More Cicero, Fewer Electives
By Eric Adler
This article appears in the Winter 2024 issue of the Coolidge Review.
In an address delivered in 1921 to the American Classical League, Calvin Coolidge, then the vice president of the United States, contended: “All theories of education teach us that the mind develops in the same way, rising through the various stages that have marked the ascent of mankind from the lowest savagery to the highest Civilization. This principle is a compelling reason for the continuance of classics as the foundation of our educational system.”
Coolidge offered this sentiment at an odd time. By 1921, colleges in the United States had made great efforts to remove the classics as the foundation of our educational system. As Coolidge must have recognized, he was engaged in a losing battle—a lost cause that tells us much about Coolidge’s concerns about the effects on human flourishing that stemmed from the diminishment of the classical tradition.
Calvin Coolidge had himself been a student at the most volatile time in the history of American higher education. As a student at Black River Academy, St. Johnsbury Academy, and Amherst College, Coolidge had been caught between two curricular worlds—one that harkened back to the dawn of American higher learning, and one of seismic change. Coolidge’s intellectual formation and lifelong respect for classical studies must be seen in this broader educational context.
The Slow Shift Away from the Classics
Before we turn to the specifics of Coolidge’s education, some brief remarks about the history of American institutions of higher learning are in order. Colleges in early America were very different from the professionalized universities with which we are accustomed today. The early American colleges were humble institutions that received their intellectual bearings from a combination of medieval scholasticism, Renaissance humanism, and the Protestant Reformation.
Thanks to the influence of Renaissance humanism, these early colleges saw the development of good character as their chief goal. Educators believed that this project was best accomplished through the study of the masterpieces of ancient Greek and Roman literature, in their original languages.
Accordingly, the study of Greek and Latin dominated the curricula of the early U.S. colleges and the secondary educations of the college-bound. Although students at the early American colleges studied a variety of subjects, the classical languages remained for centuries the dominant ingredient in the curriculum. Since these institutions promoted the notion that particular classical texts were the key to moral improvement, the early colleges insisted on overwhelmingly prescribed curricula.
The foundational role of the classical languages in American higher education had always been controversial. Many Americans associated this sort of education with the aristocratic ethos of Europe and hungered for a curriculum more in keeping with American pragmatism. Partly as a response to such critiques, the American colleges slowly altered their curricula over time, granting more pedagogical attention to other subjects.
The resistance to the classical curriculum came to a head in the decades following the Civil War. A generation of academic reformers took their pedagogical bearings from the German research universities. The spirit of academic professionalization had first reared its head at these institutions, which encouraged rigorous training in particular disciplines, and led to the attainment of a PhD.
In the late nineteenth century, many academic leaders in America reoriented U.S. higher education toward the spirit of professionalization typical of German institutions of higher learning. They aimed to reduce the influence of the classical humanities and theology on the American colleges, creating institutions in which the scientific method would dominate.
Importantly, these reformers replaced the prescribed classical curriculum with the elective system. Undergraduates were now free to choose virtually all their own classes. The academic reformers conceived of higher education as an intellectual version of social Darwinism—according to which different disciplines would compete for students and supposedly only the fittest would survive.
By the end of the nineteenth century, even many of the most established American colleges no longer required Greek and Latin for a bachelor’s degree.
Coolidge’s Amherst Defers to Tradition . . . to a Point
It is in this context that we must put the educational experiences and sentiments of Calvin Coolidge. Although a principal’s certificate exempted Coolidge from having to take Amherst College’s admissions examination before matriculating in 1891, we can tell much about his secondary-school training from the vicissitudes of this exam. Academies such as the ones Coolidge attended could serve as training grounds for prospective undergraduates at American colleges, and they therefore taught to the test, to employ a contemporary phrase.
The Amherst College catalogue for the 1890–91 academic year provides much detail about the subjects tested on its admissions examination and therefore about the content its prospective students would have encountered in their secondary schooling.
The nature of this exam underscores that Amherst remained a comparatively traditional New England college in Coolidge’s day. Amherst’s admissions examination necessitated much experience with classical Latin and, to a somewhat lesser degree, ancient Greek. The exam included passages to be translated from such works as Cicero’s Catilinarians, Virgil’s Aeneid, Xenophon’s Anabasis, and Homer’s Iliad. Although test-takers had to demonstrate their abilities in a variety of other subjects, the comparative attention granted to Latin and Greek demonstrates that Amherst still considered classical studies the sine qua non of its candidates for a bachelor’s degree.
The Amherst College catalogue from Coolidge’s freshman year further testifies that it was an institution in limbo—still deferential to earlier traditions of American higher education, but also changing with the zeitgeist.
The catalogue spells out a curriculum that remained wedded to the tenets of Renaissance humanism, while also moving in the direction of greater curricular breadth and more elective coursework. The freshman year at Amherst seems comparatively traditional. Except for a choice between the study of French and German, all coursework in the freshman year was prescribed, and ancient Greek and Latin dominated. Starting with the sophomore year, however, an increasing amount of coursework was elective.
The catalogue also shows signs that a classical education at Amherst in Coolidge’s day would partly conform to the priorities of professionalized classical study that were a hallmark of German-inspired approaches to higher learning. In the early days of the American colleges, the study of Latin and Greek surrounded relentless oral quizzing on grammatical minutiae. Less attention was paid to classical literature as a whole. Amherst’s catalogue for 1891–92, however, specifies that students of Latin and Greek would spend some time on ancient history and archaeology. And, as their coursework in the languages progressed, the instruction would focus less on grammar and more on literary appreciation.
Had Coolidge chosen to attend, say, Harvard University rather than Amherst, it is likely that his education would have differed markedly. Harvard, after all, had removed ancient Greek from the subjects required for its admissions examinations in 1886. And it was beholden to the elective system: by 1894, Harvard required only one class of all its undergraduates—in English rhetoric.
Unthinkable
Coolidge must have been looking back wistfully at his own education when, in 1921, he told an audience at the American Classical League, “It is unthinkable that any institution founded for the purpose of teaching literature should neglect the classics.”
Even in Coolidge’s day, that prospect was very thinkable, indeed.
Eric Adler, PhD, is professor and chair of classics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of The Battle of the Classics.