Making Sense of Making Sense of it All: Why we hate Paideia

Here’s something that everyone on campus has an opinion about: Paideia. Since Paideia is under review, I feel obliged to review it myself, in a totally objective light.

Paideia simply can’t win. You either hate it or you don’t say anything about it. But here’s something I usually don’t admit to most people: I kind of didn’t hate Paideia. In fact, I sort of liked it. I think the same is true of most people. It’s not that any of us really hates Paideia, but we feel, in part, an obligation to hate it. As students, we should feel inclined to have a certain animosity towards Paideia.

Where does this feeling arise from? It starts when you arrive on campus for a prospective visit or first-year orientation. It seems to be a staple of any admissions welcoming tour or orientation lecture to somehow mention the culture of disdain surrounding Paideia. It goes something like this: “Well, I know you’re probably all quite familiar with our first-year requirement of two semesters of Paideia. If you talk to any of our students on campus you’re bound to get an opinion about Paideia, and we know many of them will be negative.” It can seem like they’re pushing this animosity onto first-years even before they have any idea of what Paideia is.

It’s not just students who hate Paideia, it’s also professors. I’m going to stick my neck out here: the reason why some students have bad Paideia experiences is because their professor doesn’t like Paideia and thus holds a grudge about not liking it. One of the reasons why some professors don’t really like Paideia is because they have a small role in selecting which texts they will teach. Here’s the thing about the texts we study in Paideia: you can get whatever the hell you want out of them. Why do you think we’re still reading Sophocles: because there’s a wealth of material to work with in it—history, literature, philosophy, religion, human nature.

Here’s my real gripe: it’s not with Paideia, but it’s with the people who grumble and moan and whine about Paideia. I’m going to stick my neck out here again: all the gripers and moaners simply need to calm down and take themselves less seriously. Let’s be honest, we don’t hate Paideia. We may not like all the texts, but I’m sure we don’t like all the texts we read in all our other classes.

We don’t hate Paideia. What we hate is not having a common enemy. That’s why we all form an immediate animosity towards Paideia. Whoever you are and wherever you come from, we all like being in a community. One of the reasons why they’ll never get rid of Paideia is because it allows every student on campus to complain about something together. Paideia is the one thing that every frightened and vulnerable first-year has in common, besides being terribly frightened and vulnerable.

In short, the idea of the hatred is more real than the actual hatred. A good analogy for this is the popularity of the Mona Lisa. Part of the popularity of the Mona Lisa is that it’s the most popular painting in the world. People therefore feel obliged to fawn over it because it’s popular, and not because it’s an artistic masterpiece. So it is with Paideia; we feel as though we should hate it because we don’t know what else to do. I’ll say it again; it’s the idea of hating Paideia that’s more real than any hatred. However, through this idea of hatred we’re able to form a sense of camaraderie. To be sure, it’s a weird camaraderie, and not all that redemptive. It’s a weird quirk of our nature that it’s easier to hate than love. But just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good.