A College Fetich?

For part of Harvard’s graduation ceremony of 1883, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., delivered a fiery address lambasting the college for its continued insistence on ancient Greek as part of its admission examinations. This chapter analyses Adams’s speech and the spirited reactions it engendered. It probes the arguments proponents of the classical humanities made for their subject during this consequential debate over the shape and purpose of the nation’s higher education. The chapter demonstrates that skills-based arguments dominated the appeals offered by supporters of collegiate requirements in ancient Greek. Almost entirely failing to invoke the tenets of humanism, such supporters anchored their apologetics in the concept of “mental discipline.” Their opponents, sensing the weaknesses of these appeals, ably countered this defense. At a crucial point in time for the classical humanities in American higher learning, skills-based rationales proved a dismal failure.