin. To this disagreeable old pedant I am sure you would join me in giving him three short words of advice: Get A Life. Let him translate that! So painful must this man’s existence be to himself, not to mention the plague he has become to the young and vital souls of our community, that whoever should be able to remedy this problem would surely be congratulated by all and honored with a memorial plaque to be hung in that most sacred location: on that wall in Simms Library (Blessed be its eponymous benefactor!) where the plaques of those who have given more than thirty years of dogged service to our community are set, even if, as is my case, this benefactor may have served the school less than half that time.
As it happens, happily, I do have a solution to this sad case and have no doubt that it will be well received by all members of this community, whether they be students or faculty or administrators, and especially by parents who run the risk that this man may spread his nonsense and procrustean proclivities into the silly heads of their children.
To rid ourselves of this pest and the danger he poses, we MUST employ each of the following remedies in the order in which I will now prescribe them:
Firstly: Ease this man into retirement as swiftly as decorum allows, though a resolute administration would wait to sever its relationship with this man only until the earliest possible hiatus in the school calendar, perhaps during one of our many three day weekends that the administration has so wisely distributed throughout the school year.
Secondly: Banish Latin from the curriculum. “Latin is dead as dead as it can be, first it killed the Romans, now it’s killing me.” So school children have been singing for centuries, sometimes I am told even in Latin itself. We should once and for all put an end to the cruelty of Latin instruction at our school, along with its prescriptive grammar and ponderous pronunciation.
Finally, but only, I must insist, after the first two steps have already been taken: Replace the current Latin slogan of the school by some global language version whether it be Keltic, Kuru, Karawane, or Ketchup, whatever language will best allow us to make our slogan mean whatever we want without having to worry that some ‘scholar’ will tell us that what we say it means is not what it means at all. Who would know or care what the Karawane phrase Bugo Bugere Itchi Scratchum really means? It’s fun to say. Just give it a try. For the overly scrupulous, I assure you it means ‘Knowing by Doing’. If the first two steps have already been taken, this last remedy will be received if not with relief or pleasure, then at least with the customary indifference that has attended our school motto for decades. Perhaps it is best if no one really cares.
A single example of this troublesome man’s delusions will suffice to persuade those who may yet feel some small pang of conscience at such draconian measures and would rather simply wait for nature to take its course and allow the man to fade away and die in his own good time. They argue that with him gone no one will care anymore and since the administration has long ago not allowed students to complete their language requirement with Latin, there will be no need to hire another classicist. That would surely be for the best. Did you know Nietzsche was a classicist? Enough said.
But now to my example, which will persuade even these hesitant folk mentioned above that this imminent threat requires an immediate response: I give you the spectacle of the demented pencil-pusher. This man has taken it upon himself to flood the campus with pencils, dearly bought by funds from his meager salary (How could it be otherwise?), printed with our current and hopefully temporary school motto and with what he claims to be its correct translation, all in the red and black of our sacred school colors. Somehow this odd fellow doesn’t realize that nobody cares about the correct translation, and yet he persists in his delusory efforts to impose his little truth on all.
A respected colleague at another school has told me of a similar case at his once highly regarded institution. There, he told me, a teacher, believing himself to be of service to his students, solicited tips from these students. That’s right, TIPS! These students, who were already paying a hefty sum to attend this prestigious school, thought such gratuities were a small price to pay for a better grade and the prospect of a better transcript to present to colleges. Before this man fell into complete dementia, parents were demanding that other teachers should likewise solicit ‘tips’, thinking by instituting this seemingly harmless practice to reward good teaching and enhance their children’s chances of being admitted into an elite college. Suffice it to say, the school’s reputation, once so exalted, collapsed. We too must take care that the example of this one pedestrian pedagogue who seeks to impose his little bit of the truth on all does not result in the demand of parents that their children should be taught that words really do matter and that the meaning of words is not something we are free to assign as we wish. That prospect is unnerving.
But I have digressed too long. To those few teachers and even fewer students who have been duped into thinking that Latin is still relevant, let me list the reasons why it is not:
- Latin is dead. Nobody speaks Latin today nor have they for hundreds of years.
