Teaching Machiavelli, Or How I Learned to Love the Prince
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Alan E. Miller Drawing on The Simpsons Teaching Machiavelli, and other contemporary references, Miller describes or How I Learned how the 15th-century classic can still resonate to Love The Prince with young adults. ritten by a petty bureaucrat and dip- that could unify much of the fiction, drama, and lomat for Lorenzo de Medici, a short stories they would read during the school member of one of the ruling fami- year? Couldn’t the Macbeths be considered typical lies of Europe, Niccolò Machiavelli’s Machiavellian rulers? Couldn’t Oedipus be blamed The Prince (1532) is a slim volume concerned pri- for sharing power and underestimating a possible Wmarily with advising Medici on how to acquire, “religious” rival in the Delphic Oracle? Were the maintain, and sustain power over a state. Its difficult Ibo, as depicted in Things Fall Apart, too accommo- and often archaic vocabulary aside, at first glance it dating of the white settlers encroaching on their hardly seems an ideal text for the sophomores I often territory with a new religion, powerful weapons, teach. Nearly 500 years old, it features a glib atti- destabilizing economic strategies, and potentially tude about violence and a cynical opinion of human- oppressive laws? Indeed, weren’t the British in Ni- kind. And hardly anyone teaches the book in its geria perfecting Machiavelli’s techniques? Not only entirety at the secondary level—probably because did The Prince provide a way of understanding these it’s repetitive, dense, and sometimes frustrating. problems, it also offered some principles for leaders Ironically, the things that make it a questionable concerned with how and when to act effectively to choice also make it an excellent challenge, or maintain control of their lands. “stretch” text, one that would require considerable At the time I was teaching The Prince, the attention and effort by young people. That history California State University (CSU) system developed textbooks still reference Machiavelli demonstrates CAPI, or Collaborative Academic Preparation Ini- that his ideas are still considered relevant. tiatives. It created a partnership between high For several years, I taught Machiavelli’s The school English teachers and college professors in an Prince (Dover, 1992) as a nonfiction text for sopho- effort to decrease the need for remediation at the 23 mores enrolled in a World Literature course at CSU campuses. They paid teachers to meet, pro- Berkeley High School because it helped create in- vided valuable inservice training, and offered tellectual “glue” that could link required works schools the opportunity to employ the assessment such as Macbeth, Oedipus Rex, and Chinua Achebe’s CSU used; these could help us identify student tragic novel, Things Fall Apart. The Dover intro- strengths and weaknesses in the areas of reading, duction described the 16th-century work as “a writing, and grammar. CAPI allowed us to work primer for princes” and an introduction to the prin- together, to present and critique our teaching to- ciples of leadership and governance (back cover). gether, to visit each other’s campuses and class- Widely read in college history and political science rooms, and to understand the link between our jobs courses, and even graduate business schools, it and our students’ futures. They believed, as I was would be challenging, but couldn’t Machiavelli’s also coming to believe, that English teachers needed words provide secondary students with a framework to include more nonfiction in our curricula because 72 English Journal 99.4 (2010): 72–76 EJ_Mar2010_B.indd 72 2/11/10 9:01:33 AM Alan E. Miller of The Simpsons during the unit. Knowing that they would be assigned to write an essay in which they would apply the principles they learned in The Prince to modern situations intrigued others. Reading the text would be the next challenge. I had to gloss the book heavily to provide defini- tions, footnotes, and background information. To assist reluctant and challenged readers, I needed to limit the amount of required nightly reading. I set- tled on 5–7 pages per night. (A letter to my gener- ous parents secured more than enough money to purchase Dover paperback copies of The Prince for each student.) These two decisions helped me widen access for all students. I wanted student ownership Devotees of rap music of the ideas and the books; I had heard Tupac Shakur wanted them to write per- call himself “Makaveli” sonal notes in the texts, to and knew rumors that circle words they didn’t both the rapper and Niccolò Machiavelli, portrait by Santi di Tuti (ca. 1520) know, to write questions in 15th-century political the margins. Writing in theorist had faked their books and dialoguing with most college English