Why aren't classics taught in school anymore...

We have mandatory philosophy classes on our last year of high school in France.
It's not even an introduction but that's at least that.

so Socrate and Plato, mostly, Descartes and Rousseau.

Teaching philosophy to jr high kids would be a disster. Even teaching it to high school kids is a bad idea. It should be a college thing.

Schopenhauer was right. Young kids are stupid and impressionable, if they are fed a bad ideology it becomes much harder sometimes impossible for them to unlearn so it is best to teach them things detached from it such as spelling and math.

not while the job market demands qualifications for jobs that really don't need it. The job market is so competitive nowadays that I don't see why schools or parents would ever see the benefit in teaching the arts.

It's disappointing really, but I understand that it's the most efficient way of churning out wage monkeys.

Harold Bloom sounds like an idiot. Literally none of this has to do with racism or sexism. I'm asking why they don't also add classics to the modern education requirements

Critical thinking inculcated by such an education would likely lead to the overthrow of the current hegemony.

Name?

You said it, B/rother!

Alexis Ren

>Harold Bloom sounds like an idiot
Wow, you sure know how to argue with one of the leading academics in literature

There is nothing modern that compares to the Socratic dialogues or Epictetus.

I'm not OP and I don't think they should be read in the original, but they offer something that nothing else does.

What about Persians, Egyptians, Hindus, and Chinese?
Surely if you wanted diversity you could branch into these.
Of Course, you'd get the WE WUZ with Egyptians in there, which would be endlessly annoying when discussing higher thought

To my knowledge we know pretty much nothing about Egytion philosophy nor do we have any of there classic literature.

Hinduism and Chinese have some great literature and do occupy an importaint role in philosophy. However it really only makes sense to teach them to the point where they cross over into Western culture. The Upanishads are useful if you want to understand Schopenhauer but they really aren't part of western culture. Teaching them is rather arbitrary since it is not going to relate to anything. The Chinese have even less influence than the Hindus and the parts of the Persian cannon that would be relevent (say Avicenna) are frankly a revising of Aristotle. In contrast someone like Plato you could see their influence in all sorts of other parts of the western world. And frankly class time is always limited. I would much rather teach kids about important, but less mentioned, classics like Heraclitus than spend a week on Confucius.

Another thing is that all the cultures you mentioned draw no distinction between religion and philosophy. So basically to teach Hindu philosophy you have to teach the Hindu religion first. That's already a lot of extra time in class and frankly if you want to teach the Persians, Egyptians, you also need to learn those religions. One of the unique things about Greek philosophy is that it was the first to really seperate itself from religion. That's partly why it was able to so easily spread through other cultures, because it had no theological strings attached. In contrast it's much harder to assimilate Hindu philosophy while not being a Hindu.

Children learn calculus and english, which is far more useful than some pseudo-intellectual posturing - no one has made a single argument in this nostalgic circle jerk thread. I couldn't think of one upside to switching from an international language and advanced science and mathematics to a dead language and postulating nonsense about the 'metaphysical'

Is there anything that critical theory hasn't ruined?

Critical thinking is completny necessary for the progress of humanity.
Doing math in a completly mechanical way doesnt help at all.

This has very little do with with the merits of any individual author or works but rather the politics that surround education.

Education has boiled down to metrics and standardized tests that reward rigid memorization and basic recall skills. Classics and philosophy do not fit into this model so they are put aside in favor of teaching children/teenagers the intricacies of test taking.

Just baselessly accepting previous modes of education as being superior doesn't seem very critical

He gave you the basis.

>tfw quadrivium and trivium will never be taught again in universities

because school is about passing tests

The Odyssey is still taught in American schools. As for stuff like the Aeneid, well, it frankly is not as good as the Iliad and I'm perplexed as to why people in the 19th century held it in such high regard.

Increasingly, since post-ww2 basically, as the economy grew, education is viewed as vocational training to fill the slots of the economy.

