The pursuit of a liberal arts education has been a historically lauded endeavor. The acquisition of knowledge for knowledge's sake and a keen interest in esoteric debate have usually been taken as indicators of students' intellectual ambition and scope, marking them as potential great leaders and civic thinkers. Of late, however, the humanities seem to be entering a bit of a crisis.
Given the harsh economic climate coupled with the increasing pressure to choose career-oriented majors, the humanities' popularity has been declining. According to the Humanities Indicators Prototype, a database compiled by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, down from their peak of 17.4 percent in the late 1960s, humanities majors now account for about eight percent of all undergraduate degrees.
While the humanities were originally created to hone student intellect in ways that would be applicable to real world situations, this idealistic view does not always pan out.
Given the perceived difficulty of applying a liberal arts education to the professional world, an increasing number of schools, particularly state-funded universities, have begun downsizing their humanities departments. Harvard University recently reduced the requirements needed to major in classics as an attempt to spark students' interest.
Tufts, however, has not yet sought to downsize one of its main humanities departments. Rather, the Tufts Department of Classics emphasizes the universality of ancient thinkers. The department Web site reads: "Classics is more than the study of the Greek and Latin languages; it can liberate the student from the parochialisms of both time and place."
"A liberal arts education covers all the parts of your life that aren't a nine-to-five day job -- it covers all the parts of your life worth living, that feed your mind and heart as opposed to your wallet," Classics Lecturer Anne Mahoney said.
The Web site does emphasize, though, that medical and law schools have been traditionally favorably inclined toward classics students. Mahoney also noted that a liberal arts education can, in fact, strengthen workplace skills.
"Liberal arts-educated people tend to be better writers, and in the outside world, that's something you get judged on. Good reading skills, good critical skills -- those are things we work on in literature classes," she said.
Steven Hirsch, associate professor of classics, expressed similar views.
"The humanities [deal] with ambiguity, and, in the end, the world is an ambiguous and complex place," he said. "In many ways, it is the humanities where you learn to think about the fundamental questions. Humanities [deal] with human thought and human ideas."
Despite dwindling numbers at many institutions, Mahoney pointed to the surprising growth in high school Latin programs and noted that Tufts graduates with a background in Latin are receiving job offers even before receiving their teaching licenses.
"Even inner city schools are expanding their offerings in classics because they do find value in it," she said.
Hirsch also developed a strong defense for the relevance of the study of classics, pointing mainly to the huge influence of Greco-Roman thought on the development of Western civilization.
"They created virtually all of the disciplines and mostly all of the genres of art and literature and also created the bases of philosophical and political thought," he said. "To study [those subjects'] origins is to understand them better. My sense is that the ancient world is in a constant dialogue with the modern world."
Peter der Manuelian, classics lecturer and Egyptologist at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, echoed his sentiments. "To my mind, the liberal arts education is an invitation to observe, assess, sample and reflect on the world around us," he said. "My own field, Egyptology, is perhaps as far removed from our own era as you can get. And yet we can even learn about the shared human experience from a culture more than 4,000 years old."
Still, the classics faculty is aware that it is not impervious to the incremental dismissal of "impractical" fields such as its own. Hirsch admitted that the faculty members do worry about the downsizing of classes and the dwindling interest in the humanities, a problem that has worsened as Tufts has become more prestigious. In efforts to attract more students to their classes, members of the Department of Classics have taken the simple approach of offering exciting courses with a focus on quality instruction.
"We care deeply about our teaching and making our courses interesting," Hirsch said. "We have to convince students that we are interesting and relevant, and we try to do this in a stimulating way."
In their attempts to entice students, the classics department has also developed certain classes that synthesize modern and classic issues and go beyond a pure study of Greek and Latin civilizations. Some of the less-traditional courses have included one that dealt with sports in the ancient world and another that compared genocide in antiquity with genocide in the modern world.
While classics majors don't make up a large contingent of Tufts students, those who do study the discipline are passionate about the field and the department. Sophomore Meaghan Woodard, a double major in Latin and child development, transferred to Tufts from New York University specifically for the classics department.
Freshman Annie Mendes, who plans to double major in International Relations and classics, agreed with the classics faculty, finding the latter subject's concepts ancient but nonetheless pertinent.
"I think that the very basis of society hasn't changed much, but the classics give us a much clearer perspective," she said.
Mendes did, however, admit that her parents were not particularly pleased when she told them she wanted to major in classics.
