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We can't let schools in Pennsylvania and Kansas have all
the fun. As a loyal and patriotic Coloradan, I suppose I
should be proud that our beloved state can also produce
concerned parents
capable of creating a national
uproar.
Our most recent contribution to the American educational
dialog comes from Bennett, a prairie town about 30 miles
east of Denver. A few weeks ago the elementary music
teacher, Tresa Waggoner, showed portions of a video
designed to introduce children to opera. The 1859 opera was
Faust
by Charles Gounod, a French composer of church
music.
First, let it be said that the Bennett school district is to be commended for having an elementary music program. So many schools these days have eliminated music and art programs.
I can't even think of a practical economic rationale for such cuts, since I know many people who make their livelihoods from music and art, while I've never known even one professional football player. You'd think that if schools were preparing children for careers, they'd keep the programs that offer the most career possibilities. If the idea is to produce educated citizens, music and art are certainly important parts of our culture.
Faust is a major player in our culture. My favorite
Elizabethan play is The Tragical History of Doctor
Faustus,
by Christopher Marlowe. Few lines of English
poetry come even close to matching Was this the face
that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless
towers of Ilium?
and Oh thou art fairer than the
evening's air, clad in the beauty of a thousand
stars.
The plot is pretty simple. Johann Faustus, a German scholar, sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. In Marlowe's rendition, Faust tries to repent when it's collection time, but cannot, and is eternally damned. Other writers, most notably Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, allowed Faust to get out of his deal and attain salvation. Gonoud's opera is based on Goethe's drama.
The Faust stories inspire many philosophical and
theological questions, ranging from Is the unlimited
pursuit of knowledge evil?
and Are there things we
are not supposed to know?
to Is any human past
redemption?
Faust stories have been a staple of Western
Civilization for more than four centuries, since the first
German Faustbuch appeared in 1587.
Marlowe used a 1592 English translation as the basis for his play that was staged shortly thereafter, and Faustian themes illuminate modern discussions of capital punishment and stem-cell research.
This seems to be beside the point for certain concerned
parents of Bennett, one of whom said It glorifies Satan
in some way.
That's because a major character in all Faust versions
is Mephistopheles, the demon who represents Satan while
transacting with Faust. Mephistopheles is a complex
character, who comes running for Faust's soul at his first
opportunity, but also implores Oh, Faustus, leave these
frivolous demands, Which strike a terror to my fainting
soul.
This is hardly a glorification of Satan, who is, after all, a necessary character in such accounts. To put this another way, the Bible would be a very short book without Satan.
Other parents complained that their children had
nightmares from the video about opera. I can still remember
the childhood nightmares I had after watching The Wizard
of Oz
for the first time -- some works, no matter how
innocuous, can do that.
But how far are we supposed to go in the prevention of
childhood nightmares? Can we guarantee that children riding
the bus to school won't pass some gruesome
nightmare-generating auto accident? Or that nightmares will
never be provoked by Hansel and Gretel,
Little
Red Riding Hood
or Bird Hunting with Dick
Cheney
?
The more one ponders this, the more it appears that those concerned parents ought to demand that the school present a full production of Marlowe's Faustus to the youngsters. Mephistopheles might get many of the best of Marlowe's mighty lines, but the play is a straightforward tale of a man who is damned for seeking knowledge.
And that seems to be the exact attitude of those parents -- seeking knowledge is an evil which must be punished.
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