A Phillips Academy Latin teacher from 1891 to 1932, Charles Forbes graduated in 1890 from Brown University. His longstanding, close ties with his Brown classmates are documented in records of annual meetings with them in this scrapbook. While he was at Phillips Academy, Forbes wrote for the Classical Journal and served as a temporary Headmaster of Phillips Academy in 1928-1929 while Alfred Stearns was absent. However, his most noteworthy accomplishment was his fight against the “modern school” movement, which was lead by Abraham Flexner, an eminent American educator. The modern school movement sought to focus American education in more practical fields such as vocational work and science and criticized Latin as a “useless” language. In response to this criticism, Forbes wrote the book The Sham Argument Against Latin, which showed why Flexner’s arguments were flawed.

His scrapbook mainly consists of various articles, letters and speeches he wrote while he was an instructor at Phillips Academy Andover. Because his primary interest and most prominent accomplishment were in defending Latin, most of the articles in the scrapbook are articles he wrote against the modern school movement. The scrapbook also includes various invitations to alumni gatherings, school dinners and other social events on the Andover campus.

by Brian Kim, Class of 2014

 

Scrapbook Box 4