ThomStratton.com

There is one distinct disadvantage to audio books. You don’t get to see how things are spelled, or how the words are arranged in a sentence, and sometimes that can make all the difference in understanding. The reader’s particular accent and how they decide to pronounce a name can make this even more difficult. I’ve written before about not knowing how names are spelled in fantasy books I’ve listened to. Well, it can be a problem in non-fiction, too.

Take the lecture series I’m listening to on the Renaissance. Right now we’re discussing the history of Florence, Italy, and its contribution to the birth of the Renaissance era. Fortunately I’m familiar enough with history that this didn’t throw me for a loop, but I can see someone else getting a bit confused.

Did you know that for the better part of the 1400’s Florence was controlled by the meta-cheese? Or should it be “Meta-cheese”? Whatever this cheese was, it was obviously not a type of Limburger, as the meta-cheese controlled things subtley, from behind the scenes.

I suppose it could just be a title within hierarchy. If a ruler was powerful enough to be considered “The Big Cheese”, then they needed something above that to show that another ruler was even more powerful. Hence “The Meta-Cheese”. The hierarchy went like this: Mini-Cheese, Little Cheese, Cheese, Big Cheese, Huge Cheese, Ginormous Cheese, Honkin’-Big Cheese, and Meta-Cheese. (Or perhaps I’m miss-hearing it, and it should be “Medi-Cheese”, meaning “middle cheese”, like the Mediterannean is the “middle sea.”)

The reign of the meta-cheese was ended in the late 1400’s, when Charles VIII conquered Florence en route to claiming the throne of Naples. I suspect, however, that he had help. I’m thinking he employed a mercenary mozzeralla, or perhaps it was an elite, well-aged parmesan.

(In case you haven’t figured out what I’m talking about yet, go here.)

On a semi-related side note, I recently finished the audio book of “The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterannean”, by David Abulafia. I enjoyed it enough and found the information useful enough that I bought a copy for my reference library. Holy Moley! The thing is at least four inches thick! In paperback! No wonder it took me so long to get through it! Still, very interesting book. (Note to self: You haven’t reviewed this book yet)

I’ve moved from “The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean” to a recorded lecture series on the Renaissance. One of the initial lectures discusses the roots of the Renaissance as a reaction against the Middle Ages in returning to the classical ideals of the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome. One tenet of those cultures was a “liberal education” for the citizenry to provide a better-educated, more adaptable populace. Interesting to think that our modern education is based on principles over 2000 years old.

What bothers me, though, is how literally colleges seem to be taking the idea of “liberal arts” these days. It seems colleges increasingly view their role as pushing the liberal agenda. There’s not even so much as lip-service paid to the idea of ideological diversity, or even neutrality. Case in point, this little gem:

A professor at Michigan State University (MSU) opened the first day of his…class on Thursday by bashing Mitt and Ann Romney and ranting against “old Republicans” who he says “raped” the country, according to a student who made a secret recording of the class.

The eight-minute secretly recorded video also reveals Prof. William S. Penn bullying a student who apparently disagreed with his Democratic politics and arguing that Republicans want to prevent “black people” from voting.

“If you go to the Republican convention in Florida, you see all of the old Republicans with the dead skin cells washing off them,” said Penn. “They are cheap. They don’t want to pay taxes because they have already raped this country and gotten everything out of it they possibly could.”

It’s hard to imagine what a rant such as this has to do with any college subject, but what’s even more surprising is that Penn teaches creative writing. It would be different if this were a lone wolf, but this case is far from typical. Even back in the 1990’s when I was in college it was not uncommon for professors to openly discuss their own politics in class. This would not necessarily be a problem if the students were encouraged to debate the professor, but most students are taught, formally and informally, to respect the teacher and let them speak or to keep your head down and shut up lest you get graded down for arguing. It’s a bully pulpit, and it seems far too many professors can’t resist.

