How did reduced teaching of Greek and Latin in schools challenge classical scholarship in the late 20th century?

In the late 20th century, the decline of Greek and Latin instruction in schools presented a significant challenge to classical scholarship. While the early 20th century saw many schools provide a strong foundation in these ancient languages, this practice diminished significantly by the century's end.12

This shift negatively impacted the field in several ways:

• Loss of Optimal Learning Time: The decline in school-level instruction meant that students missed the years when memory is most effective for acquiring new languages, forcing scholars to spend time on foundational language learning later in their academic development.1
• Institutional and Cultural Pressures: The field faced mounting threats from broader social changes, including a rise in materialism and utilitarianism that increasingly devalued the study of classical languages in both Europe and the United States.1
• Sustainability of Progress: Scholars recognized that without a reversal of these trends, the continued progress of classical studies would require heroic efforts to overcome the lack of early linguistic training and the prevailing societal indifference toward the humanities.1

Ultimately, this educational decline hindered the discipline by limiting the pool of students entering higher education with the necessary linguistic preparation to engage deeply with ancient texts.1