Abstract

It is tempting to read the French printer's creative typography as an allegory of contemporary education: pigs on the right, dogs on the left, and a of cultures timidly trying to find a place among them. Are all those creatures perhaps feeding on the rotting carcass of Civilization? Other interpretations may well occur to you. Feel free-this is not a classic text; it lacks authority and intentionality. My own reading of it, however, reminds me of what a contested field education is today, how polarized and politicized it has become, how difficult it is to speak reasonably and effectively about a coherent core of study for college students. Nevertheless, this is just what I propose to undertake. Specifically, I hope to explain just why such concepts as Great Books and Western Civ cannot really solve the problem of our flock of cultures, and then I shall go on to make a trivial proposal for a different core of humanistic study for college students. The arrogance of such a gesture is all too apparent. In my own defense I can only say that it is accompanied by a comparable amount of humility. I do not expect to solve our problems here, only to advance our discussion of them beyond the point of mutual accusations and recriminations.