On “AHA26”

To the Editor,

I’m writing in response to “Who Has Control?,” a section of the feature article about the 2026 annual meeting in the March issue. I did not attend, so I can’t speak to the accuracy of the summary of the session, What Historians Should Know about Classical Education. But I was struck by the overwhelmingly negative tone, which strongly implied that the rise of “classical education” is a bad thing against which historians should be on their guard.

This seems misguided to me on several counts. First, it assumes within the AHA an ideological consensus on right or wrong models of education that, at the least, should be interrogated and would likely not be endorsed by all members. Second, in an issue of Perspectives on History that also contained several discussions of career paths for history graduates, it seems odd to disparage a career path (teaching in K–12 classical schools) that might be attractive to current history majors and recent graduates. Third, and most important, in an age in which even students at elite universities are reading less and less and when humanities classes are attracting fewer and fewer students, it seems counterproductive to criticize programs that encourage students to read “Great Books.” If anything, we need more students reading classic texts and engaging with deep questions about the human condition.

Historians have a great deal to offer classical education initiatives. We should engage with it and do what we can to shape it, not condemn it outright on ideological grounds.