>In the summer, it was confirmed by Ivy League Princeton University in New Jersey that classics students will no longer be required to learn Latin or Greek as part of a sweeping bid to address systemic racism. A diversity and equity statement on the department’s website states: “The history of our own department bears witness to the place of Classics in the long arc of systemic racism”.
>So the feeling is the field has not been inclusive?
>The statement adds: “We condemn and reject in the strongest possible terms the racism that has made our department and our field inhospitable to Black and non-Black scholars of colour, and we affirm that Black Lives Matter.”
>Not everyone agrees?
>American linguist John McWhorter said he wanted to know “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”.
>However?
>Princeton professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta told Greek newspaper Kathimerini: “What I see as problematic is the incredible unwillingness to take seriously the provocation that there is a history of race and racism within Classics and that Classics as a discipline is very much a part of broader constructions, Euroamerica and global constructions of white supremacy.”
>It comes after…?
>Howard University in Washington, DC cut its classics department and a Massachusetts High School removed Homer’s The Odyssey which followed an online campaign by progressive education activists to “disrupt texts” they believe may teach racism or other forms of hate.
What the fuck I’ve read, the last thing a pupil or a student thinks when reading such classic works is “How racist this book is”. But perhaps in some countries their brains are so washed that they tend to make a matter of colours of everything and see racism everywhere.
scientia non olet
Did not read article, just know the title is wrong (sadly).
Based
Americans
US is getting more morbid every year.
America the country where 95% of the people who aren’t 1st or 2nd gen immigrants can only speak 1 language.
How are you going to read ancient texts if you can’t read them?
Latin and greek stopped being taught everywhere because money and now people with the same ideology (it’s too expensive) tell us in France that it’s because of the “woke movement”. Rofl
The days when natural philosophy was synonymous with learning Latin and Greek and studying the ancient texts are long gone. We have far surpassed the achievements of ancient Greece and Rome, their texts belong to the realm of the historians now. I’m not sure if we should really set our educational priorities there.
To give a few examples of severely lacking education, less than 10% of the population can properly outline how financial markets and financial policies, the foundation of the modern national economy, actually work. The other 90% still peddle asinine conspiracy theories and folk superstitions. Less than 1% of the population have basic literacy in Chinese, the language of the most important trade contact of the foreseeable future. There is much work to do.
So, the background:
* our education minister has massively mishandled the covid crisis (read: teachers learning on TV friday evening what they should do on monday, massive turnabouts, claiming the education system is prepared to face covid multiple times and being provided wrong multiple times).
* Covid also left pupils in a bad situation, especially the ones that were struggling before, and it’s a major education topic that should be tackled (and actually receives 0 attention).
* Before covid, there were a few scandals with that minister, on top of being incompetent.
* Teachers’ salaries have been freezed for a decade, the education administration is well known to disown the teacher at the first hint of a problem with parents, and what used to be a decent job is now widely known to be a trap.
* As a result, we have huge trouble recruiting teachers.
So his solution to being a massive fraud and leaving every problem untreated is to fuel every polemic about “woke culture”, like the problem with french education is blue-haired american college kids or lack of respect for latin (when actually, your administration has trouble maintaining litteracy in the first place).
I believe every European can think of asshole politicians, and also a second category of politicians being assholes _and_ incompetent. For us, this is him. He’s the guy that will talk about anything to avoid talking about what we actually pay him to do.
France fighting against the use of English. How is that news?
Hi, thank you for your contribution, but this submission has been removed because a very similar or identical submission was recently posted.
Please check the [recent submissions](/r/Europe/new/) before sharing a link.
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> Howard University in Washington, DC cut its classics department and a Massachusetts High School removed Homer’s The Odyssey which followed an online campaign by progressive education activists to “disrupt texts” they believe may teach racism or other forms of hate.
So we live in a world where twitter activists canceled Homer?
I’m starting to think there might just be a chance our civilisation has begun to regress.
15 comments
>Racism?
>In the summer, it was confirmed by Ivy League Princeton University in New Jersey that classics students will no longer be required to learn Latin or Greek as part of a sweeping bid to address systemic racism. A diversity and equity statement on the department’s website states: “The history of our own department bears witness to the place of Classics in the long arc of systemic racism”.
