Would like to hear Oat Action Man's take on this.

https://paw.princeton.edu/arti...e-and-identity-track

Curriculum Changed to Add Flexibility, Race and Identity Track

The Princeton faculty approved curriculum changes in the departments of politics, religion, and classics in April. Politics added a track in race and identity, while religion and classics increased flexibility for concentrators, including eliminating the requirement for classics majors to take Greek or Latin.

Professor Frances Lee, associate chair of the politics department, said the idea for the new undergraduate track in race and identity was part of the larger initiative on campus launched by President Eisgruber ’83 to address systemic racism at Princeton. A committee put together by the chair was asked to look broadly at the department to recommend responses. The new track was created out of courses the department already offered. The goal is to offer this track as a defined pathway for students who are interested in the topic, as well as to set them up for future academic work in this area, Lee said.

“The politics of race underlies so much of U.S. political history,” she said, adding that there is “a wide array of intellectual questions as well as subjects that you need to understand if you want to understand politics at its core.”

Students who choose this track will need to fulfill three main requirements: take the introductory core course “Race and Politics in the United States”; complete three other courses from the 14 focused on race and identity; and incorporate the theme as part of the senior thesis. The track is open to all undergraduate students in the department.

In religion, courses for concentrators are now available in two main “streams.” The first, called traditions, “encompasses different religious traditions, approaches, geographical areas, and time periods,” and the second, called themes, allows students to concentrate on thematic areas, according to a department memo. The department has wanted to do this for some time, said Seth Perry, director of undergraduate studies and associate professor of religion.

“We also wanted to do a better job in articulating what the major does in terms of transportable learning outcomes for our students as they go off into graduate schools or in their careers,” Perry said. For example, students can pursue Islam and religions of Asia, or they can pair religion with media, art, philosophy, or politics.

In classics, two major changes were made. The “classics” track, which required an intermediate proficiency in Greek or Latin to enter the concentration, was eliminated, as was the requirement for students to take Greek or Latin. Students still are encouraged to take either language if it is relevant to their interests in the department. The breadth of offerings remains the same, said Josh Billings, director of undergraduate studies and professor of classics. The changes ultimately give students more opportunities to major in classics.

The discussions about these changes predate Eisgruber’s call to address systemic racism at the University, Billings said, but were given new urgency by this and the events around race that occurred last summer. “We think that having new perspectives in the field will make the field better,” he said. “Having people who come in who might not have studied classics in high school and might not have had a previous exposure to Greek and Latin, we think that having those students in the department will make it a more vibrant intellectual community.”

I propose one mandatory course:

Read "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

A worthless degree to begin with made all the more worthless with this decision. Wonder how people with this degree will vote. Yeah.

quote:

Originally quoted by princeton.edu:

“Having people who might not have studied... or had exposure to (the subject matter), will make it a more vibrant intellectual community.”

Wait, what?
I wonder if that also works with alligator farming.

Anyone dumb enough to drop 500K or so on a classics degree, deserves their fate.

My daughter has a classics degree and it was only $150k she must of got it on sale. Haha but she has done quite well for herself with it.

Yeah, that oughta work.

The Ivys are all in a race to see which achieves total irrelevancy first. The three most famous, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, have the early lead.

I have no problem with degrees in the classics or philosophy. Throughout history the world has greatly benefitted from great intellects whose day job was to explore the human and societal nature and experience and as a society we all are better for them. I find their writings fascinating. Consider this list which I did not compile myself but grabbed from a quick Google search:

Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
Confucius
René Descartes
Michel Foucault
David Hume
Immanuel Kant
Søren Kierkegaard
Lao-Tzu
John Locke
Niccolo Machiavelli
John Stuart Mill
Friedrich Nietzsche
Plato
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Paul Sartre
Socrates
Ludwig Wittgenstein


The problem lies in universities churning out too many not so deep thinkers who may find the area somewhat interesting and a lot easier than engineering or accounting or chemistry just to take their tuition money. They coast through college and graduate with little or nothing to offer society in the field. Career opportunities are limited to writing and or academics, but not to them because these opportunities are very limited to the very few who really do have worthwhile ideas to offer. Through Darwinism, without any marketable skills, they often end up in menial occupations. Nothing wrong with manual honest labor but kind of an expensive waste of a college education.

So long as I am not paying for it (think student loan forgiveness), their choice, their life.

You won't believe how sick I am of this constant racism crap.

It seems that people with white guilt are in a race to the bottom of the barrel.

A degree in the Classics without Latin or Greek? Blasphemy! I suppose they'll study Ebonics instead.

flashguy

Declining interest in the department threatens jobs so the professors came up with a plan to increase enrollment and save their jobs. Plus they all know Greek and Latin and can offer up new translations to their students who require them since they can no longer be expected to read the originals. It's a win-win.

Am I the only one who has got this feeling that American universities are stumbling around like zombies looking for a cliff to fall over?

I would agree. I do believe the pendulum will swing back the other way. It happened with my college years.

Today's Dilbert:

A friend of mine's oppinion of Latin in the 50’s. Latin is dead. As dead as it can be. It killed off all the Romans, and now it’s killing me. Dead are they who wrote it. Dead are they who spoke it. Dead are they who learned it. Happy death they’ve earned it.

quote:

Originally posted by satch:
A friend of mine's oppinion of Latin in the 50’s. Latin is dead. As dead as it can be. It killed off all the Romans, and now it’s killing me. Dead are they who wrote it. Dead are they who spoke it. Dead are they who learned it. Happy death they’ve earned it.

It was explained to me back at school that it was not so much the actual language per se, as much as the learning of the 'structure' of language - and one that has only faint echoes in our present-day English.

That comment alone helped me to a degree in modern languages. I was already fluent before I even started school, thanks to my father, grandparents and uncle, in English, Welsh, Irish and German and soon picked up French from our neighbours. The others followed on as I went through school with a multiplicity of different language-speaking fellow-pupils. We were not called students until we went to University.

My only thought when reading the thread to this was instead of eliminating the Greek and Latin classes maybe they should include some others..

quote:

Originally posted by Blume9mm:
My only thought when reading the thread to this was instead of eliminating the Greek and Latin classes maybe they should include some others..

I have to agree on that one.

A good while back our unit was having a pub quiz night out which included a few American-type questions, mainly in deference to our USAF exchange officer and his lovely wife. He failed all three American-themed questions in the fifty question test.

Here, give 'em a try....

1. What American president was given the nickname 'Old Hickory'?

2. What famous American sailor said 'I have not yet begun to fight'?

3. What country made the Statue of Liberty?

He flunked all three. But to our amazement, so did his wife.

I scored 100 percent, but I had a classical education way back when.