Word: rigidity
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EVER SINCE Adam and Eve took a bite out of forbidden knowledge, there has always been a strong tension between religion and education. Scholars of the European Renaissance confronted this split when they tore down the rigid ecclesiastical dogma of their day, scientists witnessed its revival during the 18th century Enlightenment, and amid fundamentalist revivals, humanists of the 20th century still feel it today. Parents may push their children to get good grades and go to church on Sunday, but any disciple of the Divinity School can tell you that the connection between religious and secular education is, at best...
Michener is entirely preoccupied with his political message: "Personal freedom was the lifeblood of Poland, but the supreme irony was that its freedom-loving citizens were not able to develop those same mental forms which could preserve that freedom." He sets up rigid dichotomies between Polish culture and the surrounding barbarism. The monomania goes to the point where he assets that Germany and Russia invaded Poland solely to allay the fear that their common people would envy the conditions of the Poles and be incited to rebel. He makes no mention of Poland's immense strategic value or her rich...
...flashbacks follow three families who live in an imaginary town, about 80 miles from Krakow. Although the names change slightly over the centuries, each family's social position is rigid. The Buks, peasants, are subservient to the Bukowskis, minor nobles who in turn serve the Lubonskis, major nobles (magnates). From the Tatar invasion in 1241 to the modern union negotiations, these three families appear, and each performs the task dictated by his rank. The Buks tend the horses of the Bukowskis, who fight fearlessly for the causes chosen by the Lubonskis...
...CONSISTENCY of the roles of three families is probably justified by the rigid class structure of Polish society and the book makes that point well. But it does not explain the precasting of the three families who serve as protagonists: the major nobles are wise and selfless, the petty nobles brave, but not extremely intelligent, the peasants stalwart and forthright. Under the combined weight of political and individual stereotypes, Poland is merely a vehicle for the characters' political platitudes. Even in the most romantic and stirring public scenes, personal characters get buried. The following is a scene from turn...
...world through the processes of categorization and idealization. Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear submarine and a prominent critic of the American educational system, visited our sophomore tutorial last year and emphasized the fact that history texts make past events look like the products of superhumans and rigid ideal, when in reality most were the result of a fluid mixture of chance and compromise made by people much like ourselves. He hammered into us the need to distinguish between books and life when trying to learn about the world...