>So the feeling is the field has not been inclusive?
>The statement adds: “We condemn and reject in the strongest possible terms the racism that has made our department and our field inhospitable to Black and non-Black scholars of colour, and we affirm that Black Lives Matter.”
>Not everyone agrees?
>American linguist John McWhorter said he wanted to know “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”.
>However?
>Princeton professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta told Greek newspaper Kathimerini: “What I see as problematic is the incredible unwillingness to take seriously the provocation that there is a history of race and racism within Classics and that Classics as a discipline is very much a part of broader constructions, Euroamerica and global constructions of white supremacy.”
>It comes after…?
>Howard University in Washington, DC cut its classics department and a Massachusetts High School removed Homer’s The Odyssey which followed an online campaign by progressive education activists to “disrupt texts” they believe may teach racism or other forms of hate.
What the fuck I’ve read, the last thing a pupil or a student thinks when reading such classic works is “How racist this book is”. But perhaps in some countries their brains are so washed that they tend to make a matter of colours of everything and see racism everywhere.
scientia non olet
Did not read article, just know the title is wrong (sadly).
Based
Americans
US is getting more morbid every year.
America the country where 95% of the people who aren’t 1st or 2nd gen immigrants can only speak 1 language.
How are you going to read ancient texts if you can’t read them?
Remeber last week when people said that this was bunk ? Looks like he wasnt too far off
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/qvv5xe/claims_that_teaching_latin_is_racist_make_my_mind/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Latin and greek stopped being taught everywhere because money and now people with the same ideology (it’s too expensive) tell us in France that it’s because of the “woke movement”. Rofl
The days when natural philosophy was synonymous with learning Latin and Greek and studying the ancient texts are long gone. We have far surpassed the achievements of ancient Greece and Rome, their texts belong to the realm of the historians now. I’m not sure if we should really set our educational priorities there.
To give a few examples of severely lacking education, less than 10% of the population can properly outline how financial markets and financial policies, the foundation of the modern national economy, actually work. The other 90% still peddle asinine conspiracy theories and folk superstitions. Less than 1% of the population have basic literacy in Chinese, the language of the most important trade contact of the foreseeable future. There is much work to do.
So, the background:
* our education minister has massively mishandled the covid crisis (read: teachers learning on TV friday evening what they should do on monday, massive turnabouts, claiming the education system is prepared to face covid multiple times and being provided wrong multiple times).
* Covid also left pupils in a bad situation, especially the ones that were struggling before, and it’s a major education topic that should be tackled (and actually receives 0 attention).
* Before covid, there were a few scandals with that minister, on top of being incompetent.
* Teachers’ salaries have been freezed for a decade, the education administration is well known to disown the teacher at the first hint of a problem with parents, and what used to be a decent job is now widely known to be a trap.
* As a result, we have huge trouble recruiting teachers.
So his solution to being a massive fraud and leaving every problem untreated is to fuel every polemic about “woke culture”, like the problem with french education is blue-haired american college kids or lack of respect for latin (when actually, your administration has trouble maintaining litteracy in the first place).
I believe every European can think of asshole politicians, and also a second category of politicians being assholes _and_ incompetent. For us, this is him. He’s the guy that will talk about anything to avoid talking about what we actually pay him to do.
France fighting against the use of English. How is that news?
Hi, thank you for your contribution, but this submission has been removed because a very similar or identical submission was recently posted.
Please check the [recent submissions](/r/Europe/new/) before sharing a link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/qvv5xe/claims_that_teaching_latin_is_racist_make_my_mind/
If you have any questions about this removal, please [contact the mods](/message/compose/?to=/r/Europe&subject=Moderation). Please make sure to include a link to the comment/post in question.
> Howard University in Washington, DC cut its classics department and a Massachusetts High School removed Homer’s The Odyssey which followed an online campaign by progressive education activists to “disrupt texts” they believe may teach racism or other forms of hate.
So we live in a world where twitter activists canceled Homer?
I’m starting to think there might just be a chance our civilisation has begun to regress.