Daniel Streett, whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time last year at SBL, has recently written a series of blog posts on the state of Greek studies in the academy.  It is not pretty.

To wet your appetite I will only mention a test he did with about 30 Greek profs and graduate students assembled to hear a paper he gave in 2008 on teaching Greek communicatively: he asked them for the Greek words (English to Greek) of 10 basic objects or items any 6 year old Greek child in the classical world would have known.  Words like “ball,” “yes,” “red,” etc.  I can almost guaranty that whatever you guess the average grade was, you have guessed too high!  Don’t believe me?  Check it out here.

The other posts can be found here:  Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5 (and keep on checking back, because he is not done.)

Related posts:

  1. 2012 Koine Greek Fluency Workshop
  2. לַעֲשׂוֹת as “to do” and “to make”
  3. A review of “Living Koine Greek Introduction Part One”
  4. Intensive Koine Greek, spoken immersion summer session