Current Trends in Ancient History in American Schools

"Classics has been a discipline in crisis for most of the past half century as indicated by the sharp declines in classical language enrollments at the high school and college levels since the 1960s. The impact of the crisis has been uneven, being borne primarily by the language and literature segment of the discipline. Ancient history, in contrast, has suffered relatively little thanks to its location predominantly in history departments and the recent expansion of its place in K–12 public education as a result of the adoption of new standards based social studies curricula in various states. These developments offer significant opportunities for classics, but taking advantage of them, however, will require changes in the amount and kind of ancient history taught to future Latin teachers and history teachers since the demand at both the K–12 and post-secondary levels increasingly is for ancient world history."