There was one notable exception in my (lengthy) college career: Professor “Bud” Wigginton. He taught English 201, which focused on argumentative writing. He was one of those who would frequently discuss controversial topics in class, though in this case it at least fit the nature of the class. I’d heard a few rumors about him, ie. “if you’re a Mormon you can forget getting an A”. So I went in to my first few assignments rather wary. And I got B’s and C’s. I don’t remember now if I finally went to him about it or if he asked to see me, but one day we ended up discussing my grade.

“Your problem, Mr. Stratton, is that you don’t take a side,” was his response. “You try to show both sides, which is admirable, but you don’t try to argue one way or another. Pick a side and defend it!”

I came away from the discussion a little angry, and with my back up. I decided on the next assignment I’d show him. I’d argue a point, all right. I’d pick the side opposite what he appeared to believe and then catch him when he still marked me down. The trouble was, he gave me an A. If I remember correctly, he also wrote a little note like, “Yes! This is what I want!”

Over the remainder of the semester we formed something of a friendship, and my respect for him grew. I think I disagreed with him on every topic, and I got an A. My papers were frequently marked in places with notes like “Excellent point!” or “I hadn’t considered that.” I even started to openly disagree with him at times in class discussions–and he seemed not only fine with that, but welcomed it. I soon grew to look forward to his class, and we had several good conversations outside of class.

Neither of us changed the other’s mind. But I came to see him as a teacher who, while naturally coming from a certain perspective, saw his role as teaching students to think for themselves. I think he truly thrived on debate, not as a win-lose situation, but as a win-win situation in which two people might at least gain greater understanding of an issue from one another. He wasn’t about to apologize for his beliefs, but he was well-versed in the counter-arguments, and seemed to see in them an opportunity to tighten up his own thinking on the matter.

But teachers like Professor Wigginton (He had a Doctorate, but insisted we call him “professor”) are rare these days, and he’s long since retired. Teachers like Professor Vrooman, my Economics teacher, don’t last long in colleges. I don’t think he was conservative, but he had two strikes against him. He taught economics as a science, not an ideology. And his teaching style was a bit confrontational, with some salty language and mild poking at the local culture. Between the liberal faculty (though I suspect ISU was mild by comparison) and the significantly Mormon student body he got complaints from both sides. He didn’t last long, but I count myself lucky to have been one of the few students he got the chance to teach. He helped me understand economics. He helped me enjoy economics.

That’s what college should be about. No, we don’t necessarily want ideologically neutral campuses. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could at least get ideologically divers, campuses, whose missions were first and foremost to teach, to teach to think, and to provide students with as broad a perspective as possible? Can you imagine how it would change the world?

Unfortunately, that’s not what we get much anymore. Now what students think is more important than that they can think for themselves. I can understand that. If you truly believe in something it’s only natural that you would want to teach that to those for whom you are responsible. It’s too important to leave up to chance or free thought. We can’t afford to lead the horse to water in the hopes they will take a drink.

But if we return to the original definition of a Liberal Education, that’s not the role of a college. I can see an argument for their role being to provide alternative viewpoints to their students’ backgrounds. However, the political/ideological demographics of the US being what it is, that would call as much for conservative viewpoints as liberal. I don’t think most colleges are willing to go that far, though quite frankly the country as a whole would benefit from it if they would. If we could all learn to respect one another’s point of view, even if we will never agree with it, that would be a big step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, thanks to the increasingly liberal education system in this country, the most exposure the average American gets to how to debate and exchange ideas is from our politicians. And that is a scary thought.

When I was young there were a fair number of people who were convinced that Dungeons and Dragons was evil and encouraged devil-worship. I have no idea what my parents thought about it. My only attempt at D&D when I was young was a single game with a friend of mine that didn’t go very well. I got into war games, and when I did discover role-playing games it was the Star Trek RPG. Not much satanism there. If there was my sister wouldn’t have come within ten miles of it, let alone invested as much time in at as we did.

But even though the “evil” stigma has diminished over the years (video games took over that role on the societal hit list), it’s still largely considered “odd.”