- Latin is dead, except in those elite, eastern boarding schools from whom we assiduously want to differentiate ourselves and in those public high schools in Texas that have always had an inferiority complex.
- Latin is dead and has no other utility than to make us sound smarter and wiser than we really are, a ruse for us that is no longer possible since the cat is now out of the bag and everyone knows we have been ignorantly mistranslating our sacred school motto for years.
- Latin is dead. If there were anything of value to read that has been written in Latin, there are abundant translations of these few books. The translations make the arduous task of reading classical literature a little less intolerable. No one cares in books of great length if three small words happen to be mistranslated. Let no one ever again have to apologize for not having read Homer’s Iliad in its original lingua Latina.
- Latin is dead, except for those few who believe that Roman history and politics are best understood in its original language, a politics I am assured, unlike our own, that is demagogic and controlled through bribery by a few wealthy individuals, and a history that cannot serve as a model for us since Rome is but an example of yet another failed state.
Let no one argue that because we are community of scholars young and old that we should value the correct translation of our sacred school motto, that such lack of scholarly concern sets a poor example for those whose education we are responsible, that we owe this old man a debt of gratitude for his insistence on his little truth, and certainly let no one argue that students should be allowed to study Latin to fulfill their language requirement, and finally let no one be so naïve and simple as to argue that the correct translation of the motto “Knowledge for doing” (which, according to him who will not shut up, means that we want our students to use what they have learned here for the purpose of making the world a better place) more accurately reflects our noble purpose than “Knowledge by doing”. I cannot support such arguments until one and all are ready to capitulate to the tyranny of a little truth pedaled by an old man often seen muttering to himself, barely knowing who he is or where he is going.
I am myself getting on years and all but a rigorous exercise regimen has kept me from sharing in my target’s physical and mental decline. Consequently, it cannot be said that I have anything against the old per se. True, I am a teacher of English, a subject more relatable to the actual daily lives of our students and one that requires little more notice of Latin than the mere mention that over half of our English vocabulary derives from this now defunct language. Nevertheless, with English losing ground to Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, and other global languages, it may be argued that English one day in some distant future may itself become a dead language. Consequently, I hope no one will suggest that I have been engaging in an egregious ad hominem argument for the sole purpose of driving this pathetic man to an expeditious exit from our community.
FOOTNOTE: Since I wrote this piece, the school has officially changed the translation of the school motto to "Knowledge through doing" in a well-intended but misguided attempt to cover their original error in translation by substituting the longer and more dignified preposition 'through' for the diminutive 'by'. Our pedant, of course, was not to be put off, claiming that the affront to scholarship to be even more egregious, since he himself was consulted on the correct translation and then ignored. And now, unfortunately, he is in possession of another little truth: that the change is really no change at all, muttering all the time about a king's misguided choice of attire. He continues, as always, to insist on his original little truth that the actual translation should be 'Knowledge for doing' and that we should embrace the noble purpose that the correct translation underscores: we want our students to apply the knowledge they acquire here to make the world a better place. I fear the official change has only served to delude him into believing that he has some God-given purpose on this earth, likening himself, I suppose, to one of those insufferable Old Testament prophets.
PS. I regret to say that after holding out for ten years against the little truth of the pencil-pusher the school has finally capitulated to this demonic man's insistence on the correct translation of the school's motto. Here's how it happened: one of the unauthorized pencils, inscribed with what my sophomoric colleague claimed to be the correct translation of the school's motto, found its way to the notice of a gullible young man who innocently used the translation on the pencil in composing the school's new alma mater. Somehow, through inattention or indifference or exhaustion or simpleminded recognition that a scholarly community such as ours cannot knowingly continue to mistranslate its own Latin motto, the new school song won the imprimatur of the school's administration. Perhaps it was because the 'correct' translation fit so nicely with the tune. Who knows? But it is done. What next? Is there to be a revival of Latin at our school? Are students to be allowed to take Latin to satisfy their language requirement? Are we to return to the Dark Ages? The man has won the day with his 'little truth', and his 'little victory' has given him renewed energy to pursue his other quixotic ideas. He is now pushing the subversive agenda of a website that preposterously proclaims, Classics for All: https://classicsforall.org.uk/about/why-classics/ Happily, my retirement is not far off. I am tired.
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