1. I’m generally not very fond of the lesson plans I’m given, or the readings. That is, a lot of the readings are fine in themselves, but odd choices for the subject. In US History and Literature class, for instance, my students are reading a book about the Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne, written by a German woman. It’s a good book and an important subject, but seems kind of out-of-place, especially since the textbook gives only the most cursory summary of the Revolution. I went off-script yesterday to fill them in on the details of what happened, though I’m far from an expert on the event, but I was at least able to provide context about the Estates General and the rough sequence of events leading up to the Reign of Terror.

2. Also, our textbook, Christ in the Americas, in addition to other problems (e.g. the authoress intruding her opinions into the narrative a little too freely), tries to be a total history of the Western Hemisphere, which it really doesn’t have the space to address adequately, and which in practice amounts to giving a history of the US with occasional diversions to Latin America (Canada gets pretty much forgotten after the French and Indian War). Much as I’d like to learn more about the history of Latin America, the history of the English-speaking peoples on this continent is more than enough for one course. And to accommodate this goal, the narrative jumps around a lot, skimming over the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson Administrations and devoting but a cursory glance to the War of 1812 (we’re supposed to read a book on Lewis and Clark as well, but we’re tracking to the leave them behind before we get to it).

3. I also went off-script in Classical History, though there wasn’t much scheduled for that day anyway, in order to give the kids an overview of the Peloponnesian War, which the lesson plan essentially skipped. They seemed to find it interesting, with remarks about how shocking and nasty the whole thing was. That led neatly into touching on Socrates (he was a veteran of the war and started doing his thing while it was still going on), and so more or less brought us up to the next subject in the lesson plan, which is Phillip and Alexander.

4. Anyway, all that has given me to think, and I’m starting to consider how I would structure a course. It’s tough, because there is always so much to cover. Like, if I were to craft a course in English grammar, I think I would begin with Aristotle’s categories, then to the nature of symbols and the purpose of language, and only then start on the parts of speech and functions in a sentence. And I’d have every point be illustrated with quotations from classical English literature, oratory, or the like. So, the basic form a sentence might be illustrated by “Jesus wept.” Subject: Jesus; Predicate: wept.

We’d probably cover the parts of speech all at once, identifying what each of them are (this is why we’d start with the categories; to give the necessary terms to describe words), and then spend the bulk of the course examining how sentences are formed. Since I think you need to grasp all the types of words before you can really grasp how sentences are made (e.g. you need to know what a preposition is before you can identify when a noun is the object of one). Then we slowly build up to more and more complex sentences, which reinforces the earlier lessons as the students pick out the parts of speech and how they’re functioning over and over again.

5. I keep going back to Federalist no. 10 and wondering if I missed something, since my reaction is “This is one of the seminal works of American political thought?” He goes on about why you can’t stop factions from forming, which amounts to “this is why people will always have different interests and points of view”. Why do we need three or four paragraphs to establish that? Shouldn’t that be axiomatic to any consideration of government? Isn’t managing that more or less precisely the purpose of government? That’d be like starting a military treatise explaining why perpetual peace and negotiation isn’t practical.

His most interesting point, the idea of “great and aggregate interests being referred to the National, the local and particular to the State Legislatures,” occupies a single sentence when I would think the ramifications and practical application of that would suffice to carry a whole essay (and perhaps it does: I haven’t read all the Federalist Papers yet, but the closest thing I can remember is Hamilton’s speech about how people will always be more interested in their own states than the national government).

He spends a lot more time on the idea that the country is too big to allow for national-level factions…a point quickly invalidated by the party system and frankly dubious even without it; what about the different economies and positions of north and south, east and west, just as an example? That isn’t even considering that this whole debate is about establishing a national Constitution that is subject to different interpretations, meaning his point is more or less invalidated by his own essay.

6. I think Federalist 62 (also by Madison) on the Senate is much more interesting and astute, and probably my favorite so far. In it he talks about the need for a check on the influences of “irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or [being] misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men,” and generally addressing some of the real problems that come with democratic government. This one actually even makes Fed. 10 better, as Madison is aware that he seems to be contradicting what he said before and clarifies that his argument then was only about likelihood, not a guarantee, and they still need an actual mechanism to protect against those dangers (I wonder if someone pointed that out to him or if that was really just him tacking back-and-forth with the issues at hand?).

On that note, I think the Senate appointed by the States was one of our best ideas in the Constitution: not completely undemocratic (because then people would whine), but insulated against popular influence, drawn from about the most reasonably qualified pool you could manage (the state governments) and given a fairly long leash, but unable to do anything without the say-so of one of the other branches. This gives able and ambitious men a strong incentive to go make a name for themselves in the state legislatures, gives the voters a reason to pay attention to the same, and, as Madison says, provides a stop-gap to the rest of the government in the form of a body of experienced legislators (since you ordinarily couldn’t get into the Senate without having first put in a good few years in local government and shown your competence in that regard).

So, of course, we decided to trash the whole thing with the 17th Amendment.

7. Fed. 62 also contains this golden line:
“To a People as little blinded by prejudice, or corrupted by flattery, as those whom I address…”

Which calls to mind another:

“But when I tell [Caesar] he hates flatterers, he says he does, being then most flattered.”
-Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 1