So paint me a little surprised when my twelve daughter announced that her church group’s activity this week will be a LARP (For the uninformed, that’s a Live-Action Role-Play). Granted, it will be a Book of Mormon LARP (that alone might be worth the price of spectatorship, just to see how they manage that one), but I still can only wonder how they slid that past the Propriety Police. Is this just a case of her adult leaders being clueless, or has society really changed its view of role-playing games?

Once can only hope. They’ve been a great source of fun, friendship, and social interaction for me for years. Besides some incredibly fun times with my sister, my years in the Greenway Game Club (we have RPG-gear bags to prove it) helped keep me sane through much of the last fourteen years. Some of my favorite memories….were entirely unrelated to the game, usually, but the game gave us an excuse to get together and be totally nuts, dagnabbit! We had an awful lot of fun in-game, as well, not the least of which the look on Bill’s face when he discovered the Ring of Calling in the Cavalry called in the Paladin Queen herself.

Resurrecting our gaming from three hundred miles away has proven a bit challenging during the two years I’ve lived in Utah, but we’re working on it. It’ll be fun to dig out the ol’ dice bag again.

Recently my daughter bought a Texas Instruments calculator for school. That reminded me of my brother-in-law’s calculator that he used to have for college. His was programmable, and he would often program it to play “Lunar Lander”. The calculator would start by telling you your lander’s altitude, velocity, and amount of fuel. You would then proceed to tell it, turn by turn, how much fuel to burn.

The idea was to control the lander’s descent to touch the surface within an acceptable range of velocity. Use up too much fuel too early, and you might run out of fuel and crash. Use too little and you would end up going so fast that no amount of fuel would stop you in time. We could play it for hours.

This was in the old days before we outsourced imagination.

But then computers became more accessible. My siblings went to college and we were able to play more sophisticated games, like “Hunt the Wumpus”, which was essentially a logic game. You would be in a maze with one arrow. Each time you moved the computer would tell you what exits your new room might have, and if there was a wumpus nearby it would give you a hint. By logic or luck you could figure out where the wumpus may be, and if you shot your arrow in that direction you could kill it before it could kill you. But make a wrong move and the wumpus would get you.

There was an even more sophisticated game called “Star Trek” (obviously this was a kinder, less litigious age) where you were on a randomly-generated 9×9 map of sectors. You had some simple commands you could enter, such as scanning certain sectors, moving, targeting weapons, and firing. The idea was to explore the “galaxy” looking for klingon ships. Each sector consisted of a 7×7 grid with early emoticon-type symbols representing your ship and any enemy ships. You could fight the other ships, take damage, find your bases, get repaired and, if you were sufficiently good, hunt down all the klingons and win the game.

Mind you these text-drawn maps were the very height of graphics in those days.

I also remember play Zork, a text-based adventure game similar in play to “Wumpus”, only with a much broader range of actions. You started the game suddenly finding yourself in a field, with a white house nearby. You had no idea where you were, why you were there, or what you were supposed to do. You could only explore and see what you could figure out. I never had the time to play Zork very far.

Years later I bought a PC game version of Zork where someone had redone the game with graphics. It was pretty cool, but I still was never able to finish it. But only because it was hard, not because it wasn’t fun.

By then the Atari was changing the world, and today we have video games as far ahead of the Atari as the Atari was ahead of those old text-based games. Mind you I would never consider going back, other than for a brief bout of nostalgia, but I do sometimes have to wonder if we didn’t look something by having the computers do so much for us. The range of interactive storytelling is incredible these days, yet are they really more fun? They don’t require as much of us, certainly, and that’s not entirely good.

Not long ago I came across a modernized game of “Lunar Lander. ” All the old elements were there, except now everything is graphical. I enjoyed playing it, but I don’t know it was any more fun just because I could see the lander itself and the landscape I was landing on. The game required more of a manual touch now instead of a mental approach. You didn’t have to think about what you were doing; you just looked at the lander on the screen. If it was going too fast, push a button to fire the rocket. It would burn fuel until you stopped pressing the button or until you ran out of fuel.

It was certainly easier to play, but I can’t say it was any more satisfying than landing on the moon via calculator.