Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

Paul Cartledge
****
Historians, like the Greek city-states in their day, don't really know how to take the Spartans. They were admirable in their war making (a feared opponent), yet repugnant in their social practices: enslaving whole populations as war chattel -- for centuries, separating children from their families to be raised by the state for the state's needs, inculcating a warrior ethic that shamed the survivors of battles into suicide. In fact Thermopylae was a battle in which 300 Spartans, led by King Leonidas, were expected to not come back, and the one survivor who did was spurned by his society. He was miserable, and one year later in the battle of Plataea he left the Spartan line in a berserk-like, suicidal charge to make amends for having survived Thermopylae. (To no avail, it was bad form to break the line.)

So the main problem is that one of the most repressive, totalitarian societies ever known in Western history fought for the freedom of the Greeks against Xerxes and the Persian empire. Not only that, their stand at Thermopylae undoubtedly bought enough time for the Athenians to resist Xerxes fleet at Salamis, forcing his retreat. We can admire and be grateful for that, since the great flowering of Greek culture occurred after the Persian War.

This is a well told history of Thermopylae: background, context, immediate outcome, long term significance to the history of the world, etc. Perhaps the best chapter is the epilogue in which Cartledge recounts how historians and philosophers have viewed the Spartans over time. Totalitarian regimes (i.e. Nazi Germany) admired the Spartans, but so did Plato and Rousseau. At their best the Spartans were willing to die for the idea of freedom, even if the individuals didn't really have a choice.

Education For Thinking

Deanna Kuhn
***
This book struck a chord with me since it puts the emphasis on thinking and teaching thinking, a task that -- mostly -- can only be done by getting students to think. By "thinking" Kuhn means inquiry and argument. In the case of argument she is not advocating canned topics the teacher chooses which the students debate by talking to the teacher and not to each other. Instead she is advocating debates that start out as almost conversations between students which then become formal over time. She also includes an interesting and practical example of how to get Middle School kids to engage in meaningful and respectful argument on the topic of capital punishment. In other words by engaging in arguments, with just a little guidance on what makes some opinions better than others (facts, reasons, explanations of how facts and reasons support particular opinions), kids start thinking and valuing the thinking that authentic argument engenders. This is "learning by doing" pure and simple.

Inquiry is a little more difficult, in Kuhn's opinion, because it requires a student to step back into some meta-cognition regarding the act of inquiring. By implication inquiry is an iterative process, which as students become more adept, leads to more subtle and refined questioning and inquiry. Kuhn gives an example of inquiry by a grade school girl given the task to make a number of generalizations about sail boats. She also had students working in Middle School on an inquiry into marketing music using various booklet covers for CDs. In each case it took a fair number of weeks to finish the inquiry.

In both cases Kuhn felt she needed to find topics in which the students were interested (music), or about which they had strong gut feelings (capital punishment). Strong interest and feelings tend to free people (not just students) to think and communicate clearly. Students, particularly, are often in a position where they have little knowledge and minimal understanding with a new topic. It is almost impossible to speak authoritatively in that situation. Many students have the response of sticking to the facts or generalizing like crazy. If we want them to develop argumentation, then we need to start with subjects about which they can speak authoritatively, i.e. they can be authors. My hunch is that it's similarly the case with inquiry. Inquiry has to be learned by doing also, but maybe not all students should be studying the same topic.

Interestingly enough, Kuhn did not seem to tie argumentation and inquiry activities together, though they seem natural bedfellows. That being said, I was a little disappointed in the conclusion, being more of a call to policy action, rather than an appeal to teachers directly, the people who really make a difference in a child's education.