More Important Than Finals

Today starts senior finals, and exams for the rest of the students begin next Wednesday.  The entire school is in testing mode, with most classes given over entirely to review at this point.  Mine are certainly among them.  We have discussed the outline of the exam and are in full review.

Yet today we are interrupting each class for about fifteen to twenty minutes for something more important.  We are reading aloud and discussing, briefly, and article from The New Yorker, "Unburied:  Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Lessons of Greek Tragedy."

There are a number of reasons for not reading this piece.  The language is difficult.  There are words that many of our students do not know, and the argument of the article is mature and complex.  And as I said, we are in the middle of reviewing for final exams.

Our class, however, uses a textbook called Latin For Americans.  We begin talking the first week of Latin I about the influences of the ancient world on the modern.  Not to read and discuss this article would be a dereliction of duty.

In each class we talked about how there will, without question, be another tragedy like the Boston bombing.  Perhaps there will be several such in the lifetimes of our students.  Unquestionably they will happen in the lives of their own children.  The question becomes how they, and we, will grasp and come to terms with such events.  One way is by realizing that these are shared experiences that people before us have encountered as well.  This is why we read the literature we do, why we listen to the music and appreciate the art that we do.  This is the reason we offer the liberal arts education that has been vital to forming the complete person for so many years.