Editing Victor Davis Hanson (section)

===United States education and classical studies===
Hanson co-authored the book ''[[Who Killed Homer?|Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom]]'' with John Heath in 1998. The book explores the issue of how classical education has declined in the US and what might be done to restore it to its former prominence. That is important, according to Hanson and Heath, because knowledge of classical Greece and Rome is necessary for a full understanding of Western culture. To begin a discussion along those lines, the authors state, "The answer to why the world is becoming Westernized goes all the way back to the wisdom of the Greeks—reason enough why we must not abandon the study of our heritage."<ref>Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, ''Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom'' (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), p. 28.</ref>

The political scientist [[Francis Fukuyama]] reviewed ''Who Killed Homer?'' favorably in ''[[Foreign Affairs]]'' and wrote that, "The great thinkers of the Western tradition—from [[Hobbes]], Burke, and [[Hegel]] to Weber and [[Nietzsche]] (who was trained as a classical [[philologist]])—were so thoroughly steeped in Greek thought that they scarcely needed to refer back to original texts for quotations. This tradition has come under fire from two camps, one postmodernist that seeks to deconstruct the classics on the grounds of gender, race, and class, and the other pragmatic and career-minded that asks what value the classics have in a computer-driven society. The authors' defense of a traditionalist approach to the classics is worthy."<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom|url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1998-07-01/who-killed-homer-demise-classical-education-and-recovery-greek|magazine=Foreign Affairs}}</ref>

The classicists [[Victoria Cech]] and [[Joy Connolly]] found ''Who Killed Homer?'' to have considerable pitfalls. Reviews of the book have noted several problems with the authors' perception of classical culture. According to Cech, "One example is the relation of the individual to the state and the 'freedom' of belief or of inquiry in each. Socrates and Jesus were put to death by their respective states for articulating inconvenient doctrines. In Sparta, where the population of citizens (male) were carefully socialized in a military system, no one seems to have differed from the majority enough to merit the death penalty. But these differences are not sorted out by the authors, for ''their mission is to build an ideal structure of classical attitudes by which to reveal our comparative flaws'', and their point is more what is wrong with us than what was right with Athens. I contend that Hanson and Heath are actually comparing modern academia not to the ancient seminal cultures but to the myth that arose about them over the last couple of millennia."<ref>{{cite web|title=Who Killed Homer?|url=http://mtprof.msun.edu/Win1999/Cech.html|publisher=The Montana Professor}}</ref> According to Connolly, Professor of Classics at [[New York University]] as of 2016,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://classics.as.nyu.edu/object/JoyConnolly.html|title=NYU Classics: Joy Connolly|access-date=September 4, 2016}}</ref> "Throughout history, the authors say, women have never enjoyed equal rights and responsibilities. At least in Greece, 'the veiled, mutilated, and secluded were not the norm' (p. 57). Why waste time, then, as feminist scholarship does, 'merely demarcating the exact nature of the sexism of the Greeks and the West' (p. 102)? From their point of view, in fact, the real legacy of feminism is the destruction of the values of family and community."<ref>{{cite journal| author = Connolly, Joy | date = 1998-05-13 | title=Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom | format = book review | journal=[[Bryn Mawr Classical Review]] | url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1998/98.5.13.html| access-date = 2025-02-12 }}</ref>