OLD LESSON PLAN FOR NEW TIMES

An old lesson plan? From Aristotle?

Who needs one with new lessons every day?

More like who doesn’t?

Sometimes it takes a while for things to sink in.

The notion of three-act storytelling traces back to Aristotle, who theorized on story beats in Poetics.

He argued that stories are a chain of cause-and-effect actions, with each action inspiring subsequent actions until a story reaches its end.

Sounds easy enough? Further details:

Comedy imitates inferior people, Aristotle claims, but such characters are not inferior in every way.

Characters in comedy are guilty of “laughable errors”; however, such errors do not elicit painful emotions in the audience. A comedy does not imitate pain, and it should not provoke these emotions in others.

 

Why do we know anything about Aristotle after so many years?

Because he wrote things down after he was educated by his teachers and mentors with a lesson plan, who also wrote things down.

Socrates mentored Plato, who mentored Aristotle.

We do see differences in the philosophical treatises of these three great figures, however, so it goes without saying that mentoring does not equate with copying or developing sameness.

 

Blame The Teacher For Bad Students, Or The Lesson Plan?

From our friends at the Smithsonian Associates:

 

The nearly 20-year relationship between the ancient world’s most profound philosopher and his student—the world’s most powerful conqueror—reveals a stark contrast: One dominated by the power of his mind, the other by the might of his sword.

Fueled by success on the battlefield, power, and wealth, he transformed from a monarch guided by reason and moderation into one viewed as a dictator, corrupted by his ego and a threat to democracy.

Finally, his generals turned to Aristotle to destroy the monster he had created.

Prevas draws on ancient accounts to examine whether the philosopher was not only complicit in the murder but had an active role in it, preparing the particularly caustic poison mixed into the wine that killed Alexander, not yet 33.

He also explores how an emperor who received tutelage in the highest of moral codes abandoned them to amass an empire that dissolved into civil wars after his death and left nothing lasting behind.

After his death he left nothing lasting behind?

Sure, but we know his name all these years later.

That’s not nothing.

The lasting question: Have we learned from Alexander the Great, the world’s most powerful conqueror?

Is his life an example of what happens when a nice man abandons the highest of moral codes to beat the ass off lesser rulers of lesser lands?

Was it an example of moral code for a teacher to poison a former student?

Where were the henchmen? The plausible deniability?

Why didn’t the generals take Alexander out like the Roman Senators did Caesar?

 

The Old Lesson Plan

Wealth inequality, political gridlock and civil wars had all weakened the republic in the century prior to Caesar’s ascension to power.

Caesar’s increasingly autocratic reign further threatened the republic. He bypassed the Senate on important matters.

He emblazoned his image on coins and reserved the right to accept or reject election results for lower offices. 

As Caesar transacted public business from a gold-and-ivory throne, rumors swirled that he would declare himself king.

 

And then:

 

I’m no fan of anyone getting stabbed twenty-three times in the back.

Not a fan of pumped up dandies walking around like they own the place.

But they make for great stories of the ages.

 

The Next Great Story

For the last month and a half I’ve joined eight others in a basement room in the Lakewood Theater.

We’re all learning how to tell a story. You can’t be a chicken about it.

Everyone tells their story while everyone else practices good listening skills.

The lesson plan includes learning how to listen better.

What makes it more fun is the instructor, Nancy McDonald.

We could be in a basement room anywhere with her leading class.

About the stories people tell? They are stories they’ve held onto for ages waiting for the right time.

I’m surprised at the quality and variety of it all.

It feels like a place to let it out.

 

Letting It Out

The best part of spoken storytelling is you don’t have to do it the same way every time like a story juke box.

My story is evolving.

I’m telling it like a serial in a newspaper like Charles Dickens did with Tale of Two Cities. (Hey Dave)

Next week I’m telling the climax of my war story.

So far:

A gifted grad student drops out to join the Army after Pearl Harbor.

People come looking for him, to take him back to the lab to share his intellectual gifts.

An Amy instructor recognizes his student’s exceptional abilities and helps him get lost in the rush to WWII.

Two years later, 1944, they reunite on Tinian, an island airbase used to firebomb Japan.

A solitary soldier who does his Army airplane mechanic work and keeps to himself so he can concentrate on the problems he worked on in college, he lives in a tent.

One day after his shift he finds someone in his tent. A woman.

She’s a local teacher hiding in caves with families and going out to steal food where she can find it.

Since the island was part of the outer defense ring of Japan the soldiers were allowed to bring their families since no enemy would ever reach them.

In spite of their language barrier the teacher and the soldier find common ground.

Their new lesson plan is for him to keep a food supply in his tent for her.

Late one afternoon he meets her there and she convinces him to follow her into the jungle that night.

She takes him to hidden caves full of civilians caught in the crossfire that’s scheduled to end with flame throwers.

The Japanese people are terrified of the single soldier from all of the propaganda they’d heard about Americans.

The teacher hears their fear and it’s in the cave that she first speaks English, to the soldier’s surprise.

The people want their kids back, kids who were the teacher’s students.

A rouge group of Japanese soldiers had taken all the young girls further into the jungle, but the teacher found them and brings the American to help.

Together they set out to free the girls, but discover their horrible fate at the hands of their countrymen.

 

I’ll finish this part, Part 3 of the serial, next week.

Stay tuned for the climactic scene.

What would Aristotle say about the lesson plan?