# Reasons for the decline of classical education? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 11, 2012, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-for-the-decline-of-classical-education/615457 "2012-03-11T13:38:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-for-the-decline-of-classical-education/615457/21 "2012-03-12T19:32:24Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > I suspect that the cutoff point was WW1. > > Make of this what you will. I read a paper on demographics of WWI casualties–mostly among British officers. At the beginning of the War, a college degree was required for a commission. (As time marched on, other ranks were promoted.) Young men with less elite degrees, although they may have started with the classics, had often studied things like Engineering. Which qualified them for positions behind the lines. Oxbridge graduates who had started in the “Public” schools? Send them Up The Line. Where, of course, most of them died… ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-for-the-decline-of-classical-education/615457/22 "2012-03-12T20:53:41Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > A classical education is the hallmark of aristocracy. It is primarily useful in allowing a gentleman to relate to his peers and to distinguish him from the lower orders. I would guess that it fell from favor as higher education became more common. As education becomes more oriented towards teaching skills the workforce becomes more skilled and the economy expands and there is more demand for skilled workers making education more oriented towards teaching skills. This pretty much nails it. I would only add that from an aesthetic point of view, literary tastes in this period changed significantly away from classical models and toward more naturalist expression. Vergil was criticized as overly-artificial, Livy and Cicero as too rhetorical. That isn’t to say these models were rejected wholesale by 20th-century writers. Rather, the original reasons for designating certain writers/works as “classics” had fallen out of favor. IMO–at least for non-specialists–classical works are studied more today for the way they influence or inform modern works (e.g. Ezra Pound reinterpreting the Roman writer Propertius as an imagist poet), rather than as great literature in their own right. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-for-the-decline-of-classical-education/615457/23 "2012-03-12T22:06:08Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > In the 19th century, schoolchildren literally had Greek and Roman literature and writings flogged into them. As so in the beginning of the twentieth. After the second world war, it has gone a marked reduction to the point that I would not be surprised that many school systems eschew them altogether. What were the reasons for this? GI Bill. People wanted college to be more than an enrichment experience, they wanted it to be something that would get you ready for the real world. Somethig useful. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-for-the-decline-of-classical-education/615457/24 "2012-03-12T23:13:23Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > I read a paper on demographics of WWI casualties–mostly among British officers. At the beginning of the War, a college degree was required for a commission. (As time marched on, other ranks were promoted.) > > Young men with less elite degrees, although they may have started with the classics, had often studied things like Engineering. Which qualified them for positions behind the lines. > > Oxbridge graduates who had started in the “Public” schools? Send them Up The Line. Where, of course, most of them died… That’s basically what I thought. ---
**Author:** ![gurujulp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba9def/32.png) [@gurujulp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gurujulp)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-for-the-decline-of-classical-education/615457/25 "2012-03-13T00:50:27Z")
> [@dzero](#): > > Precisely. How is this any different than the Nazi book burnings? At least a bonfire has some aesthetic appeal. I have no idea even what point is being made by shooting books out of cannon. :rolleyes: Ah- yeah… I was reading it as a joke until the rolleyes smiley! Sorry about the misidentification! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-for-the-decline-of-classical-education/615457.md?page=1)