‘They Can’t Read’: Victor Davis Hanson Shares Horror Stories That Drove Him Out Of University

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson recounted the challenges he faced teaching at California State University, Fresno during a Thursday episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

Hanson was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 1991 while at the university. He asserted on his show that he left because his students were incapable of reading the classics he assigned them in an introductory humanities course.

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“I taught for 21 years at a California State University campus. And when I started, Jack, in 1984, I taught a course called Introduction to the Humanities. I had nine readings,” Hanson told co-host Jack Fowler. “And it started out with Homer’s Iliad, Homer’s Odyssey … Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Euripides’ Bacchae, Aeschylus’ Orestia, selections from Thucydides and Herodotus. This was the ancient part of the first semester. And I ended with Plato’s Apology and Crito. I might have had Aristotle.”

“When I finished 21 years later, that same course had two readings: Homer and Sophocles. In other words, I could no longer ask students to read that material. And I started with 30 students in the class,” he added. “And at the end, in 2004, I had 58. And I would say all of them could not read those things. So I was curious about this. I always tried to be empirical rather than just get angry. I would call one of them in. He said, ‘Dr. Hansen, I can’t do your class. I got to drop. Can you please get me out without an F? I can’t keep up with the reading.’”