LATIN AND GREEK

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 79, 30 September 1924, Page 7

LATIN AND GREEK

VALUE IN THE SCHOOLS AN AMERICAN CONTROVERSY. (UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.) (AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) NEW YORK, 28th September. The question ol the value of the study of classical languages has often been debated in the United States, but in recent years it has been quite dormant. Suddenly, however, it has become the centre of a Taging controversy. Ths dispute over the value of denominational as compared with Governmentcontrolled schools has also become involved, and publicists and educationists are divided into bitterly opposed camps. The American Classical League, which obtained an appropriation of 15,000 dollars from the Rockefeller Institute to inquire into tho status of Latin and Greek studies in American Government schools, has issued a series of long reports which have been widely published in the Press, deploring the partial limitations placed upon the study of Latin in various parts of tha country, and presenting statistics showing that students who take Latin are 13 per cent, higher in their other studies than those- who do not take Latin. The reports are bitter concerning the low estate into which the study of Greek has fallen, and condemn tho practice which deprives anxious students of the right to pursue the Hellenic language. The league's opponents deprecate the study of Greek and Latin as valueless tor students who, without advancing beyond intermediary education, must earn their livings. They declare that where students or parents of students desire suc h studies they are easily avajl-

Professor Dallas Sharp, of Boston University who was formerly a ministor i. tho Methodist Episcopal Church, condemns denominational schools charactering them as an Old .World educational idea imported from England, Idea C°"f lP t' y "fc varinncß wit* the idea of democracy and tending to "TW . anta«onisra and suspicion, pnnntl ? °"l y °ne koH^'on large enough to embrace all the diverse eleUiat is the Government school " 1 rofesaor Sharp's opponents declare there W room for .various kinds of schools m the United States, and they stress th ß> phenomenal growth of both denominational and Government institutions, notably since the war. The State of Oregon has been dividwV°W a* PParochial. arochial school question, which to-day v probably the larges political issue there. . The State Le R - .SSSS?SX MdaLlw&ri>iddil«^