*School Review. 26:576-99. O. '18. Liberal education without Latin.

David Snedden.

Science. 11: 801-7. My. 25, '00. Should Latin and Greek be required for the degree of Bachelor of Arts? John J. Steven

son.

†Science n. s. 45: 481-2. My. 18, '17. Science and classical education. H. G. Wells.

†Westminster Review. 4:147-76. Jl. 1825. Present system of education. George Jardine.

Westminster Review. 53:393-409. '50.

Classical education.

Westminster Review. 60:450-98. O. '53. The school claims of languages, ancient and modern.

Westminster Review. 72: 1-41. Jl. 1, '59. What knowledge is of most worth.

SELECTED ARTICLES ON THE

STUDY OF LATIN AND GREEK

INTRODUCTION

The classical system of education may be said to date from the fall of Constantinople in 1453. When the eastern capital was taken by the Turks, the scholars fled and scattered over western Europe, carrying with them many ancient manuscripts, which contained, locked up in the dead languages, the best of the knowledge and the literature that then existed in the world. Through the next hundred years the study of the ancient classics, then called the new learning, was slowly, often reluctantly, accepted as the basis of education. It was the Jesuit Fathers who first proved to the world the educational value of the study of Latin and Greek.

To England, and from England to America, the classical system spread. The institutions of higher education in this country were truly classical until quite recently. As a rule both Latin and Greek were required for admission to college and were prescribed studies in college. From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 until past the middle of the nineteenth century a college course was made up very largely of the study of Latin, Greek, Ancient History, Philology, and Mathematics.

Shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century the demand for modernized higher education began to affect the curricula of American colleges and universities. The Morrill Act, approved by President Lincoln on July 2, 1862, provided that the Federal Government should give a tract of land to any state that would maintain at least one "College where the leading objects shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in such manner as the legislature of the State may respectively prescribe in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions

of life."

The older colleges slowly adjusted themselves to the
new competition and to the popular demands for modern edu-
cation by the gradual adoption of the elective system and by de-
creasing the amount of the dead languages required for admis-
sion or prescribed during the college course. At the close of the
first decade of the twentieth century many of our colleges and
universities require no dead language study either for admission
or for graduation, while scarcely any hold to the old require-

ments.

Latin is now being studied by about two fifths of the students
in our high schools and academies and by a very much smaller
percentage of the students in the colleges and universities.
Greek, on the other hand, has practically disappeared from our
educational system, being now studied by less than one per cent
of the students in our secondary schools. The following table,
arranged from figures given in the report of the U. S. Commis-
sioner of Education for 1916 (p. 487-9), shows these facts as
regards the public high schools in America during the past thirty
years:

AMERICAN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS

Although the private high schools in 1915 had less than one
tenth of the total high school enrollment, still in that year they
were giving instruction in Greek to more than twice as many
students as were the public high schools, as is shown in the fol-
lowing table.

These two tables may be combined to produce the following

statement:

From these figures we see that more than ninety-nine per cent of the high school pupils in America are not studying Greek, and that more than sixty per cent of them are not taking Latin. It is unfortunate that similar figures for the colleges and universities are not available, and that these figures should begin with so late a date as 1890. Were it possible to give figures covering both the high schools and the colleges for the past hundred years, they would tell a most interesting story.

The following table gives the percentage of students in the public and private high schools combined who were studying each of the subjects named during the years stated. It is the best data available on this point, but it does not by any means convey to the average mind an accurate idea. Rather it seems to give the impression that in 1915, for instance, about one half of the students enrolled were taking the algebra offered in the schools, about two fifths were taking the Latin offered, and about one fourth the geometry. Latin is usually a four year study while algebra and geometry are usually one and a half year studies, but only one year studies in some schools. If a high school had just four hundred students, and these were equally divided with one hundred in each of the four years, and if each student took at the appointed time the full four years of Latin and the full year and a half of algebra and geometry, then that school would appear in the following table with these results; Latin 100 per cent, Geometry 50 per cent, Algebra 50 per cent, while the fact is that each student is taking all of each of these subjects that the school gives. In other words, the maximum percentage that geometry or algebra could make in such a table is somewhat over fifty as the number of first and second year students is always more than half of the total enrollment. When this table states that the percentage of students taking English Literature was 56.07 in 1915, it does not mean that only about