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February 14, 2008
The unexcavated level at Pompeii - a way to get students excited about learning?
I figure that some students think I'm a little over the top about it, but when I think about Pompeii I get excited about how much more there is to learn - how much work there is still to be done! Whenever I teach the city, let alone visit, I always stress how much unexcavated territory there is - and remote sensing can do only so much!
Here at the Villa of Mysteries you can see the house on the higher ground, which represents the level of the soil before excavation started. There are still big chunks inside the walls that are untouched - not that they don't have enough to do re-digging in a more scientific fashion lots of areas that were kind of garbled in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Still, academic life sometimes seems to me a series of mood swings - everything has been said (and usually in German); nothing has been done. I'm sure the middle ground is more accurate, but looking at a wall like this makes me think telling students the second to get them excited about the life of the mind is not such a bad plan.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at February 14, 2008 5:42 PM