MOOCs, Part II, Epic Teaching and Teaching Epics

Homer

The debate surrounding MOOCs (Massive On-line Open Courses) continues to take place across every form of media. I have posted an on-line debate in Which I summon  the ghost of Socrates to speak to one expert on social media who has significant reservations about MOOCs. I have also been active in commenting on other debates on this issue on websites for Inside Higher Education and several of the educational groups within the LinkedIn network.

The argument I want to put forward today actually goes back to the beginnings of learning, to the original and aptly named Peripatetic School, called the Lyceum. Aristotle survives today in part due to luck but mostly thanks to the use the early Christian thinkers found in his methods to support their points of view. For a millennium the Scholastics danced around his words like angels on the head of a rhetorically refined pin until it became outdated and retrograde when Bacon and others ushered in the scientific revolution. Why this broad brush stroke in Western Civ.? Because all we have of Aristotle are his lecture notes. The hundreds (perhaps) of his books have long since been food for worms rather than for thoughts.

Most of us have kept notes for a course. Think about how they would fare if turned into a book. Perhaps a few writers with the memory of Funes the Memorias (read Borges’ story) could create a beautiful transcription. But not bloody likely back in ancient Greece. The technology did not allow for transcription: a stylus and wax tablets were the best one could get. Yes, the storage of memories back then was an art, but still, even knowing this, the notes that we call the work of Aristotle are not accurate and are, often, not great literature. They are often dry, often vague, and often misleading. Whether this was due to Aristotle himself it is impossible to say. On the other hand, having the the actual words of one of the brightest men on the face of the earth, during his time, and perhaps since that time, would be incalculably invaluable even now.

I bring Aristotle up as an example of all that has been lost in order to compare this with what is now happening in the world. In the most recent edition of The New Yorker there is a story on MOOCs and it tells, although not in dactylic hexameter, the tale of one MOOC hero. It too has ancient origins. A professor, Gregory Nagy, if not quite an epic hero himself, is nevertheless still a legend at Harvard. He has honed his lectures for several generations and his resume as a noted Classicist is intimidatingly deep.

His MOOC, offered by edX, is on the ancient Greek hero. The course is, appropriately, in media res, meaning that only 10 of the proposed 24 segments are up. Each of the segments is subdivided into sections that contain short lectures with accompanying visuals, small discussions of specific texts, and dramatic readings of the texts in translation. Each episode centers on a Greek word/concept, but there are overarching themes throughout.

Achilles and Ajax

I have studied and read many versions of numerous epics for many years and in watching Nagy’s MOOC I have learned a great deal. Unlike the wonderful approach to the epic by Tim Shutt (whose work I have commented on), Nagy spends much more time on the specific words and passages rather than looking at the larger superstructure. His love of the words and the way these words were chanted to the public convince me that this form of academic offering is mimetic. 

The Iliad and Odyssey were the central texts for those living in Greece for many centuries. The government of Athens paid for their public recitation to the people as they were thought to contain the core wisdom of the culture. Now, Nagy’s work in essence repeats this feat. Harvard has paid for the public presentation of his insights and his words reach around the globe. The evocation of what many think of as a lost age is at the same time a return to the public declamation of what others think of as eternal verities of character and act.  We learn about ‘kleos’ and ‘nostos’ and other words that still bear significance to anyone living.

In addition, Nagy knows that what he is doing is also imitating the theme of the Iliad. The central lines of the Iliad for Nagy are these: “I’m going to die, but the story will be like a beautiful flower that will never wilt.” (Rhapsody 9, line 413). Achilles’ willful embrace of his fate in these lines is used by Nagy to describe many things in the poem but he also uses them to describe the act and meaning of the course itself. He knows that long after he is gone from this world, the course itself will be a bloom to be viewed for as long as humans walk the earth. But he also makes connections with the epics of our culture, the films, like Bladerunner, that tell of heroes who die having seen things that will disappear 'like tears in the rain'.

Homer Manuscript

Aristotle’s actual words and so much of great Classic learning has long disappeared never to be recovered. What MOOCs allow, if nothing else, is for great teachers like Nagy to perform in an epic mode for the world to hear and see. His beautiful bloom will never fade. Each MOOC will be a contribution to learning that even those centuries from now can return to for learning not simply about the texts, but how we in this time and space interpreted learning. These artifacts gather the flowers of our age in science, technology and many other disciplines not simply for our time but for those who are to come. Creating a record of civilization as we see it is better than the thousands of time capsules buried in buildings and holes in the ground.

One of the key Greek words that Nagy underscores is “Me mne mai”. He translates it as “I have total recall”. The MOOCS of today will permit the total recall to future generations the knowledge of today in ways that permit the total recall of what values we put forth in our teaching and in our teachers. For me this epic reach is to be applauded and supported.  To have the best teachers in the world declaim to us now, and for those who come after us, their lives’ work seems both wonderfully dramatic and pragmatically essential.

                                                 Cream "Tales of Brave Ulysses' live

For those who do not subscribe to the epic mode, a subsequent entry will support MOOCs in a way that makes sense based on data rather than poetics. It involves cost benefit analyses and is based on much research by some of the brightest people in technology and education today.