Misplaced Homer

On the campus of Columbia University is Butler Library.  Its neo-classical design, with fourteen imposing columns supporting the names of famous ancients, immediately draws the eye of any passerby. The names etched into stone above these columns are of great classical writers: Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Vergil.  Interestingly, one of these names is not like the others: Homer.  Homer's name appears carved into the building because its designers thought him to be a great ancient writer.  Homer, most historians now agree, was no writer.  He was a singer--an oral poet--and probably the amalgamation of many bards over many years.  I use Homer as an example because his eternal presence on the facade of the library bespeaks a point of tension in the histories of education and literature, not to mention the current culture of the prior.  Why has speech--orality--become so marginalized in education?  What has happened to the heard spaces of the ancients?  Have they disappeared, or perhaps subverted the dominant written culture in which we educators now find ourselves? 

To understand why Homer's presence is of such interest, it's worth noting whose name is missing.  While both Plato and Aristotle are inscribed, doubtless for their foundational contribution to western philosophy, their predecessor, Socrates, is suspiciously absent.  How could both Plato and Aristotle be so lauded, and Socrates, who died for philosophy, be left out?  One compelling reason is that the building is a library, that is, a place for written words.  Socrates famously denounced writing, saying it had deleterious effects on the memory.  Socrates' absence from the walls of Butler Library point our attention to the status of its inscribed figures as writers.  If Socrates' orality denies him a place on Butler, it's fair to say Homer's presence is in error.  

I draw attention to this error because I think we in education--and literacy especially--live with the effect of a similar error.  Somewhere in the twists and turns of history, orality became marginalized and literacy prized.  There are, I can already imagine, many example of this, not the least of which include our priveleging of writing in classrooms, our yen for silent reading, and our dependence on literate modes of communication for assessment.