"The removal of the classics is a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian schooling at the expense of soul-forming education."

"To end this spiritual catastrophe, we must restore true education, mobilizing all of the intellectual and moral resources we can to create human beings of courage, vision and civic virtue. Students must be challenged: Can they face texts from the greatest thinkers that force them to radically call into question their presuppositions? Can they come to terms with the antecedent conditions and circumstances they live in but didn’t create? Can they confront the fact that human existence is not easily divided into good and evil, but filled with complexity, nuance and ambiguity? This classical approach is united to the Black experience. It recognizes that the end and aim of education is really the anthem of Black people, which is to lift every voice. That means to find your voice, not an echo or an imitation of others. But you can’t find your voice without being grounded in tradition, grounded in legacies, grounded in heritages."

Write Cornel West and Jeremy Tate in "Howard University’s removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe" (WaPo). 

FROM THE COMMENTS: Joe writes:

I know a lot of institutions are closing programs now, but it isn't a value judgement as much as it is an acknowledgement of no students enrolled. Looking at the federal government numbers for 2019, 2018, and 2017, no bachelor's degrees were awarded in classics at Howard University. In 2016 and 2015, only 1 degree each year was awarded. There are so few graduates in classics at most schools, I can't find any earnings data on the college scorecard site. It really doesn't make business sense to keep a program open when students don't want to enroll.

You don't know squat.

Last night, we were discussing that article in The Guardian about how everything in the bathroom is wrong, beginning — of course — with the toilet. The statement "our bodies were designed to squat" irked the commenters, beginning with Joe:

[Our] bodies weren't designed.

Some religionists may protest, and I got sidetracked into wondering if the Bible has anything to say about what sort of toilet we should be using. I found something in Deuteronomy (putting the doo in Deuteronomy):

"Choose a place outside the camp for a latrine. Include a spade among your equipment so that when you squat to relieve yourself, you can dig a hole and then cover your excrement. For the LORD your God is on the move within your camp to deliver you and to hand your enemies over to you. Therefore your camp must be holy so that he will not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you."

When you squat to relieve yourself... Aha! So God was picturing you squatting over a hole. If we are to believe Deuteronomy...

In a nonreligious mode, ken in sc said:

Only a person who has never tried to rise up from a squat on 60+ year-old knees would think our toilets are too high. They make adapters to make toilets even higher for semi-invalids.

This got me thinking that if the squatting position is better for many people, there's no need to install different toilets, just make some sort of stool that fits around the base of the toilets we already have to raise the feet to a higher position. I figured this must already exist, but I despaired at the prospect of Googling the word "stool" with "toilet," given the alternative meaning of "stool." I carefully constructed my search: footstool for toilet to make it more like a squat toilet.

Behold: The Squatty Potty.

And here's NPR nattering about squatting. Last paragraph:

For most people, the modern toilet doesn't cause any problems," [said Rebekah Kim, a colorectal surgeon at the Center for Pelvic Floor Disorders at Virginia Hospital Center]. But if you're to believe Slate's [Daniel] Lametti, squatting on top of the toilet could be a time-saver — he managed to drop his 10-minute routine down to a minute.

I was afraid to click on that last link. I really don't want to hear about some man's 10-minute routine. But I did, and I'm not sorry, because the illustration is so absurd — 2 men on side-by-side toilets, one much happier than the other. Lametti concludes that even though he "gained an hour over seven days," he still preferred the familiar chair-height toilet and doubted that squat toilets would be "the next back-to-nature craze—the new barefoot running shoe or caveman diet," mainly because "Americans, now fatter than ever, are having trouble standing up from a sit, never mind a squat." Lametti's a bit of an asshole, no?

Thanks to all my readers who gave immediate and overnight pushback to a vile new commenter...

... who I assume was pro-Obama and writing under a pseudonym here with the object of making this blog — and more generally, criticism of Obama — look racist. This coward put up his comment on my 9:50 p.m. post — "Should the President be insulting pop stars?" — at 11:52, presumably to maximize the time that it would be up on the blog and that it would sit here as long as possible before I would take it down, which I did as soon as I got on the blog this morning at around 9 (Central Time).

The commenter, Metlife, had never posted here before and had a profile showing that he'd joined Blogger just this month. He wrote — and the asterisks are mine: "can someone murder that f***ing n***** fast? It will be a good day when Hussein is murdered by one of our southern patriots."

The pushback was immediate. Joe wrote at 11:59: "Could the previous comment be stricken and the poster banned?" Just Lurking said: "Is that you moby?" (suggesting, as I am doing now, that Metlife was against not Obama but this blog community). John Stodder said: "Althouse is probably asleep, but if you have her phone number, wake her up and tell her to delete it." (No one did that.)

Seven Machos said: "Okay, first, get Metlife out of here. At least Cedarford is subtle and occasionally witty.... All racist ass clowns and pretend-racist-agent-provocateur ass clowns should take note of Cedarford's work. This is how it's done." (Cedarford is a longtime commenter who writes well but often expresses extreme ideas of the sort that I do not censor).

Peter Hoh said:

I'm guessing that nolife is a plant. A true Southerner always capitalizes the S.

And wouldn't a full-blown racist southerner consider that "southern" is an unnecessary modifier for "patriot"?

Plus he knew how to spell "Hussein."

Good ole boys spell it "Hoo-sane."

Former law student said...

Speak of laying a turd and someone does. Probably an agent provocateur, because he created a fresh identity for the occasion.

Blake said:

Ugh. The Mobys are getting disgusting in here.

Urban Dictionary defines "Moby":

An insidious and specialized type of left-wing troll who visits blogs and impersonates a conservative for the purpose of either spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension among conservative voters, or who purposely posts inflammatory and offensive comments for the purpose of discrediting the blog in question.

The term is derived from the name of the liberal musician Moby, who famously suggested in February of 2004 that left-wing activists engage in this type of subterfuge: “For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?’”

The strategy has been frequently attempted on conservative blogs, but has not been nearly as effective as Moby envisioned, since false rumors are easily debunked by fact-checking minions, and cartoonishly extreme commenters often get immediately identified as mobys and banned.

Lucid said:

Actually, Metlife, with his registration [email] and ip address, should be reported to the secret service. Threatening the president is a serious crime, as it should be.

I also wonder if Metlife is actually a lefty troll pulling an Alinsky.

Hey, Alinsky isn't defined yet over at Urban Dictionary. But I know what you mean, and I certainly think he is.

Jack said:

God, what a festering stinkhole of a web site this is. I don't know how you wingnut loons can stand stewing in your own shit like this, presided over by the shit mistress, Ann Althouse.

Of course she's too dishonest to tell you dumb motherfuckers that Obama's remark was made off the record, thus rendering her posed questions ("should the president be insulting pop stars?" and "what business is it of the presidents?") inoperative. And of course you stupid shit-for-brains don't follow the link to find out for yourselves. Maybe the ever-dull Althouse didn't bother reading enough of the story to find out that the comment was off the record, or maybe she's just dishonest.

You're stewing in a cesspool. And you like it!

And that's an example of the sort of comment I don't delete. I'm that into free speech. But Metlife deserves deletion and, as Lucid said, investigation by the Secret Service. I like to think the Secret Service is good enough that they are already on it.