The classics might teach the youth what it really means to be human, and that is wisdom which can't be bought, and which can make a prince of a pauper, but all the same, we don't need six million professors of English. We need six million scientists and engineers to stay competitive in the globalized economy and keep our countries at the forefront.

You can't market knowledge of the classics like you can technical knowledge. And we're in a market driven world.

Because we don't need Latin to communicate with other people anymore. Learning a dead language to read a couple books makes no sense for 99.99% of the population. Keep in mind almost every single country in the world has to teach English as a second language, which is a fundamental skill. As for native English speakers, learning Spanish first and then Latin makes a lot more sense

Here in Europe they do teach philosophy.

But why the fuck should students learn dead languages such as Ancient Greek or Latin?

Rigourous training in mathematics and chemistry should suffice the needs of critical thinking.

>Reading kant make up moral imperatives endeavors critical thinking

?

Kant has nothing to do with it. Teaching kids today things mechanically and not to understand what the circumstances behind it is (that's literally the definition of critical thinking) is going to produce weak members of society.

Why can't they teach both though?

No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views; because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to arrive at maturity. The child should give its attention either to subjects where no error is possible at all, such as mathematics, or to those in which there is no particular danger in making a mistake, such as languages, natural science, history and so on. And in general, the branches of knowledge which are to be studied at any period of life should be such as the mind is equal to at that period and can perfectly understand. Childhood and youth form the time for collecting materials, for getting a special and thorough knowledge of the individual and particular things. In those years it is too early to form views on a large scale; and ultimate explanations must be put off to a later date. The faculty of judgment, which cannot come into play without mature experience, should be left to itself; and care should be taken not to anticipate its action by inculcating prejudice, which will paralyze it for ever.

I shouldve further clarified; Those languages as well as modern languages that have a history in Philosophy such as German, Italian, French, etc. would also benefit the students.

honestly it's a good thing
like just look at crash course and EC history, it's ridiculously easy to insert your own biases and ideology without young kids realising it
most high school classics classes would probably be on the same level as those webshows when you think about it, like both of them are written by people who could theoretically become high school history teachers at any time
it's best left for college, when (hopefully) they'll be less susceptible to this shit

Colleges were just 4 year long camps for the elite, who were rich as fuck and did not need a vocation. Teaching them fine but unpractical things in life. Gradually it became a vocational school especially after FDR's GI Bill . Hence the demise of the Classics

t. Classics phdfag

How are you going to accomplish that by teaching latin, mandatory

Do you even know what the term "classics" mean?

>Another thing is that all the cultures you mentioned draw no distinction between religion and philosophy.

Confucianism is only tangentially related to Chinese religious thought, while some Indian philosophical schools were actually atheist.

People in the 19th century could on average read Latin better than Greek. Also, the Aeneid is more refined than the Homeric epics, which are an amalgam of oral traditions full of repetitive formulas.

This is true. You might also add some strands of Buddhism.

But what does this ultimately? The goal was to make the class bearable for resentful minorities and women who will get zero representation in the course. I don't know if mentioning the Chinese will make them feel much better.

With the current PC period I think it would be difficult to even discuss the classical world without triggering some of these people. Plato thought that knowledge was the ultimate measure of man and most men were not capable of grasping the higher learning, there are even slaves in his ideal society. Can you imagine trying to teach this? A proper philosophical education would not have you mindlessly saying "nah" to this but exploring why the ideas behind it, how it shaped society and future thinkers.

It's not just the students too but the teachers. If you've seen school of life's videos the ability to take complex philosophy and boil it down into some feel good, semi-political, message is boundless.

Historically classical educations were not for the commons. I sort of agree with Plato that not everyone should be learning philosophy. The vast majority of people that pass through the education system will be doing, repetitive jobs, which require the opposite of a critical think, they require a complacent machine. That's why schools are designed to churn out complacent machines.

Because only cunts who want to learn that shit should spend time on it.

