A conversation with Dr. Sweet
Swiss boarding school, stints on 'Wishbone' and a supreme love of the Core- presenting David R. Sweet
Angela Cuba
Issue date: 11/25/08 Section: News
There are some ideals that all of our University of Dallas professors hold in common: a passion for the intellectual life, a devotion to their students and a deep love for the great works that make up our Core curriculum. In those respects, Dr. David R. Sweet is in perfect unity with his fellow professors. It was the Core curriculum that first attracted him to UD. "I heard about UD while I was teaching classics at Berkeley…some friends of friends told me about the way they did things here and I thought 'Man, I'm going,'" he said. Presently, he is Dean of Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts, Director of the Institute of Philosophic Studies and Director for the Graduate Program in Humanities, and also teaches undergraduate courses.
Like a lot of UD professors, for Sweet a lifetime of rich experiences complements the insights of the great thinkers of Western Civilization to form the ground upon which he bases his work in the academic community. His adventures include living in a Swiss boarding school as a junior in high school ("My initial impression was that it was a reform school", he said.) and being featured as the voice of Homer in the "Homer Sweet Homer" episode of the children's television show Wishbone, reciting the first 20 lines of the Odyssey in the original ancient Greek. How the directors ever found him, he said, he has no idea, but he found the experience fun.
One of the many benefits of the Core, said Sweet, is that because the great classical texts (of Homer, Virgil, Thucydides, etc.) are already taught to students in many different departments, the classics professors can focus on teaching their students to translate, rather than introducing them to the material. As a result, Sweet said, the classics students at UD are extremely advanced in terms of their colleagues other universities. In short, Sweet said, "there is no other place to go for classics."
The virtue of being able to teach the great works time and time again is that "even though you read them repeatedly, you don't get tired. We keep coming back and continue to deepen our understanding of them," said Sweet. This is not true for only classical literature, but rather, Sweet emphasized the unity of the Western Tradition. Simply put, the Core is not many courses, but in reality, "one course", where all the parts build and rely intricately upon one another. His growing concern is that UD students are increasingly foregoing their studies for other activities. "My impression is that because there is so much to do, the reading doesn't get done," he said. What is being lost is the precious virtue of solitude, allowing the mind to be fully absorbed by the text. The Core, he said, is like "a wonderful meal" that can only exist as a whole, and not in parts. "Don't scan the reading," he concluded. "You don't want to miss a thing."
Like a lot of UD professors, for Sweet a lifetime of rich experiences complements the insights of the great thinkers of Western Civilization to form the ground upon which he bases his work in the academic community. His adventures include living in a Swiss boarding school as a junior in high school ("My initial impression was that it was a reform school", he said.) and being featured as the voice of Homer in the "Homer Sweet Homer" episode of the children's television show Wishbone, reciting the first 20 lines of the Odyssey in the original ancient Greek. How the directors ever found him, he said, he has no idea, but he found the experience fun.
One of the many benefits of the Core, said Sweet, is that because the great classical texts (of Homer, Virgil, Thucydides, etc.) are already taught to students in many different departments, the classics professors can focus on teaching their students to translate, rather than introducing them to the material. As a result, Sweet said, the classics students at UD are extremely advanced in terms of their colleagues other universities. In short, Sweet said, "there is no other place to go for classics."
The virtue of being able to teach the great works time and time again is that "even though you read them repeatedly, you don't get tired. We keep coming back and continue to deepen our understanding of them," said Sweet. This is not true for only classical literature, but rather, Sweet emphasized the unity of the Western Tradition. Simply put, the Core is not many courses, but in reality, "one course", where all the parts build and rely intricately upon one another. His growing concern is that UD students are increasingly foregoing their studies for other activities. "My impression is that because there is so much to do, the reading doesn't get done," he said. What is being lost is the precious virtue of solitude, allowing the mind to be fully absorbed by the text. The Core, he said, is like "a wonderful meal" that can only exist as a whole, and not in parts. "Don't scan the reading," he concluded. "You don't want to miss a thing."
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