“Dear Dumb-Dumb: Our research shows that you are one of the most ignorant people on earth. Therefore, the Great Courses company of Chantilly, Va., is sending you the enclosed catalog of CDs and DVDs. Buy some of these Great Courses, study them and maybe you will one day have enough smarts to be fit company for educated folks.”
The above statement (which I made up a few minutes ago) is how I feel I’m being talked to each time a catalog of “brilliant college lectures” lands in my mailbox. I received another one yesterday, which means I will feel stupid as Adam’s off-ox for the next six weeks. On most days I’m willing to match my 108 I.Q. against anybody else’s. But my intellectual confidence is blown to pieces when I thumb through the Great Courses catalog. Each page is filled with stuff I know almost nothing about.
Such as the “Joy of Mathematics.” That’s the actual name of the course. And each separate lecture is another joy, to wit: “The Joy of Pascal’s Triangle,” “The Joy of Pi,” and “The Joy of Fibonacci Numbers.” Does that sound joyful to you? Everyone knows that math should not be joyful. It should be a miserable experience. If it’s not, then it’s probably a scam.
I’m especially bewildered by the writing courses offered. Such as “Building Great Sentences – Exploring the Writer’s Craft.” The lecture topics include “adjectival steps,” “prompts of comparison” and “degrees of suspensiveness.” With such a listing, my self-esteem plunges. After 50-odd years as a newsman and public relations flack, I wouldn’t know an adjectival step if it bit me on the kneecap. I am mired in the cockeyed idea that you don’t build great sentences; you write clear ones. I can just picture Hemingway or Stephen King at their desks, saying, “Today, by jiminy, I’m going to build some great sentences, each one with a high degree of suspensiveness.”
I once worked with a news reporter who, with deadline 20 minutes away, told his city editor, “I need more time to give this story an ironic twist and an O.Henry ending.” A week later he was selling pipe joints to plumbing contractors.
Another trait of Great Courses is their emphasis on simplicity. Not only should learning be joyful, it should also be simple. “The genius of calculus is simple” says the brochure. But then you read the lecture titles in the calculus course. They include “Archimedes and the Tractix” and “Abstracting the Derivative – Circles and Belts.” Just the sort of basic stuff you chat about with your buddies during lunch.
I don’t dispute the inherent value of the Great Courses or any other self-improvement effort. As a rule, the more we learn about life the more we enjoy it. Still, troublesome questions lie buried on every page of these lift-yourself-by-your-own-bootstraps catalogs. Such as: Do I really want to listen to 36 lectures on the Vikings? After submitting myself to 24 lectures on Einstein’s Relativity and the Quantum Revolution, will I be better equipped to serve myself and humankind? After subscribers patiently plod through two dozen lectures on “The Dead Sea Scrolls,” are they any more likely to be better parents or more competent account managers?
Cynic that I sometimes am, I fix my attention on the marketing details of the Great Courses. The prices of the courses have been radically slashed; no one can accuse entrepreneurs of gouging subscribers. The latest list price for “The Foundations of Western Civilization” is only $44.95 for all 48 lectures. But when you check the original price – $359.95 – you automatically ask “Why the 88 percent markdown? Wasn’t the course worth the original cost?” I confess: I’m overly suspicious. I should be jailed for being an obstacle to education, and for looking a gift horse in the mouth. Furthermore, every course comes with a lifetime satisfaction guarantee. If while you are still alive you become unhappy with a course, your money will be refunded, or another course will be substituted.
Possibly the most practical course offered is “How to Become a SuperStar Student.” If I were a 16-year-old high school sophomore, I’d snap up that course in a New York minute. I’ve thought of buying the course for my four grandchildren, but they’re already on-track for superstar status and I don’t want to bungle the deal.
My own hope is that one day the Great Courses people will include such pedestrian topics as “Finding work during a recession,” “How to detect baloney in political speeches and writings,” and “A quick repair guide for leaking faucets.” Even Einstein might have signed up for one of those offerings.
Bob Driver is a former columnist and editorial page editor for the Clearwater Sun. Send Driver an email at tralee71@comcast.net.
