About two-hundred students did the assignment, and almost three-fourths of them failed to see anything wrong with Athens’s attack on Melos. Their line of reasoning was scarily consistent. Pericles said Athens was a democracy. We know that democracy is good. Therefore, Athens was good. Many even explicitly approved the genocide that occurred at Melos because it showed that democracy makes a people strong. An overwhelming majority of students could not even see Thucydides’ condemnation of Athens. Athens was a democracy, and democracies only do good things. Seemingly evil acts must be explained away. Interestingly, those students who could tell the difference between good and evil were not necessarily my best students. It seems that a sensitivity to morality has nothing to do with academic ability.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 01:35:04 +0000
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