I dunno if making fancy allegories ought to be a thing among engineers or scientists.

If anything, scientists should be placed far from the classics as possible.
>Hey we found a new space-object!
>Let's uncreatively name it after Greco-Roman shit.

Oh, it does seem like another case of Jewish subversion...

>guy literally attacking "queer theory" "feminism" and all the philosophers that enabled this

>but he's a jew

Don't trust him. He must be trying to trick us when he says feminist feminist deconstructionism is bad for the nation!

/pol/ is pathetic.

Because the point of education nowadays is to produce good workers, and not good people

If a student wishes to learn how to be a good person, they must do so on their own time

it's a meme you dip

I'm not from the US, so I dont know how things are there, but I studied technical middle and highschool, education being STEM focused, and I don't see how replacing math, physics and chemistry for philosophy, or literature could be good, I'm from a developing country thou, so maybe this kind of things are more important to us than people in the US

Because most kids are disinterested and fall back on the "when will i ever use this" meme

Kids are stupid, but apparently the adults running the shit show called "education" are worse; see: common core

They are at Boston Latin

when would they ever use it then?

Because people are stupid /thread

>I think they're extremely meaningful.
Tell us why.

I would personally cut out most shit in education and reform the rest so people would end their childhood faster(but be not any less competent), while you want to prolong it. Why?

I'd teach her the classics if you know what I mean

Because universal education was a mistake

Education nowadays teaches us to make money and not teaching us the tools for finding the truths

You made me remember this TV show for teenagers (probably the best thing done here in a long time) about a philosophy teacher:
youtube.com/watch?v=yDniUfQMb8M

saw a few episodes
very cringey and liberal

>cringey
Explain yourself, please.

I do not like this "I think it is meaningful thus everyone should think it is meaingful stuff". And I have other objections to this proposal.

there are more and more classics being made every day, teaching the same stuff that was taught decades ago would be stupid

This person knows what's up, yo

Not trying to get all /pol/ here, but...

Because that would require raising the bar for primary education and whenever that happens accusations of racism/white privilege/etc. inevitably follow, schools get punished and then the grind resumes as before. Speaking frankly, most minority students just don't give a shit because of a combination of lousy parenting and home lives, lower IQs and cultures that disdain education.

>t. Went to a school that was ~30% white and witnessed all of this firsthand

If we follow schopenhauer, maturity is but a question of age, it may have been closer to the truth in his century but i seem to disagree nowadays. A lot of children given adult like responsabilities at the age of 13/14 seem to act more mature than 30 year old graduates who are completely out of this world and unprepared for the job market. Maturity as a question of age was teared appart in the late 20th century by the gradual disappearance of a strong parenthood (parents let their child do everything and nothing).

I do believe that Maturity, which is holding responsabilities and making thoughful choices is not a question of age but a question of environment and 'training'. A sad fact is the 90's kids were the last to truly experience the traditional kind of childhood. Nowadays, you need to mature fast to successfully enter life.

Teaching philosophy (at least it's bases) and such courses can help children grow mature where a lack of parenthod and an unadapted school system cannot.

>Teaching philosophy (at least it's bases) and such courses can help children grow mature where a lack of parenthod and an unadapted school system cannot.
Are you pulling this out of yer butthole or do you have some science to back this up?

>Not trying to get all /pol/

then gets all /pol/cat

smelled that one a mile away
go back to /pol/

I've done latin since middle school and the only thing I know is how to cheat on translations.

Also we did philosophy in high school, we had a great teacher and my former classmates remember Kant and Plato more than how to solve equations

Whats the point exactly to learn the classics exactly? If someone wants to be cultured they can just take them as voluntary classes.
>Learning latin
Jesus fuck why the fuck would you force people to learn a dead meme language? Because muh rome?

