The Confucians Who Saved Middle Earth

Steven Cromack

It is particularly hard to get students interested in United States history. But this can seem almost impossible when studying ancient civilizations. How could a teacher get her students interested in Confucianism? If 19th-century U.S. history seems distant, what about the Warring States period in 481 B.C.?

One of the ways might be to take the ideas Confucius posited and find them in today’s culture. According to Confucius, an individual must be great, humble, and exhibit tremendous self-discipline. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam are Confucian heroes. A teacher can use Tolkien’s Middle Earth to examine Confucianism and the Warring States Period of China.

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction. All that the dark lord Sauron needs to destroy the world is his “ring of power.” Frodo Baggins, a hobbit, possessed the one ring and brought it to the Council of Elrond. There he sat quietly as the leaders of the free races debated what to do with the ring. Eventually, the group decided that someone must cast the ring back into Mount Doom, where it was forged. No one, however, could agree on who could or should take the ring. At long last Frodo volunteered to carry the burden, bear its suffering, and resist the temptation to use its power. Tolkien writes, “At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice. ‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way.’”[1] In the wake of this declaration, the free peoples of Middle Earth rallied behind the hobbit, and so began the journey of the fellowship of the ring. Throughout the journey, Frodo was tempted to use the ring and to surrender to its temptation. But, he resisted, often with the help of friend Sam.

With the collapse of the Zhou Dynasty, China entered a civil war that would last for several centuries. At the center of the Warring States conflict was a debate over the role and purpose of the emperor. In his Analects, Confucius posited that the king needed to exhibit te, or the great magnetic, moral force produced by holding fast to the “way of the ancestors,” (the tao.) In order to do this, the king had to follow the li, or the traditional, ritually prescribed actions including etiquette. In The Analects, the Master [Confucius] said, “He who rules by moral force (te) is like the pole-star, which remains in its place while all the lesser stars do homage to it” (Analects, Book 2, Ch. 1). Confucius continued that the king must, “govern them by moral force (te), keep order among them by ritual (li), and they will keep their self respect and come to you by their own accord” (2.3).

Confucius’s words about how the king should act were merely an idealistic vision of what a good emperor should look like. He saw the reality of the Chinese monarchy: every dynasty rose in the glory of victory and fell violently from power. For Confucius, there was no good king, no savior, no real exhibitor of te at the top. Confucius believed that no living man could separate himself from the corrupting power that comes with ruling. If the king at the top could not provide order to tame the chaos, or provide stability for the bottom, what hope was there for the world, or those living in it?

Confucius believed that humans could impose their will on the world. As there was no savior coming to rescue the world, every person must act as the good king. Each individual must be the savior of everyone else and have the wholeness of a king. Everyone must exhibit te. On the part of the person, this takes tremendous self-discipline (8.4). According to the Analects, self-discipline meant that individuals must overcome selfish desires, remove all traces of arrogance, and “be loyal and true to your every word, serious and careful in all you do.” As for the person who has “taken goodness for his load,” as Frodo did, Confucius wrote (8.3):

In fear and trembling,
With caution and care,
As though on the brink of chasm
As though treading on thin ice.

Frodo and Sam took “goodness” for their loads and acted because Middle Earth was “on the brink of chasm.” For Confucius, the tao was “the way” to take control of the chaos, to free oneself from the pain of living in the midst of civil war or strife. Every individual has the capability to do this.

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam exhibited te (moral force). They held fast to the simple ways of their people and were not corrupted like the race of men. They were the saviors of Middle Earth, had the wholeness of kings, and exercised tremendous self-discipline to resist a multitude of temptations. In the wake of their willingness to make the impossible possible, Middle Earth fell in line behind them. Frodo and Sam stepped in and acted as great kings.

What other Confucian heroes can you think of?
_______________

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), 264.

Boston Globe Coverage on Class Project

Randall Stephens

Early last month I posted a short piece on a class website project that my students and I did as part of a fall history readings/methods course. We created a resource website for the Moswetuset Hummock, a historic outcropping of land near our college, which played an important role in the first encounters between Indians and English settlers. If nothing else, the effort inspired students to get out of the classroom and do history.

The students and I had no idea that the website would garner the attention of our local Quincy newspaper. And we certainly didn't imagine that the project would draw the attention of the Boston Globe. But . . . it did. And we're thrilled to get that kind of attention!

Jessica Bartlett reports on our efforts and what we hoped to achieve. ("Eastern Nazarene College students create website on Quincy's Moswetuset Hummock," Boston Globe, January 25, 2012.)

Although the small section of Quincy known as Moswetuset Hummock is where Massachusetts derived its name, relatively few know the significance of the small marsh located on Quincy Bay.

Students from Eastern Nazarene College are hoping to change that.

The small, wooded area that separates Quincy Bay from the Neponset River received recent exposure with the help of six ENC students and History Professor Randall Stephens, who created a website dedicated to exploring the significance of the shore and detailing its place in history.

Part class history project, part exploratory jaunt through time, the website includes information on the Indians that lived in the area, to the relations with new settlers, to the diseases that would decimate the tribes by the time Myles Standish meet the tribe leader in 1621. >>> read on

It will be tough to trump this when we take on our next class project!

The Plagiarism Gamble and Theory of Mind

Randall Stephens



Most history professors have handed out, or will soon be handing out, their syllabi to students in their classes. Students will stare blankly at the five stapled pages, hoping that they will be able to find some way to get through the class while maintaining a respectable GPA.



Among other things, a syllabus is a contract. A good syllabus gives students and teachers a clear picture of what to expect from one another. A bad syllabus--self-contradictory, thin, riddled with mistakes--does the opposite.



