Education: Gracchus, Cicero & Roosevelt

New York high-school students taking their regents examinations in Latin last week ploughed unhappily through the usual translations, conjugations and declensions, blinked when they came to something entirely new. To modernize classical study the State Department of Education had this year inserted a section of such posers as the following:

1) Name a reform of Gaius Gracchus similar to one that is now being advocated by President Roosevelt.

2) Contrast Cicero's attitude toward the bankers (for example, in the Manilian Law) to that of President Roosevelt toward certain bankers today.

3) Give one of the possible titles that the Governor of the Philippine Islands might have had in ancient Rome.