Dear Adam,
These are thoughts which come to my mind as I read your dad’s piece on Father and Son. They may be helpful to resolve your immediate decision, and to your study as you go through university and life.
Dropping Russian literature so that you may get a higher mark with MMSS is not relational because you can do both and get high marks. As for not liking your literature professor, there are two types of professors, those you admire and learn or not learn, and those you dislike and learn or not learn. It all depends on you, not professors of this type or the other.
To a large extent I think you have “a problem” because you have a choice, but not necessarily freedom. It means that you have to go to school and take courses and high marks. But you cannot be yourself acting as you like.
That is a common problem of young people today. In my generation we felt just lucky to have a book to read and a relatively secure time and space to do so. I am referring to 1940’s when we were at war with invaders, as well as poverty with most others in society. Even decades later the situation was the same.
The good thing was that young people, like myself then, were acting themselves and accepting full responsibility for doing or not doing. We relied on no teachers, school, methodology, books, let alone all the gadgets of today.
Specifically, I have never taken a literature course. However, I have read a lot of literature in all ages and countries, and benefited from the experience.
I can imagine how your professor teaching Tolstoy and Anna Karenina; what your examination requires; and how your work is appraised and marked. If my imagination is not off the mark, I can also write your examination and score a high mark. BUT THAT IS NOT learning. And as such, you would not really feel proud getting a high mark.
Learning is about getting meaning out of the act and the success of knowing more useful thoughts and questioning.
I read Anna when I was 13. I was at a rural school with a library that had 7 books of which Anna was one (Chinese translation). We did not have literature teachers, not to speak of a methodology of literature, nor requirements, and therefore no choice. But we had full freedom to read or not to read, and how to read.
The book begins with the sentence: All happy families are alike: only unhappy families are different.
Adam, you can imagine how IRRELVANT this line could be to me by reviewing what I said above, the circumstances that I was in. And how Tolstoy was unrelated to a boy of thirteen, fearing to be killed, not having enough to eat, and no ground for stability and hope.
But it was relevant. And my friends and I loved the book and Tolstoy, till today, 60 years later, when the world had so changed.
I began to observe my father’s family which was unhappy and tried to understand why. I observed all other families in my village and found no happy one. It was years later that I found a happy family, in Canada. Then I found more.
In the meantime, I had read all Tolstoy’s books. The themes of happiness, family, love and human relations and ethics appear in all of them with very rich and vivid examples.
Then, I found that Tolstoy was deeply influenced by ancient Chinese thoughts, in these themes, as well as in non-violence to power, and a simple rustic way of life.
Two to three years ago, I had an eye examination by a woman from New Zealand who was here doing her intern at the Polytechnic University, because we had many cases for practice. She was good. So I asked her name and what she planed to do later. Her name was Natasha. It struck. I immediately said: War and Peace. She was shocked and said she must phone her Mom about it.
We had lunch together and she told me that her Mom was a big Tolstoy follower, so much so that she went to NZ from Ireland to live out Tolstoy’s ideals. She named her daughter Natasha and boy Pier.
That is another example of relevance.
I wrote an article to the wykontario.org with the title Again Natasha, and you can ask your father to tell you about it.
So literature is about meanings and life. And good literature can influence people across time and space to be immortal.
I can also tell you this bit of relevance in my own experience. I was visiting Moscow about 15 years ago. By chance I was asked to speak to a gathering at the Russian Academy of Social Sciences, with about 50 academicians attending. I then gave this impromptu lecture of 90 minutes to an audience of learned scholars. I chose to talk about Russian literature, using War and Peace and Dr. Zhivago as example. How daring.
In both books the authors were painting for us this vast, beautiful and hash land that is Russia, and used it to impress on readers how Nature is cutting through and shaping the human soul. In the midst of wars, the main characters would find time to express the simple wish to live by one’s own labor, to love and be loved, to admire life in all its constellations, and to be at peace with oneself. But Russia was consumed by an ideology for freedom and equality, written in words, and exhibiting in slogans. So Russian found no peace, and Russians found no freedom, by destiny.
I had a standing ovation at the end of my lecture. The academy also awarded me a D. Soc. Sci.
Now, back to appreciating literature and learning literature for a high mark. I hope you have found your answer.
The answer cannot come from methodology or professor. It must come from your heart, as you give yourself in the literature while reading and re-reading it, many times.
Can freedom be taught?
One year in the late 1950’s I had to teach a summer course to a class 523 students, all to become high school teachers. The age of students varied from 27 to 61. They all had taught schools. I chose to do away with any examination and asked students to give themselves a mark, reporting to my secretary.
It was interesting that this removal of threats enabled the students to listen to me, rather than to what might be required of them in an exam.
I had 21 nuns in my class. Those were years when they came out of the convent and lived outside by themselves and choosing to wear or not to wear their habits.
In late September that year I received a letter signed by three nuns in my class. It asked me to pardon them for their sins! The letter said that as nuns they should be free from vanity, especially when it served no purpose of need. The fact was that they all gave themselves a mark of 90 when the passing mark was 60, just because I allowed them to appraise themselves. So they had committed a sin. And now whenever they marked their students’ works, that vanity sin came back to haunt them.
I replied by saying: You are Pardoned, signed Bishop Kong.
I knew they had learned how to be free.
What about MMSS?
I had taken a similar course doing my Ph D. It included research methods and inferential statistics. The supporting math knowledge included high algebra and typology. The trick is to understand the real meaning of the standard deviation, and the rest is about what to infer or how to infer. If you know these the others are just formulae, and nothing else. So scoring high marks is a piece of cake. It is not time consuming at all.
One last few words before I sign off. There are two types of people; success-seekers and failure-avoiders. Both can be successful, depending on internal success or external success. The first type holds themselves responsible for their own work, (and behavior) succeed or fail. The second type always blames on others, or relies on others. They even cannot enjoy success. When they have a high mark they would say it is because it is luck, or the exam is too easy. When they have a low mark, they would say because they have no time for study, or the exam is too hard. The first are always positive; while the second negative.
Attending university is to learn to know the self and to be free. If you fail this, no high mark would be worth the time.
Great literature CAN empower a person to know and be free. Nothing else can. This is why the liberal colleges insist on students reading lots of literature.
Fortunately for me and my peers who did not have the luxury of attending university paid by fathers and society, we read by ourselves.
Slk
2014/11/18