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Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

Princeton, which had been previously known for grade deflation, removed the requirement to study a classical language (Latin and Ancient Greek) as part of their classics major in able to make the field more accessible to people of color.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/1005833496/critics-concerned-...

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That is not why princeton removed it. It was because there were classics in other regions that you could study as well. The requirement of knowing a set of “classics” isnt gone. You could study ancient china for example.

It makes complete sense. If you are already a talented undergrad research that isn't going to focus on european classics in grad school (or in your Junior Papers or Senior Thesis), why make students finish an entire curriculum on ancient rome or greece?

source: this was discussed during princeton reunions at a panel, or I may have heard this from a another alumnus that was a classics major, heard after the change.

edit: cant reply for some reason (?) but ancient china was a mismemory. it didnt go beyond the near east and africa. still makes perfect sense if you specialize in neighbors to mediterranean.

Ancient China is in a different department. It would make sense to allow students to choose ancient Aramaic instead of Latin, but that's not the change. You can now graduate specializing in Ancient Greek without reading a single line in Ancient Greek.

> You can now graduate specializing in Ancient Greek without reading a single line in Ancient Greek.

Is that true? It sounds more like classical Greek literature was just removed from the core curriculum.

Aramaic wouldn't make any sense either as aramaic isn't part of european civilization. It should be latin and greek. A degree in "classics" ( the works of greco-roman civilization ) should require both latin and greek.

Heck all students in american education ( K-12 ) should be taught latin at the very least. Why we stopped...

Looking at the degree requirements at the moment, the option to study another language isn't in place of Greek or Latin, but rather in place of other courses.

> One course must deal substantially with classical reception or comparative approaches to the ancient world; this requirement may also be fulfilled by study of another language relevant to the student’s interests (Akkadian, Modern Greek, etc., at any course level).

Sorry, I was specifically asking about fake or unserious degrees, so its not really in line with what I was discussing. However, I would question whether removing Latin or Ancient Greek as a requirement meaningfully lowers the quality of education. I'm not privy to all criteria considered when making that decision, but it seems reasonable on the face of it to me -- removing unneeded requirements that may be a barrier to learning.

In what world is being able to read the material unneeded?

Latin may not be a requirement for whatever Grievance Studies, but it certainly is necessary if you want to study Virgil.

All this hemming and hawing is still irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Removing requirements on the basis that they don't increase the quality of education does indeed sound reasonable, but doing it due to the color of skin would be the wrong reason to enact a policy. Racism is what we're fighting against, not trying to make policies enabling it.

If you're studying history, you should be reading primary sources. Translations are a useful tool, but everyone makes mistakes and has their own biases, so your scholarship is compromised of you rely on them. The only jobs relevant to a classics major are Latin teachers and college professors. Obviously, you can't do the former without learning Latin. Professorships are already incredibly competitive in classics, so you'd be a lot less competitive without language proficiency. I don't think the degree is quite "fake" yet, but it's definitely getting close.

Moreover, familiarity with Greek and Latin is very helpful even when reading English-language texts, in part due to the influence of those languages on English, and in part (I admit this is a bit circular) because English-language authors—especially the more academic-leaning ones—up until quite recently assumed they could toss in some Greek or Latin and their readers would understand it, especially if it was just a quote from some familiar text the reader surely encountered in school.

I could see loosening the requirement, but if the loosening isn't simply to permit French and German (also hugely important in academics, some fields more than others, very influential on English, and also often untranslated in otherwise English texts, so, justifiable for similar reasons) as substitutes, yeah, I'd regard it as likely a step backwards.

> However, I would question whether removing Latin or Ancient Greek as a requirement meaningfully lowers the quality of education

In Classics, where Ancient Greek and Latin are principal topics of study

I understand why we might relent on not teaching them as a part of general studies, but in Classics, Theology and Ancient History at the graduate level there's no way to escape the need to read the original, and anyone who must rely on translation will remain crippled in the field as long as they do so.

Man, McWhorter jumps straight to the point. It's remarkable that NPR still has him on:

> JOHN MCWHORTER: Thanks for having me.

> SIMON: Josh Billings - I don't have to tell you, a classics professor who's the department's head of undergraduate studies - says, quote, "having new perspectives in the field will make the field better." What would be wrong with that?

> MCWHORTER: Nothing at all, but I don't want to hear it until I know that it's not a way of saying through the back door that we want to have more Black students, and it's racist to expect them to learn Latin and Greek.

It's especially odd to have him on since he's not a classics professor.

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