It's always a good idea to spell out clearly what you mean by cheating, misuse of evidence, or otherwise trying to pull one over.



Almost every year I find myself wondering if students really understand what plagiarism is. I include the following in my syllabi:

Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated. Be advised: ANY instance of cheating on tests, essays, or other assignments may result in immediate failure of the course. For more on this fascinating topic, please refer to the ENC history dept. guidelines concerning academic honesty: http://www.enc.edu/history/stephens.plagiarism.html. Those who are guilty will be caught. Incriminating evidence is only a Google™ search away.

Still, that warning does not necessarily get through. Now and then I'm left wondering about what a student was thinking. ("What were you thinking!!??") Neuroscience and psychology shed some light on that vexing question. I sometimes fall down a theory-of-mind rabbit hole when I reflect on student cheating. Simon Baron-Cohen writes: "By theory of mind we mean being able to infer the full range of mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, imagination, emotions, etc.) that cause action. In brief, having a theory of mind is to be able to reflect on the contents of one’s own and other’s minds."* The game of poker requires some theory of mind skill. Adjudicating cases of plagiarism test our theory of mind abilities, too.



Did a student know what he/she was doing when he/she lifted that long passage, unaltered, from Wikipedia? Did she/he think that I wouldn't notice that the writing style shifted from spotty, wordy, and atrocious to fluid and concise? Was it a calculated bet worth making? Did the student not even know that there was anything wrong with copying and pasting all of that material from the web?



Surely there are some researchers out there who have polled students on questions like this. Until I see those kind of studies I'll continue to wonder just what was going through the plagiarists mind. . .

In Defense of Facts and Memorization

Randall Stephens

I recently had a student in a large survey class who did not appear to be prepared for an exam. That's not unusual. But this student answered the essay question on the test in a very unusual way. She/he wrote a poem describing how much she/he hated "history." (I was glad to be spared from his/her wrath, at least in the poem.)

This got me thinking about why students say they despise history. It certainly could be related to how history is presented to them: dry-as-dust fashion, or one-damn-thing-after-another mode. Perhaps such students think of lectures, textbooks, and history classes in general as producing storms of useless facts, unconnected to reality. Some non-majors complain that they did not come to college to learn about the past or irrelevant dead people.

Some students might not have an aptitude for history, plain and simple. That's fine.

But how much of the undergraduate complaint against history has to do with an unwillingness to learn content? Surely one needs to know real details about the past in order to understand it.

It strikes me that historians can be a little too defensive about teaching too many of the facts, the details of history. To be sure history is not a collection of pointless facts, as I tell my students. Among other things history helps us undertsand who we are by examining who we were. I like how Peter Stearns puts it in "Why Study History" on the AHA site: "The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier."

A student will need to know what actually happened in the past before he or she can go on to write history, tell a story, formulate arguments, and do the interesting work of interpretation.

That's not unique to history. Content and some basic memorization are a the heart of most disciplines. Biologists have to learn anatomy and classifications. Others in the hard sciences must memorize formulas and need to have a grasp of mathematics. Language requires plenty of memorization. And on and on.

History professors, though, blush a bit when they ask students to memorize a list of names, ideas, dates, and the like. A student of Antebellum America should know the difference between John Calhoun and John Brown. A student in a course on the Early Republic should be able to distinguish a Federalist from an Anti-Federalist. A student in a colonial history course will need to know that the French and Indian War came before the American Revolutionary War.

OK, I may be overstating the case, or grossly oversimplifying things . . . But, I'd like to say nothing more than this . . . facts matter, memorization has its place, and history does require exposure to and understanding of real content.

Oh . . . and George Washington never drove a Dodge Challenger.

"Kids, what's the Matter with Kids Today"

Randall Stephens

A fruitful discussion this past week in the NYT's "Room for the Debate" section. The topic: "Have College Freshmen Changed?" The introduction to the forum asks: "Are social, academic and financial pressures on freshmen becoming more intense? Have freshmen changed? Does the fact that many students are used to 'helicopter' parents monitoring and guiding all of their activities affect the transition to college?"

Participants note that less academic work is expected of current college students than it was a generation or two ago. Students now spend less time on homework. (Hours and hours on Call of Duty.) They also, according to some observers, have more difficulties with failure and tend to lack "perspective." The assessments are bleak, for the most part. Take Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State: "[Freshmen] also always heard they were special, and told to single-mindedly pursue their goals. 'Generation Me' is higher in narcissism and lower in empathy than previous generations." Or, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, former president of George Washington University, "Leaving home and coming of age has always been hard. With the democratization of higher education, with an increasing percentage of American young people enrolled in post-secondary institutions, do we need more vigorous programs to help students adjust to the changes as they mature into adults?"

I suppose every history professor has stories of students who come up to them after a midterm, despondent, asking, "Why did I do so poorly on the test?" The professor asks: Did you spend time going over the study guide? Did you attend the TA's study group? Did you write out a few outlines for the essay questions? To which the student replies: No. And then asks again, "But why did I do so poorly on the test?" (Reminds me of the "Brawndo has electrolytes" scene in Idiocracy.) My favorite excuse a student gave for poor performance--this was back in my University of Florida days--was that she figured she was allergic to something in the classroom. This, she told me at the end of the semester . . . and in upspeak, nonetheless.

I think that making generalizations about a generation is dicy business. I never wore plaid or listened to bad reraw grunge while I was in college in the early 1990s. My parents did not have flashbacks. The music from The Big Chill was not the soundtrack for their life. They lived in Purdy, Missouri, during the Swinging 60s.

Still, the NYT forum deserves a close read. All professors could benefit from thinking about the challenges a new generation might pose to teaching and learning.