{"id":65,"date":"2011-06-06T03:45:27","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T03:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/?p=65"},"modified":"2011-06-06T03:51:23","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T03:51:23","slug":"tom-drucker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/2011\/06\/06\/tom-drucker\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Drucker"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Prof. Philip Lockhart was the very model of a colleague to someone newly arrived at Dickinson and teaching in another department.\u00a0 It had been some years since I had used classical Latin, but he welcomed me to sit in on the Lucretius class he taught during my first year at the college.\u00a0 Lucretius can be made the basis for all kinds of remarks on the history of philosophy and science, yet Phil recognized that he had students whose interests did not lie in how Latin accommodated Greek philosophy.\u00a0 What he did with the text was point out plenty of homely wisdom in a poet whose observations\u00a0 may appropriately decorate academic buildings and who also observed the world around him.\u00a0 Lucretius\u2019 words from two thousand years before were brought home to the hearts and minds of the Dickinson community.\u00a0 Not everyone was always immaculately prepared to translate in class; the discussion, nevertheless, was lively.\u00a0 As an instructor, I had never sat through a semester\u2019s worth of someone\u2019s else\u2019s classes and been so open-mouthed in admiration.<\/p>\n

Part of the secret of Phil\u2019s appeal to students was his interest in their lives outside the classroom.\u00a0 He followed their careers with enthusiasm and recommendations about avenues to pursue, from matters as general as kind of career to those as particular as job openings recently learned about.\u00a0 He could have said, \u2018Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.\u2019\u00a0 Students did their best in an atmosphere where the instructor cared about every aspect of their lives.\u00a0 His encouragement of consideration of issues sub specie aeternitatis brought past, present, and future together in minds and imaginations.<\/p>\n

Having been part of a faculty at a university where not even Latin has been taught for almost a century, I can vouch for the civilizing effects of classics.\u00a0 One speaks of \u2018liberal arts\u2019 and \u2018liberal education\u2019, but it is hard to produce students liberally educated without the benefits of the languages in which the liberal arts were first discussed.\u00a0 While Classics at Dickinson was not the creation of Phil Lockhart, nor did he maintain it single-handedly, he was a custodian for whom the authors whose works he discussed would have been grateful.\u00a0 The warmth of Phil\u2019s welcome continued even after his initial stroke, and I only wish some of my students recognized that some of what they learn in my classroom is a gift from Magister Docentium (the master of those who teach).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prof. Philip Lockhart was the very model of a colleague to someone newly arrived at Dickinson and teaching in another department.\u00a0 It had been some years since I had used classical Latin, but he welcomed me to sit in on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27187],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-thomas-drucker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lockhart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}