Following Law, Fulfilling Duties

Having bonded with their sections outside the classroom at Monday’s Section Games, students on the California High School Summer Program began today ready to resume their collaboration inside the classroom by unpacking some more wisdom from the ancient Greeks. First, of course, there was breakfast in St. Joseph’s Commons, which was buzzing with conversation as students looked forward to tackling the challenges of a new day. 

The first challenge took the shape of a Greek tragedy called Antigone, a sequel to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The play centers on a conflict between Oedipus’s daughter Antigone and her uncle Creon, the king of Thebes, who forbids his niece from burying her dead brother, a traitor to the city. The story centers on the duty the characters owe to their family, country, and gods, and the dilemmas that arise when those duties seem to conflict with each other.

“We talked about how both Creon and Antigone were both following a law,” said student Nicolas D. “Creon was following the law with regards to duty to fatherland and country, and Antigone was following the law of the gods, the natural law, by burying her brother. One of the main conclusions our section came to was that Creon had things mixed up because he thought the law of fatherland and country was above the natural law.”

After their morning class, many of the students attended the midday Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel, then lunch in St. Joseph Commons. During lunch, the high schoolers sat with their tutors and classmates and chatted over plates of orange chicken, Asian salad, and rice. 

The second class of the day was on selections from the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers Empedocles, Democritus, and Epicurus. The philosophers cover topics such as the nature of the soul, the principle that being cannot come from or pass into non-being, and the theory of atoms and void as an explanation for the material world. Students worked to piece together the truths contained in the fragmented writings of these ancient thinkers. “We all have different opinions in class,” said Indigo S., “and there are 17 of us, so there can be more than two different opinions, and as a group we have to keep on arguing until we all agree.”

Whether the students left the classroom in perfect agreement on the principles of reality, or not, their time in class had to come to an end for the day. They will spend the rest of the day having fun during recreation, at swing-dance lessons, and dorm games later this evening. Check the Summer Program Blog tomorrow to get the details!