How the Ancient Greeks Educated Me

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers.

What a 1950s public education and a Greek ideal still teach us about holistic learning.

In this episode
A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 4 of Eli's aphorisms, a "What If?" to ponder.

Eli’s Aphorisms
“Everyone dreams at night. It's when you dream during the day that things happen.”
“To many people, a conclusion is the place where they got tired of thinking.”
“The past we know does not have to be accepted as the designer of the future we don't know.”
“Too many people think they're right for the simple reason that they're surrounded by people who agree with them.”

What If?
The light-beam mirror.

This episode is supported by Vantage Point's Executive Sponsor, Stephen Bozer, SVP of Human Health at Flavine.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. More at eliamdur.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

This is Vantage Point, the podcast for critical thinkers, where we make sense of and excel in our lives, our jobs, and our world. We're not political, just critical. Thanks for joining in the second of our eight inaugural episodes. I'm your host, Ellie Amdur, and I'd reiterate last episode's intro to make sure we're all on the same page. If there's one threat to life on this planet that looms above all the rest as existential, it's undoubtedly artificial intelligence. If the absolutism of that statement seems misplaced or inappropriate, especially in the face of change, nuclear annihilation, food supply, wars, energy, cryptocurrency, pandemics, and so forth, I am ready to be willing and able to defend that statement. Starting now, here at Vantage Point. So to warm up, to get ourselves going down the runway, so to speak, let me ask you a question. And as I said in the first episode, this is a big question, probably the biggest question of this century so far, worldwide. That question is where has critical thinking gone? We need to answer that question and then decide what to do about it. So, what has become of critical thinking? In the last couple decades of my professional and private life, the waning of critical thinking has become so plain to see and so painful to bear that we at Vantage Points have decided to do something about it. Now you might ask, just what can two guys do about a worldwide problem this big? Well, Michael Adams, beloved late president of Fairley Dickinson University, constantly exhorted us. No one person can change the world, but anyone can change what he can touch. And Mahatma Gandhi always taught, whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. So we will here. Vantage Point, the podcast for critical thinkers, will bring you one major commentary, timely relevant observations and advice, Ellie's aphorisms, short, pithy, and insightful, thoughts from great minds in history, and a question to ponder, and the what if question of the day with exciting contemporary ideas. Additionally, from time to time, we'll interview exciting thought leaders from many fields. In essence, Vantage Point has one objective: to help make you better, more competitive, and more fulfilled by constantly improving your critical thinking. So let's get started. The title of this episode is How the Ancient Greeks Educated Me. From Greekis.com, quote, the education system in ancient Greece was regarded as a foundational pillar of society, preparing individuals for responsible citizenship, renowned for its emphasis on holistic development, physical fitness, and moral virtues. Notice the three: holistic development, physical fitness, and moral virtues. This approach has left an enduring legacy on teaching in many parts of the world today and throughout the centuries. But maybe no longer. Let's take a look at education then and now. Certainly, when I went through the spectacular public education system in Mount Vernon, New York, in the 1950s and early 1960s, that was the case. As I see it from my vantage point of having taught two graduate communication and leadership courses for 15 years, it's mostly gone. The victim of nefarious forces, political agendas, and general intellectual ennui and a resignation from the effort to rigorously continue to challenge the rising generations. Education is the ongoing debt of one generation to the next, but it appears that the past couple of generations have defaulted on that debt. Let's break it down. The three segments of Greek education that I talked about, the first is holistic development. In the sciences and mathematics, as I remember them being taught, there was not only insistence on mastery of the subject, the current subject, but preparation and readiness for the next. In cultural studies, we were exposed to visual arts, performing arts, and literature, lots of literature. More on that later. We read all genres of books and wrote book reports on every one of them. We learned public speaking, ballroom dancing, and etiquette. And none of my friends passed on the chance to play an instrument, sing in the choir, and learn a foreign language. All boys learn to work with wood and metal. All girls learned home economics. And although gender roles have changed, responsibility to educate should not. I'd suggest they all learn both. We painted, we drew, we sculpted. Before we continue, I'd like to bring in our founding sponsor, Stephen Bowser, who has thought hard about what a liberal arts education really teaches us and what we risk losing when we let it go.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

