Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the people/institution mentioned in the post, not to rogueclassicism!)

Dear all,

I am contacting you in anticipation that you will be able to assist in efforts to ensure that Latin does not disappear from the curriculum in Scotland, particularly in the state sector. The examination board, the SQA, proposes not to develop qualifications in Latin at the first/lower levels, contrary to the Curriculum for Excellence.. Qualifications for Classical Studies have now been secured but is essential to secure a discrete Latin qualification at National Level 4 to ensure parity of esteem and progression with other languages.

If there are no qualifications at the first/younger levels for pupils, schools will inevitably remove Latin from the school curriculum.

A Facebook has been set up outlining the concerns encouraging classicists and those who care about education to contact the SQA and Michael Russell, the Education Secretary for Scotland to ensure a “re-think” of these proposals, which appear to discriminate against Latin.

Could I ask you to look at the Facebook page, simply titled Keep Latin and Classical Studies in Scottish Schools, and give your support to ensure that a classical language remains available to pupils in Scottish schools. (You do not need to be a Facebook user to access these pages.)

Regards

Shona J.A. Harrison
Classics Teacher

With apologies for cross-postings. The link to the Facebook page for the campaign (which also gives details of email addresses at the Scottish Qualifications Authority where letters of concern might be sent) is:

http://en-gb.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126559574038372&v=info

Bruce Gibson

From the Tripod:

Trinity College’s Classics Department is in danger of being dissolved and replaced as an interdisciplinary program.

This process involves numerous steps, the first of which is the notification of Department Chair and Associate Professor of Classics Dr. Martha Risser by the Educational Policy Committee (EPC).

The EPC consists of various members of the Trinity Faculty, including the Dean of the Faculty, who serves as the chair but does not vote. There also are six elected tenured members of the faculty on the EPC, who must have been at Trinity for at least five years. These six members serve three-year, staggered terms on the EPC, and none of the members may serve consecutive terms.

There is at least one, but no more than three, representatives from the following departments: the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities/arts. The EPC also cannot have more than one member from any one department.

Now that the EPC has delivered a notification of its thoughts to Risser, a series of rigid steps will follow. Risser will first have to present a statement to the EPC, which she says “will vote on whether or not to bring a motion to the faculty, requesting permission to conduct an inquiry into the possibility of discontinuing the Classics Department and organizing an interdisciplinary program in its place.”

If the committee decides to bring a motion to the faculty, they will do so and wait for the faculty to vote. If the motion is approved, the EPC will conduct an inquiry and decide whether or not it is necessary to discontinue the Classics department. If they decide in the affirmative, they will allow the faculty to vote on the motion. If that motion is also passed than the ultimate decision lies with President James F. Jones, Jr.

“The questions concerning the role of a traditional classics department have been around for a great many years,” said Jones, “Several different solutions have been tried: from the Five-College Consortium model in Massachusetts to the IT classics network in the South sponsored by the Mellon Foundation. We here are trying to think of ways to increase the role of classics by extending traditional language (Greek and Latin) and literature offerings to classics studies. Some may wish for days of yesteryear where, at Trinity and elsewhere, Latin and Greek were required. But those days are never going to return, however much we might pine for them. The Dean is trying to think, with senior faculty here, of ways to extend our offerings rather than to have to justify tiny-enrolled courses for a very few.”

Jones also was sure to point out that his opinion was just one of many.

“I should state my own prejudices. I was a student at a military academy in the South where, if one were in the upper form, one had to read all the way through Ovid, Cicero, Livy, and Virgil. If I live long enough, I hope to end my career where I first started it: teaching Caesar, Cicero, Ovid, and Virgil in the morning and coaching soccer in the afternoon.”

The Classics Department was recently looked at by external reviewers who came to Trinity last spring and argued against the replacing of the department with a program. According to Risser, they recommended both of the vacant tenure-track positions be returned to the Classics Department and filled as soon as possible.

Risser also noted that the only NESCAC school without a Classics Department is Bates, where an interdisciplinary program is anchored by three tenured professors who specialize in Greek and Roman literature.

“Some have expressed concern about enrollments,” said Risser, “While it is true that some of our classes (e.g. Advanced Greek) are consistently small, others (e.g. Mythology, Ancient Warfare, Ancient Athletics) are large. Our average enrollments are equivalent to those of other departments.”

When asked about her own thoughts on the possible changes to the Classics Department, Risser expressed her uncertainty of the future.

“I really do not know what will happen, but I hope Classics will always be valued at Trinity. Classics has a long tradition of being an interdisciplinary field in which we examine the societies, cultures, values, laws, arts and ideas that form the core of the world in which we live. Through studying the ancient Greeks and Romans, our students become acquainted with the cultures that are at the very foundation of Modern Western and Middle Eastern civilizations, and gain understanding of the rich classical tradition that is still present in our lives today.”

A group in support of keeping the Classics Department has been created on Facebook by Trinity alumnus James Sickinger ’86, who majored in Classics while at the College. According to the Web site, the group is “intended to serve as a focal point for fostering support for the Classics Department at Trinity College, which is threatened with elimination. It will serve as a forum to provide information and foster communication.” At the time of press, the group had 340 members.

via College’s Classics Department Faces Possible Changes in Future – News.

Facebook seems to be blocked where I am right now; I’ll post the site later or, if some intrepid soul has access, please post it in the comments.

The incipit of a piece in Inside Higher Education … I suspect the situation at Centenary College is rather more common than we might know:

In this era of financial turmoil in higher education, many arts and humanities programs have found themselves in the cross hairs of budget cutters. Some proposed cuts have quickly attracted national or even international opposition. Think of all the outrage, for example, about Brandeis University’s plan (since put on hold) to sell off its noted collection of modern art, or of the budget cuts that for a time endangered the future of the Louisiana State University Press.

In both of those cases, and many others, prominent academics and scholarly associations organized petitions, lobbied key decision makers and shouted to anyone who would listen that these cuts simply could not be made. Thousands of students in California are expected to rally across the state today to protest various cuts to California’s colleges and universities.

But there are also a lot of people and programs this year that are being eliminated with hardly any attention at all. These programs are on hit lists precisely because they are small, because they are not famous and thus they don’t have thousands of supporters organizing petition drives and rallies.

Stephen Clark has since 1988 been the only classics professor at Centenary College, a liberal arts institution in Louisiana. This week, the college decided to eliminate the Latin program, which has been the focus of his career as a tenured professor. While there is an appeals process, the college earlier indicated that tenured professors in departments that are closed would probably lose their jobs.

At Centenary, much of the discussion about which programs to eliminate focused on size, and Clark makes no claims that Latin classrooms are packed. Enrollments of five to seven students are good for upper division courses and most years there are only a few majors, sometimes just one.

more …

via News: Turning Off the Lights – Inside Higher Ed.