In France they teach most of this things in highschool

>Why are we not at the same as

i suspect you are french, causei am and it looks very much like my own experience on those two subjects

>remember Kant and Plato more than how to solve equations
>people will believe this is good

supposedly learning Latin makes it easier to learn Romance languages like Spanish or French later on
still completely stupid though, I feel like it's still around because that this like they just can't come up with a different way to teach Roman history

It is if you never find yourself in a profession that requires anything beyond basic mathematics.

The application of philosophy is more flexible and generally relevant to a person in every day life than the application of math (beyond basic stuff). Which isn't to say that the use of mathematics hasn't created things people need and use daily, just that they don't need to understand the math to use them.

Wouldn't valid psychology or sociology be better as philosophy? I never understood why there was no psychology or sociology at all during high school. When I say psychology I am not talking abut Freud and such which are no longer valid.

This is true. The average person is going to have no use for any math any more complicated than basic algebra, entry level probability, or the geometry necessary for building a fence.

Only people that actually go into certain jobs need to go beyond the 8th grade level.

Psychology and sociology are best left for college for the same reason philosophy is. 16 years old is still way to young and dumb and it will just turn into ideological watering holes for whatever agenda the staff wants to push.

>attacks the core of western literature, claiming they shouldn't be taught because it's racist to do so
>"b-but he also attacks some feminist school so he's okay!!!!!!"
Hmmm

But there actually is some philosophy during high school in the Netherlands. But in my time only in the highest educational level.

I otherwise think what you've said is valid and agree.

>common core

literally states decide what to teach which is garbage

>its another "picture of cute girl + nutjob conspiracy theory" thread

Both should be taught

They literally go into Hegel and Kant now in the literature textbooks of Dutch. I've seen it in my brother's book.

Can agree with that.

limited time and funds, ad like half of a class not even knowing what that teaching persin is on about anyway.

I don't know I think Descartes and Hume are within the range of a high school senior. And even some basic introduction to critical thinking would do a hell of a lot of good for those who bother to pay attention.

>the sonic hedgehog gene
>Raichu factor
scientists can be a pretty cringey bunch

What do you think of biologists:
>Scaptia beyonceae
>Anophthalmus hitleri
>Agathidium cheneyi
>Agathidium bushi
>Aptostichus barackobamai
>Litarachna lopezae
And so on and so on.

Fuck you. Why should I learn langaugaes that have no connection to our culture or history(or even destroyed it) and which is also useless and only a source of snobbery. A better question would be why arent we learning old versions of our language? Why should old english, a language concerning the ethnogenesis of your ownn people, be more unworthy than learning latin or greek.

INb4 "classic superior civilisation" there were plenty of other civilisations during those times that also had an equally crucial role. Why not also learn old Persian, Assyrian, Egyptian or Pheonician?

I personally rather have other people learn old languages and translate it for me. It requires quite a bit of time investement to learn a new language.

I rather use that time I would spend to learn an old language reading a diverse range of philosophers (among other sciences).

I am one tbqhwyf, the cell-biology/physiology type though.
I even do the same kind of shit

Why doesn't everyone study what I'm interested in? Why should they study things that I'm not interested in?

Because people who spoke old english contributed nothing, without romans you were the equal of sandniggers of modern era.

They contributed to english culture and its further development. Romans didnt exist by the 6-7th centuries. This isnt about contribution, this is about learning your people's history.
If we're gonna talk about contribution, why shouldnt you learn old french since it was spoken when england was strongest in medieval times?
Im so thankful my nation isnt full of roman worshipping bitchcucks and we actually take pride in our national cultural history, with many people in Bulgaria choosing to learn old church slavonic( old bulgarian) rather than greek or latin.

Epistemology and basic logic is probably the only thing I think high schoolers should study.

It's the type of thing that's "hard" like physics or math so there isn't a real risk of them fucking it up. The teacher can objectivily show them where they are wrong in their thinking if they make a mistake. In contrast something like Nietzsche or Hegel would be something where it would be nightmarish to have general-ed high school teachers giving it to kids that havn't even mastered critical thinking.