Andrew Crocker – Michigan State University Class of 2014 – represents the last of the classics majors at the public institution. The 159-year-old school will no longer offer the major.
The Lansing State Journal reports:
Classics was one of a spate of programs placed on the chopping block in the fall of 2009. The university was both responding to declines in state support and taking the opportunity to reassess its priorities. …
Prior to the Civil War, most American colleges required heavy doses of Latin and Greek, and even classes in the sciences would often evoke Aristotle and other ancient authorities. It was a part of the backbone of American higher education, even if more modern subject matter and more experimentally oriented methods would ultimately make it an optional rather than a required part of the curriculum. …
It is the only Big Ten school without an active classics major.
The irony here? Michigan State students call themselves Spartans. Literally, their mascot is Sparty the Spartan.
What a shame, and troubling trend. In the words of Founding Father John Adams:
“In company with Sallust, Cicero, Tacitus, and Livy, you will learn wisdom and virtue. You will see them represented with all the charms which language and imagination can exhibit, and vice and folly painted in all their deformity and horror. You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.”
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