Single Course of Study

. Prior to the secularization of school curricula and the dawning of the age of science and industrialism, colleges such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and others prescribed a single complete course of study. The classical curriculum required all students, regardless of their career paths, to learn Latin and Greek as well as the language of mathematics. A typical freshman class of the period would have read Latin out of Cicero and Horace, and Greek out of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato. Readings and translations from the Bible would also have been regular exercises for the average college student. The insistence on training young men in the ancient languages of Greece and Rome dated back to medieval Europe; since then, traditional religious leaders continued to demand that every student follow the same course of studies to insure that future teachers and...