Obligation and Opportunity

Extract

We are all aware, painfully aware I am sure, of the defensive position which the humanities have been forced to assume during the past fifty years. Enrollments in those subjects which have traditionally borne much of the burden of a liberal education have decreased to a point that now the classical studies are represented by no more than a dwindling rear guard, and the modern foreign languages are withering from the blasts of ill-advised and ill-informed attacks in the name of practicality.