[lit-ideas] Re: My Friend Stephen Straker
- From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 09:42:36 -0400
What a lovely evocation. We should all be worthy of such testimonials.
And what a great idea -- Arts 1. I teach at a small northern Ontario
university where the idea of a liberal education regularly loses ground
to career-based training. Now you've got me dreaming...
Here's to Stephen, indeed.
Ursula,
mightily impressed
Michael Chase wrote:
>I met Steve Straker in 1977, when I was a wet-nosed undergraduate at
>UBC. Steve was one of six professors from various departments who
>taught a kind of Great Books program called Arts I. Whereas most
>undergrad education at UBC, as at most large universities, consisted in
>attending lectures in cavernous amphitheaters along with 300 other
>students, Arts I was divided into small seminars and tutorials. Once a
>week, all 100 or so students would gather to hear a lecture by one of
>the six professors. That was the best part, because the other five
>profs would tend to argue with the speaker, which in turn inspired the
>students to question some of their assertions. For the first time, I
>glimpsed the idea that university life did not have to be just the
>slavish regurgitation of a professor's Golden Words : profs were human
>too (who knew?) ; they could be wrong, and one could even argue with
>them. Heck, one could even have one helluva good time arguing with
>them, for hours on end.
>
> Part of the Arts I program was a weekend getaway to a camp in the
>woods, where we slept (co-ed : what a revelation for an 18 year-old
>!!!!) in bunk-beds ; I remember drinking from from a gallon jug of
>Villa Sherry as we performed an impromptu reading of the first book of
>Plato's Republic until all hours of the morning.
>
> On another evening, I took to wandering about the camp, and I followed
>the glimmer of lights and the sounds of music until I came upon a
>clearing where a bunch of kids had set up a campfire. Presiding over
>the campfire was Steve Straker, cigarette dangling cooly from his lip,
>looking like Woody Guthrie as he strummed a guitar and sang Bob Dylan's
>Corinna, Corinna. Wow, I thought : this is the coolest prof I have ever
>seen. For the rest of the year I became friends with Steve : always
>cool, always eager to share a joke, always passionate about the ideas
>he discussed.
>
> Here's to Steve Straker, one hell of a cool guy.
>
>
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