Quote:
Originally Posted by LXA SE285
The founders of most general GLOs, who were basically kids themselves, seemed so much more educated relative to college students of today. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, if you were a college student or even a high school student, you were going to get classics and mythology in your curriculum. (As recently as the '50s at my mom's boarding school back, you could take Greek if you did well enough in Latin. My mom, unfortunately, did not like to study and got a 4 in Latin one grading period. A 4.)
Back in the day, putting together a ritual must've been not only fun but relatively effortless because you had this basic shared well of info from which to draw and adapt.
Without trying to be nosy or imply any superiority of old vs. new, I wonder what cultural allusions have inspired the founders of GLOs from the past decade or two.
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I've often thought about this on a grander scale, of how different rituals reflect the times they were created. Even those from the 18th and 19th centuries would vary, I'd think, to reflect the "current" issues (not to mention founder & campus personalities). I've seen some from the early-mid 1800s and others from the mid-late 1800s, and to me they have a slightly different in focus. Most come back to Greek ideals (duh, it's a GLO) and appreciation for learning (also duh, they're in college) in some way- but the approach changes. Admitedly a low sample size and male vs. female, but it's absolutely fascinating.
I did have a class on mythology in high school, called "Humanities" (nice broad term don't you think?). Only 30 of 2500 students took it a year, so I'm pretty sure I was in the minority with that one. We also had a Latin program but it was being phased out to some extent. My college had a strong but small classics program, several of my sisters were involved there and "helped" us on pronunciation and the like
