Paul Krauss is editor of Vogland View and author of The Odyssey of Love. He has another book

entitled Finding Arcadia, Wisdom, Truth, and Love in the Classics.

That's our topic today. Welcome. Welcome, Mr. Krause.

Hello, Mark. It's great to be with you.

Your introduction has the heading, don't cancel the classics. Are we losing the classics?

Yes, Mark. I would say we are losing the classics. Now, the classics, of course, used to be

foundational to liberal arts and humanistic education in the United States, but perhaps we can also extend

it out to say the broader Western world, especially the English-speaking world.

Anyone who studied literature 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, would have had to have been

very familiar with the principal classical texts of Greece and Rome.

And as our education system and as our history became more modern and more utilitarian,

following the progressive education model set out by John Dewey, the study of literature,

the humanities, and the classics in particular have suffered. And it's even, in my opinion,

gotten worse today because in the effort to try to keep some quote-unquote relevance to literature,

and you might know this, having been

a literature professor yourself, that the classics kind of got the short stick on that.

So it was, well, if we're going to salvage literature and a humanistic education, quote-unquote,

a humanistic education, in any relevant way, well, Homer and Virgil and Escalis, they don't need to be part of

the curriculum, right? We want writers and authors from the 20th century. Let me jump out. I hadn't

thought of asking this, but a little biographical question, what brought you to the classics?

Where does this come from?

How long were you reading the classics when you were 15?

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