Graduate Education in Classics: A Continuing Conversation....

Report of the Task Force on the Relationship between Graduate Education and the Undergraduate Curriculum

A Makeshift List of Generally Endorsed Suggestions

1. Addressing teacher training/apprenticeship in the grad curriculum

--Course on theories, methods of teaching myth, civ., and language

--teaching assistant training program (frequent visitation, video work, practicum)

--students not teaching for a stipend might be required to assist or observe regular faculty teaching, esp. large, introductory courses.

--labor intensive "mentoring" program

2. Addressing classics' grad student weaknesses in respect to general conversance with issues current in the humanities

--encourage coursework outside of classics to broaden intellectual experience

--grad surveys in literary theory and related issues

--integrated seminars involving classics with other disciplines, perhaps even integrated exams

--greater and systematic integration with other disciplines within the structure of the grad program

3. Addressing less than adequate undergraduate, esp. language, preparation for graduate school

--regularly offered remedial reading courses

--early, regular testing of language proficiencies

--link prose comp with standard survey courses

--serious attention to be given to developing new pedagogical models and methods for language instruction; late starters and those with long- standing deficiencies must have the means for quick, efficient language acquisition.

--in the interim, greater use of summer and post-bacc. programs

4. Addressing the evolving shape of the discipline

--serious attention to be given to considering market realities and the place of classics in a "general humanities" setting

--open possibilities to extending the teaching of classics to include the larger tradition it is part of

--consider the curricular contributions to be made by classicists in institutions without regular, language-based classics programs.

--parallel Classical Humanities track in grad schools designed to meet these needs, if organized with care and not negligent of lang. training. [some in the group expressed strong reservations about this idea, but it clearly merits further discussion]