Cord Byrd: “I was pleased to read an article in the September 15 edition of the Washington Times, titled, ``Classics Back in Fashion…”

“I was pleased to read an article in the September 15 edition of the Washington Times, titled, ``Classics Back in Fashion at Some Schools.'' Speaking precisely to the point that I have made countless times during my years in the Senate, this article reiterates the need to get back to the basics in education. I would like to get back to the little two-room schoolhouse in which I started along about 1923. I laud those schools that have taken this valuable step back and are getting back to the basics in order to reintroduce classical education into their classrooms. Who better to teach our students today than the true historians, the poets, and the playwrights of yesteryear. I long for the old McGuffey readers--I still have a set of those old McGuffey readers in my personal library--where the students read poems and wholesome stories that taught them good morals, how to act, how to grow up and be good citizens. The historians, the poets, and the playwrights of yesteryear, such as Euripides, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Sophocles, who were the four great master poets of tragedy throughout the years and were outstanding as writers of tragic plays, their works were among the classics that have built history, influenced the framers of our Constitution, and can serve to enhance our ability to better understand the present and to set goals for the future.”