classes included increasing text is a skill public school deaths. amounts of nonfiction, that tests at both the high teachers rarely teach. One of school and college levels relied heavily on nonfic- my colleagues, Gabrielle Winer, modeled the strat- tion, and that most college majors contained rela- egy of alternately reading aloud and providing her tively little fiction. In addition, we were reminded personal commentary on a text. She showed, in other that most students will continue to read nonfiction words, that reading is a process with fits and starts, whether they are college-bound or not: newspapers, that it is full of questions, that definitions have to be contracts, leases, driver’s tests and other forms of li- constantly revised, that thinking is not a linear pro- censing, brochures, and advertisements. CAPI gave cess, and most importantly that tangents while read- us time to consider in what ways the skills gleaned ing were to be viewed as inevitable and savory, not from studying fiction and nonfiction could provide as evidence of shoddy thinking. students with strategies that they could recognize Seeing this, I opted to read the beginning of and employ in their writing. the book aloud. Though many students didn’t know Once I determined that I would teach Machi- all of the words on the page—words such as antiq- avelli, I had to determine how to engage the full uity, deem, esteem, amplified, extrinsic, allurements, wont, spectrum of sophomores at Berkeley High School, unremitting, and Fortune (the capital F is intentional) one of the most diverse schools in the nation, in The appear in the Dedication—they understood that Prince. I had to show how this work was relevant to Machiavelli was “kissing up to” the man he called everyone. Since so many students consider them- “The Magnificent Lorenzo di Piero de Medici.” We selves college-bound, many were excited to read a talked about reading the text closely enough that book they had heard about and expected to encoun- they could determine the meaning of some words ter later. Devotees of rap music had heard Tupac from context. I gave them a sheet with definitions Shakur call himself “Makaveli” and knew rumors of many of the words immediately after, and we de- that both the rapper and 15th-century political termined which definitions suited each word. We theorist had faked their deaths. Some were eager to identified and clustered the words in which Machi- know why Homer Simpson used the word Machia- avelli revealed his purpose: to compare the luxuri- vellian and why I planned to show several episodes ous language and lavish gifts Medici might expect English Journal 73 EJ_Mar2010_B.indd 73 2/11/10 9:01:33 AM Teaching Machiavelli, or How I Learned to Love The Prince from him with his “humble,” “simple,” practical land in a war against Emeryville? (Machiavelli insight. We also examined and discussed Machia- would emphatically answer no, arguing that a state velli’s discussion of the perspective required for the should never join with a larger state unless abso- task he sets out for himself. The diplomat viewed lutely forced to do so. Such states, he reasoned, himself not standing face to face with his potential would be tempted to take two states at once.) I re- benefactor, but staring up, as at the foot of a great minded them also that they knew some of the rulers mountain. cited in the book from the Bible or popular history: On those first two days I modeled what I ex- Machiavelli refers to the Biblical King David, to pected them to do each night: Number each para- King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, to Julius Cae- graph and write titles or headings for each sar, to Achilles and the Centaur. I helped students paragraph. I showed them that these headings identify the contemporary “descendants” of “Duke didn’t have to be elaborate or complicated, and that Valentino,” the playboy/ruler who raped the women they could use the words in the paragraph where it who inhabited the lands he conquered. was possible and appropriate. Also, I showed them After asking students about maxims they had that they could identify the functions of the para- heard from their parents or from the media, I dis- graphs to indicate which paragraphs summarized tributed some maxims from The Prince. What did what had gone on before, which paragraphs pro- these sayings mean, and what did they tell us about vided examples, and which paragraphs defined the culture that is their source? terms. They could create headings such as “Sum- 1. “He who builds on the people builds on mary of paragraphs 1–5,” or “Examples of mire” (26). ____________,” or they could title a paragraph 2. “He who is the cause of another’s greatness is “_____________ Defined.” This forced students himself undone” (18). to read more closely than they had previously, be- 3.