Greek Mythological Master Piece \"Sailing

¶ … Greek mythological master piece "Sailing in the wine dark sea" written by Thomas Cahill, with special reference to educational issues being derived from the Greek civilization. The choice of book is in context of Greek civilization being primordial in such a way that the totality of human culture seems to originate from within it. Hence, along with the rich ancient heritage of art, philosophy, and semantics the Greeks passed down a number of repulsive elements in the field of education and its acquisition. The aforementioned book has a premium of reflecting the most comprehensive and authentic picture of a Greek society ever recorded, which infiltrates Western art, culture, philosophy, language, story telling and virtually every defining aspect of a Western society. Therefore, this book can most ably, help scrutinizing the root of historical issues that are still faced by the students and educators to date.

Sailing in the wine dark sea -Why the Greeks matter.

Greek influence pervades every walk of Western life; Cahill in his book, Sailing in the wine dark sea has recounted these formative moments of western civilization by connecting myths, stories, scriptures and archeological findings, giving a lifelike perspective to the history hardly explored before in such graphic detail.

As the writer puts it:

Whatever we experience in our day, whatever we hope to learn, whatever we most desire, whatever we set out to find, we see that the Greeks have been there before us, and we meet them on their way back." (p. 264).

This eminence and brilliance of the Greek civilization has been admired, acknowledged and elucidated in a tour that spans warriors, politicians, thinkers, playwrights and a pantheon of deities. Thus, Thomas Cahill has illuminated the epitomes of a Greek experience by touching all aspects of their society and providing a Greek link to every aspect of our contemporary life. Cahill's scrutinized the history for the object of developing a better understanding for our contemporary world. He breathes life into the dead and the bygone by considering similar routes trodden a million years ago, so that scholars can carry out a comparative study and understand what led to the present consequences. In this way they can get a better understanding of how men and women, our culture, semantics, society and intellect has been molded the way it has. Also, this book provides a reference point, a justification and a substantiation of present scenarios and helps us in eliminating the root of issues that hinder the acquisition of education and issues historically seeded therein. Alongside Cahill gives terse and sarcastic remarks on sexual mores, status of women, contemporary politics and warfare while giving the ancient Greek perspective-thus substantiating the fact that Greeks have laid the foundation and framework for our intellectual lives.

Cahill is not a blind admirer of the Greeks and does not simply idealize them; in fact, he readily picks out the flaws such as exclusion of women from public life; this exclusion and its repercussions have impressed lasting consequences for women in the modern world. In essence, the author has given a fair account of remarkable people who were intelligent, stubborn, dictatorial, logical, and highly organized. Cahill has made an extensive research of the Greeks, whose influence is felt profoundly around the world; and has recorded both their positive and negative aspects. However his respect and admiration do not waver. He mirrors the unremitting fact that Greeks are responsible of the way we are and the way we think in the modern world. He is best known for breaking down the broad scope of complex history and crystallizing into a comprehensive and entertaining narrative. In this way he animates the history with help of principle characters giving a crisp and refreshing insight to complex scenarios woven in a joyful read. This book, a captivating tour of Greek achievement comprises of multi-facets ranging from space craft to philosophy, and architecture to militarism and science. In essence, he has attempted to bridge the gulf of time, and permeate the past of Greek civilization to the present of modern culture. Thus this book best substantiates how historical issues permeate the modern education.

Historical Issues In Modern Education

There are numerous issues seeded in a Greek civilization, rooting down to the contemporary world; for instance Gender Equity, home schooling, Pledge of allegiance, Unions and collective bargaining just to name a few. Each of the issues would be addressed in due course.

Most notably gender bias as practiced by the Greeks is the major parasitical issue in all avenues of education. A study commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1991 claims that girl don't receive as much attention and are not put into challenging situations like complex and abstract questioning, as compared to boys, in an average school (Woodward, 1998). Moreover, countable school books portray "stereotypical" image of women. These books are void of any acknowledgements of the abilities and achievements of women altogether. This has also been hinted by Cahill in the chapter Warrior: how to fight and also in numerous other instances, in course of his narration, emphasizing the insignificance and inability of women. Second big issue is insensitivity towards students with disabilities. Formerly, teachers were reluctant and even hostile on the issue of including slow learners and disables to the mainstream classroom contents. Teachers primarily, chose to maintain standardized approach and at times made "superficial" changes to assignments rather than molding them by keep the learning capabilities in mind. As mentioned before, the Greeks were stubborn, authoritative and intelligent. Being a slow learner was sin enough to outdo teaching the subject. (Yeager, 2003). Another deplorable concern in the modern education scenario is school violence; comprising of juvenile delinquency, bullies and victims by gender and grade, sexual harassment, dating related violence, terrorism, drugs etc. making the ancient Greek practice of Mandatory student community service inevitable, in shape of School-based violence prevention program, involving student reps, school personnel and parents for the prevention of such vices from taking place. Moreover the problem of diversity and multiculturalism as faced by the vast Greek civilization is ever expanding its horizons in the world today. Constricting the globe into overlapped foci of semantics and cultures, this issue comes in with new challenges of interacting with people from the far off land. Along with accelerating the learning process, it paces up the growth of language and flexibility of semantics and increases the dependency of coordination and correlation than ever before.

Similar to the past practices, a standardized and global acknowledgement of ones academic qualifications is required by modern students. For this, certificates and acknowledgement are awarded to students. In turn they aim for more acceptable acknowledgements. This issue is perpetually considered and revised by educationalists world wide to create a more standardized, fair and globally acceptable certification system like The Scholastic Assessment Test and the GRE. These are taken for authentic assessment of students from diverse backgrounds.