In an era where unfortunately some would argue, even at the high school level, undergraduate level, traditional ways of teaching critical thinking, like reading Greek literature, reading literature from other countries, centered around philosophy, thought, has become passe. Some saying the four-year liberal arts degree has no value. I would counter that a lot of that liberal arts background helps teach critical thinking in different contexts. So this is a this is an area for discussion that's extremely interesting, I think extremely important.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Okay, I'm back. Let's keep talking about critical thinking forms, which we will throughout this episode. The next of the three categories of concern in Greek education was physical fitness. Boys learned Greco-Roman wrestling, and seven of the ten Olympic decathlon events. Why not ten? Paul Vault was not feasible, and placing a discus or javelin, a flying missile or spear in the hands of developing pubescent boys was apparently judged a bad idea. I would agree. In gymnastics, we learned floor exercise, rings, high bar, parallel bars, vault, and rope climbing. We learned how to properly throw a football, bounce past a basketball, and dribble on soccer ball. We were required to swim 50 meters. And in the area of moral virtues, in my schooling, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, 1984, The Republic, Plato, Diary of Young Girl, Anne Frank, My Antonia, Gulliver's Travels, The Golf Links by Clegghorn, Clegghorn, C-L-E-G-H-O-R-N. Look it up. These were neither taboo, objectionable, nor subject to parental choice banning. They were fundamental building blocks of independent thinking and part of the moral responsibility of the educator. We read and discussed the newspaper of record every day. We learned civics and ethics, voted in mock elections, and were visited by city officials. We joined clubs, we volunteered, we learned the meaning and the value of the word others. It was a hell of a rigorous upbringing. So what happened? When Albert Einstein first visited America in 1921, here was his impression. What strikes a visitor is the joyous, positive attitude to life. The American is friendly, self-confident, optimistic, and without envy. So what happened? I see a connection between that America and the one in which I was educated. I see a disconnect between that one and today's. Why not again? As we saw in the beginning of this episode, the three pillars of the educational system, which made it foundational, were holistic development, physical fitness, and moral values. And the Greeks believed that educating their rising generations in such fashion would prepare them for responsible citizenship. That held through the centuries and the millennia. When Einstein got here in 1921, he saw that. When I was born and went through the school system, I saw that. Yet we're mourning the demise of it. I'll ask the question again: what happened? So attaching the problem to a recognizable root is one of the pieces of critical thinking that we can use. Using creative thinking, we might be able to solve it. Let's pause here for a moment. I want to share another reflection from our family's sponsor on why a conversation like this one matters so much today.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

While there are many podcasts and many competing sources for your ears, we're lucky to live at a time when a man who has spent his whole career writing and thinking about how people advance through their careers, what skills they need, and especially the need to, for the entire journey of your career life, you always have to make sure you are thinking critically. We are fortunate that he's decided to start a podcast that I am very proud to be a founding sponsor of that will focus on critical thinking in the age of AI.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Okay, we're back. As promised with aphorisms, and let me remind you that they're here because these are mine. The aphorist asserts the truth as he sees it, with no need to argue, defend, or explain it. He is unshakingly confident that he's right, and that's that. Take it or leave it. And here are four of my favorites. Everyone dreams at night. It's when you dream during the day that things happen. To many people, a conclusion is a place where they got tired of thinking. The past we know does not have to be accepted as the designer of the future we don't know. And let me end up with too many people think they're right for the simple reason that they're surrounded by people who agree with them. There's a commonality among all four of these aphorisms. Wrestle around with them a little bit and see if you can find them. And I'll ask you. Oh no, I need to tell you about Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. I asked you to find out or figure out what they had in in common, what they share in common. Well, given the fact that they see the world, the universe completely differently, relativity tears down quantum physics and quantum physics, subsequently does the same thing to relativity. They cannot exist together. But each one of them was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, one year apart. Albert Einstein in 1922 and um Niels Bohr in 1923. Now, they didn't both get it for their view on the universe. Bohr did. Einstein, who never got a um, I'm sorry, a Nobel Prize for Physics, received his for describing the size of the atom and a photoelectric effect. They looked at the universe completely differently, but they were successive winners of the Nobel Prize. And the next what if question for this episode what would have happened if Bill Gates did not have access, unlimited access to a computer when he was 16 years old? And what would have happened if Albert Einstein did kick those around. The next few weeks coming up, we're gonna be talking about the importance of global alliances, critical traits for the 21st century. I've got an open letter from a liberal arts graduate, and we're gonna talk about what made Sandy Koufax great, that can work for you too. And coming up, next will be Global Alliances, and after that, we're gonna talk about one of the great original critical thinkers of all time, Nicolaus Copernicus. Before we close, a brief word about the tools being built around conversations like this and the kind of thinking they ask of us.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Here's a question worth sitting with. It hands you better information, then asks more of you, not less. That's the principle behind the work we do at Singletask. Building AI into the way people market, create, make decisions, so the tools make the people using them think harder, question more, and see further. The power of AI is real. So is the need to stay human and keep thinking critically. The best tools we can build are the ones that keep us doing exactly that.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Thanks for joining us for episode number two. Keep an eye out for number three. And we'll see you next time. Until then, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep thinking critically.