Sacking the Epic Poets

If you ask someone to name an epic poet, it is very unlikely that they will be able to name anyone other than Homer, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Certainly, Homer was a good one and the quality of his work forces us to look back romantically on the profession of the epic poet.

But consider a couple things that we tend to forget. First of all, as great as Homer may have been, it is very unlikely that he was representative of the rank and file poet of the day. Chances are that the average poet of the day, who's stock in trade was the recitation of epic poems, did a fairly mediocre job. They probably forgot lines. More than likely they missed the point of the stories they told. And, they probably injected a lot of their own opinion into their stories. So, if you were a resident of 8th century BCE Greece, it is likely that you would find that the quality of the epic poets was very uneven. There were a few really good ones; a lot of average ones; and far to many really poor ones.

The second thing that we tend to forget is that you would have never even heard of Homer if it were not for the two technologies that put the epic poets out of business - writing and printing. Further, we can thank both of these technologies for our modern levels of literacy. Writing allow us to provide a literary product of consistently high quality and printing allowed us to provide it in an affordable fashion. So, if someone in the 8th century BCE were to ask how to improve literacy, the answer would be to get rid of the epic poets and embrace new technologies.

We have a similar situation with teachers today.  There were a few really good ones; a lot of average ones; and far to many really poor ones. Further, our progress in education is not unlike our progress in literacy. Our approaches are un-leveraged, unreliable, uneven in quality, and not affordable by all. Until we employ technologies that will improve reliability, increase quality, and make it affordable to all, we are not going to solve the education problem.So, just like progress in literacy required getting rid of the epic poets, progress in education relies on getting rid of teachers.

Granted, it took almost three millennium for literacy to improve dramatically. But things happen much faster these days as we will see in the next example.