The Case of Wagner Complete Works, Volume 8 · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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It is to be hoped that there are a few people who look upon it as a problem why philologists should be the teachers of our noblest youths. Perhaps the case will not be always so.--It would be much more natural _per se_ if our children were instructed in the elements of geography, natural science, political economy, and sociology, if they were gradually led to a consideration of life itself, and if finally, but much later, the most noteworthy events of the past were brought to their knowledge. A knowledge of antiquity should be among the last subjects which a student would take up; and would not this position of antiquity in the curriculum of a school be more honourable for it than the present one?--Antiquity is now used merely as a propædeutic for thinking, speaking, and writing; but there was a time when it was the essence of earthly knowledge, and people at that time wished to acquire by means of practical learning what they now seek to acquire merely by means of a detailed plan of study--a plan which, corresponding to the more advanced knowledge of the age, has entirely changed. Thus the inner purpose of philological teaching has been entirely altered; it was at one time material teaching, a teaching that taught how to live; but now it is merely formal.[3]
If it were the task of the philologist to impart formal education, it would be necessary for him to teach walking, dancing, speaking, singing, acting, or arguing: and the so-called formal teachers did impart their instruction this way in the second and third centuries. But only the training of a scientific man is taken into account, which results in "formal" thinking and writing, and hardly any speaking at all. If the gymnasium is to train young men for science, people now say there can be no more preliminary preparation for any particular science, so comprehensive have all the sciences become. As a consequence teachers have to train their students generally, that is to say for all the sciences--for scientificality in other words; and for that classical studies are necessary! What a wonderful jump! a most despairing justification! Whatever is, is right,[4] even when it is clearly seen that the "right" on which it has been based has turned to wrong. It is accomplishments which are expected from us after a study of the ancients: formerly, for example, the ability to write and speak. But what is expected now! Thinking and deduction: but these things are not learnt _from_ the ancients, but at best _through_ the ancients, by means of science. Moreover, all historical deduction is very limited and unsafe; natural science should be preferred. It is the same with the simplicity of antiquity as it is with the simplicity of style: it is the highest thing which we recognise and must imitate; but it is also the last Let it be remembered that the classic prose of the Greeks is also a late result What a mockery of the study of the "humanities" lies in the fact that they were also called "belles lettres" (bellas litteras)!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.