Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 26

18

The Popular Culture Review

State University. However, even in that benighted mesquite grove of
academe the faculty had a fairly good idea of what it meant to be an
educated person and they did their best with the unpromising
material that passed through their hands. For example, the school
had a required general science course for all non-science Arts and
Sciences majors designed to turn out a person who could read the
Science section of Time magazine and understand it. As a young
"intellectual ,” that seemed rather pedestrian to me. As a middleaged historian, it now seems to be not a bad idea at all. I relate this
story to put in context my goal for Arts and Sciences students. I think
they should be sufficiently grounded in the Western tradition to read
and understand the daily comics. Before you set this aside in disgust,
let me add but a few examples of how our future leaders, the
graduates of Duke, Brown, Stanford and other elite institutions where
opposition to the Western tradition, as it is commonly defined and
studied, is strong, are going to be left sitting at their breakfast tables
some future morning wondering just what is supposed to be so funny in
their daily comics.
I have picked this area with malice aforethought. It is an
area not commonly identified with what might be called high
culture. My purpose in using it is to demonstrate just how crucial a
working knowledge of Western Civilization is to understanding our
society.
Let us begin with the comic strip that is the oldest of my three
examples, "Peanuts." Herein are examples, two specific and one
general, that I would like to focus on. The first is "Snoopy" in one of
his many manifestations. How, pray tell, can you truly enjoy his
adventures in France without knowing who the Red Baron was and
what is going on between the two? And where do you get that sort of
knowledge if not from Western history? Second, why does Schroeder
play Beethoven instead of Led Zeppelin (and incidentally where did
that group get their name?), or an even more subtle question—why not
Mozart? Again, from whence comes your answer if not from an
understanding of the Western tradition? The general example from
"Peanuts" is that of Linus and his biblical speculations. To be sure,
Charles Schultz deals skillfully with his readers' probable biblical
illiteracy. He spells out the point of each comment very well. (I
believe that he is also a wise and kindly man; perhaps he feels sorry
for those of his readers who did not receive their educations at the