Has anyone here studied Great Books, Greek, Latin, and regretted it later?

[Cindy in Indy]

I was reading a thread about "if you had it do to over, what would you do differently for your OWN education?" and it made me wonder, "Are there any adults on these boards who did a classical education (you know, Greek, Latin, and the Great Books) and now regret it?"

 

I studied engineering in college, which allowed almost ZERO time for any humanities classes, and now at age 43, I would like to learn Greek and read Homer in the original. I'm working on Latin currently - maybe I'll try Greek closer to age 50!

 

I just wonder, as I attempt to give my kids an LCC/Great Books education, if they'll ever appreciate it?

 

Musing,

Cindy

[Sharon H in IL]

I can't imagine anyone saying they wish they hadn't studied the classics, but I can certainly imagine saying they wish they had more time for taking classes that are more quirky, you know, following a rabbit trail of one's interests.

 

But wouldn't we all say that, too? Never enough hours in the day.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

My dad did, in a way. He thought it was pretty useless, but now that he's (much) older, he can appreciate how it shaped his mind.

Still, he would not study them if he had to do it over. He would do way more sciences. He was stuck in a classical education although he's got a scientific brain worthy of the best ones out there. The time spent on Greek and Latin was taken away from actual sciences.

 

Edit: Now that my dad is retired, he's the biggest history buff I know! He likes to read first hand account about the two World Wars. He's the only person I know who actually enjoys going through HUGE volumes of this stuff. And because of my teaching the kids, I'm the only person knowledgeable enough to buy him the books he so likes! Last year, I got him three books written by a family member, who happened to be head archeologist when Ninive (French spelling) was discovered. Wow! The things we learn about family! This year, I got him a seven volumes series about WWI, stuff that was written in 1916 to 1919, and compiled together in the early 20's. Seven huge volumes. He read them all in about a month. So now he has the interest, but as a youth this type of education was completely wasted on him. In fact he quit school because of it, enrolled in the Air Force under a false age declaration, and got away from it all.

[Carol in Cal.]

It's true that entering the Great Conversation requires knowlege of what went on before, but I think that I might have considered past thinking to be more normative if I had studied it deeply at an early age.

 

My thinking in studying chemical engineering was that then I would be well-rounded. I knew that I would always study and love books and history, but I didn't think that I would learn science on my own.

 

All in all, I am glad to have gotten my degree. I would have enjoyed my career more if I had studied history, but I probably wouldn't have been able to save enough to stay home with DD or even to consider homeschooling. So I would probably not have enjoyed motherhood very much.

 

(Not that you can't work and enjoy motherhood. Just that I, personally, liked being home and would have eaten my heart out if I could not have been.)

[abbeyej]

Dh and I both had "some" aspects of classical education -- studied Latin, Greek, some great books, and dh's degrees are in philosophy and comparative literature (mine are religion and humanities/theater) -- but neither of us had a truly "classical education". If we could go back and change things, we both would have had more and sooner, and that's what we're committed to giving our kids.

 

Part and parcel of a "classical education" is a really strong math foundation as well, so that's certainly very important to us, along with a chance to read and contemplate "the classics" in their original languages.

 

My goal is to give my kids as strong a "classical" education as I can *before* college (and that means the basics of the "grammar" of Latin and Greek before high school, so that they can actually read texts at that point). When they go off to college, I want them to have the freedom and the foundation to pursue any course of study they wish. If they want to continue studying classics (as a major, a minor, or simply as a supplement), that's great, but if they want to study engineering or film production or molecular biology or English, well, that's fine too. ;)

 

But I believe very strongly in the foundation that a traditional classical education provides.