October 3, 2006

• BACK TO BASICS AGAIN

  "Classical education was always literary education par excellence."

  "Not to know Greek is to be ignorant of the most flexible and subtle instrument of expression which the human mind has devised... and not to know Latin is to have missed an admirable training in precise and logical thought."

  "The modern revolt against centering the school curriculum around the study of Latin and Greek is understandable in an age of hyper-utilitarianism, though it's deplorably mistaken."

  "The passing of classics from our schools has in fact crippled the larger culture."

  "Any school with more than four or five subjects doesn't know what it wants to be - or, we may shudder to think, perhaps it does. Most public schools in America now strive to be cut-rate educational malls for the intellectually lame - whether or not students first darken the school doors that way, so most of them leave - while even some private schools pose as little more than colorful felt boards for the earnestly shallow, commonly confusing pious or patriotic piffle with read education."

  --Tracy Simmons, Climbing Parnassus

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