Advancing by Degrees: Greek Ruins

A SPEECHWRITER for Vice President George Bush once prepared a stump speech peppered with a bit of Thucydides, a Greek historian of the fifth century B.C. But after the Vice President tripped over the name one time too many, another staffer decided to avoid further embarrassment by drawing a line through the word and writing in “Plato.” One dead Greek was as good as another, and who would know the difference?

Who indeed? Once a common possession of the well-educated, classical knowledge now bobs like flotsam amid the wreckage wrought by a century of educational scuttling. In 1962, 700,000 American high-school students were taking Latin; by 1985, that number had dropped to 176,000. Consequently, classical studies in higher education have suffered. Out of more than a million BAs awarded in 1994, only six hundred went to classics majors. And these figures tell only a portion of the story. For with the passing of Greek and Latin we have lost part of the soul of our civilization.

About the Author

Tracy Lee Simmons

Tracy Lee Simmons is the author of Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin.

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A SPEECHWRITER for Vice President George Bush once prepared a stump speech peppered with a bit of Thucydides, a Greek historian of the fifth century B.C. But after the Vice President tripped over the name one time too many, another staffer decided to avoid further embarrassment by drawing a line through the word and writing in “Plato.” One dead Greek was as good as another, and who would know the difference?

Who indeed? Once a common possession of the well-educated, classical knowledge now bobs like flotsam amid the wreckage wrought by a century of educational scuttling. In 1962, 700,000 American high-school students were taking Latin; by 1985, that number had dropped to 176,000. Consequently, classical studies in higher education have suffered. Out of more than a million BAs awarded in 1994, only six hundred went to classics majors. And these figures tell only a portion of the story. For with the passing of Greek and Latin we have lost part of the soul of our civilization.