Introduction: The Sick Man of Higher Education
Chapter 1: Skills Are the New Canon
Chapter 2: From the Studia Humanitatis to the Modern Humanities
Chapter 3: A College Fetich?
Chapter 4: Darwin Meets the Curriculum
Chapter 5: Humanism vs. Humanitarianism
Chapter 6: Toward a Truly Ecumenical Wisdom
Eric Adler is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Classics, the Culture Wars, and Beyond and Valorizing the Barbarians: Enemy Speeches in Roman Historiography.
Valuable for its sweeping and detailed history of pedagogical
theory and practice regarding the teaching of the Humanities and,
especially, Greco-Roman literature, from antiquity to the
present.
*Classical Journal-Online*
A. is passionate about classics and the classical languages. This
book is a useful and informative contribution to a debate which
will be of interest to all classicists.
*Peter Jones, Classics for all *
The book envisions a global humanities based on the examination of
masterworks from manifold cultures as the heart of an
intellectually and morally sound education.
*Morteza Hajizadeh, New Books Network*
Adler's depth and breadth of research are impressive.... Adler does
not write as a political partisan. He does not offer a cliched
defense of Western civilization, or a culture-war polemic. It takes
courage to defend the classics in our time, and Adler's work will
re-invigorate those who feel as though they are fighting a losing
battle.
*Law & Liberty*
The Battle of the Classics will be of special interest to students
of education who care about the humanities and the classics, but it
may also be an eye-opener for general readers who are wondering how
it happened that America started abandoning the traditions that
shaped its Constitution and liberties. Based on meticulous
research, the book... deals in a most enlightening manner with
developments in American higher education of large and enduring
importance, and it is lucidly and engagingly written. Adler evinces
a breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding that is becoming
rare in today's academia.
*The American Conservative *
[A] well researched and thoughtful book.
*The Classical Outlook*
Adler's argument acquires a striking originality and almost
inescapable force.... Promote[s] the humanistic educational creed
in a most constructive and promising way. A distinctive quality of
Adler's book is that it demonstrates the crucial importance of
knowing the humanities' past in order to vouchsafe their future
*History of Humanities *
Highly readable and thoroughly researched.... The Battle of the
Classics is a great success.
*The Cambridge Quarterly *
An insightful and valuable contribution to the debate over the
educational value of the humanities. Summing Up: Highly
recommended.
*CHOICE*
Adler correctly frames the dilemma that the humanities confront.
Humanities professors must defend the specific subject matter that
they teach, not just 'skills.' And Adler is also correct that
professors should care about character.
*History of Education Quarterly*
...the best...
*Jessica Hooten Wilson, The University Bookman*
open[s] fundamental questions for understanding how tradition is
constructed, what is at stake in belonging, in changing tradition,
in educating into tradition or against a tradition.
*Simon Goldhill, Bryn Mawr Classical Review*
Not only is The Battle of the Classics that rara avis published by
a university press with the potential to inform and improve popular
discourse, it also encourages deeper questions and sparks
further—potentially fruitful—debate, some of which has already
started online and in print. It begs the reader to think hard about
the purpose of education. In an ideal scenario, this book would
motivate us to deepen the debate and re-evaluate our premises. In
2021, educational controversies are front-page news; at the same
time, they are matters of significant sessions at any number of
professional academic conferences. Adler's invitation to a more
substantial conversation (regardless of one's 'side') is obviously
timely.
*J. Kinlaw, The University Bookman*
Adler gives a lucid account of the origins of the humanities, the
character of classical studies in particular, classics's central
role in early American education, and their interrelated
accommodation to and marginalization by the modern German-style
research university... Adler's call for a truly multicultural,
multidisciplinary core curriculum is welcome...
*Pavlos Papadopoulos, The University Bookman*
Eric Adler has written a book that should be read by all in higher
education.... [He] has made an essential contribution to our
literature on education. If Adler's educational vision found a home
in even a smattering of institutions, we'd benefit greatly.
*Front Porch Republic*
Adler's invaluable survey not only defends the humanities: it even
lays out how their allies have fallen short.... For supporters and
skeptics of the humanities, The Battle of the Classics is essential
reading.
*The Spectator*
I can't imagine a more vivid or important book for our times in
higher education. Eric Adler is a clear-eyed, unflappable, humane
scholar and culture critic who looks to the past, especially the
nineteenth century in American education, to find arguments that
may help us see our way forward through the swamp that seeps around
us. He advocates for intellectual rigor, for keeping a steady eye
on quality, for addressing questions of central concern to everyone
who lives and breathes. He sees, quite rightly, that a diverse
curriculum will force students (often against their inclinations)
to look beyond themselves at the things that all of us share.
Education represents a drawing out, as the root word indicates.
It's a move toward the universal, finding common ground in a kind
of plurality that never loses sight of quality. I love this book,
which speaks to our current confusion, and recommend it
strongly.
*Jay Parini, author of Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed
America*
Professor Adler's case for the humanities is lively, incisive,
historically informed, and, above all, timely. There has never been
a greater need for such a defense. A thorough researcher and a
clear writer who understands the issues and the stakes and conveys
them logically yet with an appropriate affection for the hard-won
literary heritage bequeathed us, Professor Adler is the ideal
person to undertake it.
*Carl J. Richard, author of Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How
the Ancients Inspired the Founding Fathers*
The Battle of the Classics accomplishes what it sets out to
do...Its lively prose and urgent topic...prove a starting point
that future historians of the humanities can build upon.
*Theodore R. Delwiche, History of Universities*
Eric Adler could not have had the coronavirus in mind when he wrote
The Battle of the Classics, but the timing worked out well. The
humanities, so we are told, have been undergoing a series of crises
for years, and the scene has only grown bleaker of late.
*Theodore R. Delwiche, Yale University History Department, History
of Universities*
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