Dakota Beacon

Many years ago, in conversation with my sister, she expressed her perplexity that co-workers, fellow students, had stated that they couldn’t imagine knowing someone more than two years older than they were, as personal friends. Lucia had graduated with honors in Latin and was at the time working on her law degree.  She was working at the college bookstore. The idea had seemed bizarre to her, and I confess, to me as well.  

We were raised in an extended family.  We were all close to our grandmother, aunts, uncles and also nieces and nephews.  We had heard stories of our grandmother growing up on the frontier, of an America that was also young, of her coming of age in the Roaring 20s.  I have a photograph of her, very stylish, with a Model T era horseless carriage. I have another of her as a little girl with her sisters in a pony cart.  She, in turn, had been raised by her grandparents. To us, history was a close friend. The idea of someone so disconnected with other generations could only be contemplated with pity.  What a bleak, boring, two-dimensional existence.

That attitude seems to be the prevailing one now - due in part to the absence of a parent from the process of child-rearing.  Now kids are brought up institutionally, basically. Parents are a sort of backdrop but not much of an influence. The chain which connects us to our past seems to be broken.  It is certainly our loss.

In our world today this disconnect is extending to our major institutions of higher learning - or at least alleged higher learning.  Yale has announced plans to ditch its course, “Introduction to Art History:  Renaissance to the Present”. The reason is that the material is dominated by white males.  It is also strangely slanted towards Christian and Western culture. Imagine that. A course on art covering the Renaissance to the present time which is represented by white, Christian males.  Instead, Yale is going rudderless, seeking input from students. Which is a lot like taking your own goods to the store and being charged for them. One wonders how much longer it can be justified to pay a salary to professors at Yale.  

But the bigger question, of course is what will supplant the Renaissance?  African masks? How long should we study them? Does anyone really know what they mean?  Is there enough material there to run out the clock in class every day? Or maybe clay pots from New Mexico.  That would be good for a considerable unit. There is no reason to disparage these things. It just remains a rather short subject.  It is true that many non-Western cultures have made contributions to the whole. Persian art is beautiful. Persian rugs as well. Chinese porcelain or Japanese watercolors are well worth learning about.  Why is it more important to deep-six Western culture than it is to explore various other cultures? I have a lovely folk art woven wooden plate from Poland. I have an unusual tulip-shaped samovar from Turkey.  I love them. I have other treasures from other places. None of them is a replacement, however, for Michelangelo or Rafael.  

We see the same abuse with literature.  We no longer honor writers if they happen to be white.  Or male. This is not to make light of the considerable literature from other regions.  There is some wonderful and profound literature and poetry from South America (although be ready for the argument that because most of it is written in Spanish it is tinged with “colonialism”).  There are philosophers from the East whose work is certainly worth knowing about. But why on earth would you throw Shakespeare out? Or Burns? Many third world countries may have stories to tell, but many of them did not have written language.  The only possible reasons for getting rid of studies of the Renaissance have to be racist ones.  

Our colleges have a lot to answer for.  They have long since ceased teaching our history objectively.  English composition is full of propaganda. (I know - I have typed term papers.)  Instead we have, for example, “women’s studies”. Women have been around a very long time.  They have always been essential not only to our culture but to life itself. Their history is interesting but it is inseparable from that of men.  It just happens to be a fact that women historically have played a role more important than that of men. They have had the main responsibility of raising those men from childhood, providing their care so they survived to adulthood.  Teaching them about their culture, their language, their history and their values. Men, for the most part, have not done that. Women have. Today women have begun to share this essential role with men, but only recently. In my opinion it is to the detriment of society and civilization that they have done so.  Now children are learning not to want to know anyone more than a year or two older than themselves. Women once provided the connection with our roots and our history. No longer. Now they seem to prefer to read all about themselves and seek to find trivial details in which they played a central part when in reality, they have always played the lead.  Fathers are also essential to the raising of children. I cannot and don’t wish to dispute this fact. But they cannot be the main care providers and early teachers of their children. They must provide for their upkeep. It’s kind of a deal.

Now we have gender studies and black studies.  Black people, too, have made great contributions in many, many ways.  But they are people. Not just “black people”. In America, anyway. But are we to throw out Aristotle because he wasn’t black, and therefore was irrelevant?  How stupid is that? Should we throw out Jane Austen because even though she was a woman she was a white woman? Should we exclude everything other than Maya Angelou?  And with the lack of fluency in the languages of these third-world sources, it would be difficult for anyone on any campus, teacher or student, to even know the substance of these writers.  

I think there is room to read Angelou and Austen.  We can admire the advancements of the Aztecs as well as the exquisite beauty of the Sistine Chapel or the Greek sculpture.  It is not incongruous to recognize the loveliness of a Ming vase and also a Renoir or a Manet. Or a Corot. And certainly there is no substitute in either Africa or anywhere else for the statue of David or the beauty of Wordsworth or the insight of Burns.  It is to be supposed that we can spend a semester on the art of the Bedouins perhaps.  

Next will be our music.  Maybe the Saudis or the Somalians can supplant Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto (I hope you listened to that here on Sunday).  Or maybe the music of the Australian aborigine peoples can replace Strauss. I’m sure we will see that soon enough. The major contribution of black Americans to music has been jazz.  Guess what? We already study that, and it is well worthwhile. Should we abandon that now because it is appreciated by white people?  

The fact is that our colleges need to return to what they are there to teach.  They are there to teach us what we don’t already know about history, about art, about philosophy, poetry,  music, economics, science. Not to declare them all dead because “dead white males” played a leading part in those subjects.  And we should reconsider the wisdom of “women’s studies” altogether. Just what was so terribly important about achieving a seat in the corporate boardroom or presiding over a court that was more important that caring for and raising the next generation of America’s leaders.  The real reason behind discarding the philosophy of the Greeks, the plays of Shakespeare, the art of Leonardo da Vinci or the science of Galileo is not so much because they are “old, white men”, but because getting rid of their wisdom and skill, and their message, makes room for leftism and allows us to forget what has contributed to making us free.  And liberty is the real outcast.

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