With regard to the legitimate place of these languages in American
education, I can only refer my readers to the numerous and able
papers and books which have recently appeared in Great Britain and
America. Of these, Grimke's is one of the most philosophical and
convincing.
A great number of educators and thinkers have reached the conclusion
that the present prominence of the ancient classics in our system,
is not only a barbarism transmitted from the dark ages, but that,
unlike most anachronisms which generally surprise and amuse us, this
emasculates and paralyzes us. This carries us from the real, living
present, way back into the dark past.
In the pursuit of the ancient classics we immure ourselves in a
cloister, we shut out things, facts, society, nature, and ponder
over the fancies and philosophies of peoples who treated woman as a
slave, and who never enjoyed the first glimmering of the true social
or religious light.
I speak feelingly on this subject. When a young man, I spent several
years almost exclusively upon Latin and Greek; first as a student,
and then as a teacher.
One of my sincere regrets in life is, that I prepared about fifty
young men for college.
But for a painful and rapidly deepening conviction, that the
profession of a teacher, which I had embraced with all my heart,
would, in the higher departments, bring me into constant collision
with my idea of use as the aim and purpose of a manly life,--but
for this, I should never have turned to the profession of medicine.
Gladly would I exchange all that the classics gave me, for a
familiarity with any one of several natural sciences, which I had
but little time to examine during my school days.
The colleges and universities are rapidly emerging from this
darkness of the past.