people who hate Latin

[Glasperlenspieler]

 

But what about all of the other people that won't benefit from being forced to learn Latin and Greek at a young age (I'm assuming by "forced" you mean part of the core curriculum). I'm more familiar with STEM fields, so using Calculus as the "equivalent" example, I do think it's possible to teach more math in public schools (at the expense of other topics) so that one can master Calculus by early high school. Understanding even the first year of Calculus unlocks so much science! For example, when you learn calculus-based physics in college, you can basically throw out all of the physics you learned in high school and reduce a giant list of "fundamental equations" you had to memorize in high school physics and replace it with a few truly fundamental laws and principles plus the tools that Calculus opens up to you.

 

But is this a good idea? It certainly would have helped me become better at physics. Out of 200 or so graduates from my high school, I'm the only one to major in physics in college. Maybe a few more found physics at the high school level too boring and if they were exposed to Calculus, they might truly love physics and we might have even got one or two additional physics major. Plus, the physics majors would be well prepared for University level physics and everything would have clicked way faster (it took me about 3 years, right after learning multivariable and vector calculus, for there to be that "eureka" moment and a lot of connections between concepts I previously thought were unrelated to suddenly link up). 

 

On the other hand, this would have been completely useless to the other 99% of students that do not want to major in Physics. We can expand the usefulness of Calculus to more than just Physics of course, so it's probably more like 90% of graduates from my high school would have not needed to learn Calculus at all. Their time would have been much better spent learning something more directly relevant to their post-high school life (for most people in my school, this does not include college).

 

I think this kind of enrichment training/learning is valuable but it should stay out of public schools. The most common way I see young students receiving this enrichment is through private schools or tutoring. I have taught Calculus to many preteens who were either really interested or their parents were forcing them (I tried to avoid being hired to do this, but sometimes you don't know it's the case until several sessions in). The problem with this approach only is that it's not very equitable--not everyone can afford special enrichment programs for their children. So, another way this could happen is through cheaper (or free) summer camps or other after-school programs that get young students interested in these concepts and challenge them to push their horizons. I've volunteered / worked for several of these programs too, and I found it very fun! 

 

You bring up a number of important issues, and I'm conflicted in many ways about what the right response is. I think you're probably right that calculus or Latin is unnecessary for the majority of students. I also think that it ought to be available to those students for whom it would be beneficial, and ideally this would be done is some sort of equitable way, so that not only wealthy students have access to it. How do you do this? I don't know. I tend to be fairly sympathetic to a multi-track educational system such as Germany has. As someone else on this thread mentioned, many students are pushed toward a university education when that probably isn't the best option for them, so finding a way to provide an education that is suitable to variety of different individuals is paramount. But I also have concerns about this approach (how does one adequately determine the appropriate track for a given student? What about students who are late bloomers or poor testers? To what extent should the course of someone's life be determined by an evaluation of their aptitudes?) There's of course a further problem of implementing such a system and selling it to the American public. I'm not too hopeful about that...

 

 

That being said, I do think there are some important disanalogies between learning languages and calculus. For one, there is a marked advantage to learning languages at a younger age and I do not think there is a corresponding advantage when it come to calculus (although I very well could be wrong on this!). Also, it makes sense to learn languages in a certain order. If you eventually want to know both French and Latin, you are probably better off learning Latin first. And research indicates that the more languages one knows, the easier it is to learn a new one.  

 

 

but learning other languages is in itself specialized (i.e., non-typical for the average person). 

 

Perhaps that's a bad thing....

 

If I'd been educated in almost any country in western Europe, I would have been studying at least two foreign languages by primary school. Now part of that is a course a geographic necessity, but I also think their's a real (intrinsic?) value to this. Indeed, if education is successful shouldn't one of the results be that one's learning centered life becomes an integral part of one's everyday life? I tend to think that knowing languages and exposure to the classics (and music, and art, etc.) is central to being a well-rounded cultured individual. I guess in general I'm resistant to the idea that the primary goal of education is/ought to be to prepare students for their future careers. Then again, I'm kind of an old fuddy-duddy when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Edited June 30, 2015 by DerPhilosoph

[Eigen]

I don't disagree that becoming a well-rounded culturally literate person is important...

 

But we're talking about an education system in which a large portion of graduates are barely literate in their primary language, and lack basic math and science skills. 

 

In that education system, I'd argue that you're putting the cart before the horse. 

 

Your ideal situation is very much the liberal arts education ideal, but the idea behind a public education system was to impart a basic level of education to everyone. You're focusing on preparation for careers, rather than things people will need to be basally educated citizens, and make decisions about their life from that standpoint. People need to know how to calculate interest, how to balance a checkbook. What the difference between viruses and bacteria is, how to stay healthy. They need to know how to read, and how to write properly.

 

Once those basic things are met, then we try to enrich their understanding of other more nuanced parts of life, but when you focus on those nuances when the basics aren't met?

 

For those of you posting in this thread, how much work have you done recently with inner city/disadvantaged middle and high school students? I do a lot of secondary school outreach in my spare time, and work with taking undergrads from my (privileged private) university out to work with them. Most of them are unable to cope with the differences between the average in public education and what they received- it's night and day. 

 

As to the benefits of learning language early- the same benefits are there for learning calculus early. The most pronounced benefit to learning languages young is actually pronunciation- and you don't actually need to teach the language for that, just have the children exposed to hearing it.

[dr. t]

learning other languages is in itself specialized (i.e., non-typical for the average person). 

 

In the US, maybe, but this is generally untrue and become more untrue as time goes on. And I think this goes to your point with respect to inner city kids - are we really talking about general truths of educational theory, or the steps needed to patch the foundering ship that is US public education? 

Edited June 30, 2015 by telkanuru

[Eigen]

Since the entire premise of this thread was on whether Latin was an appropriate substitute for other more commonly spoken languages in public schools in the US...

 

I'd say we're talking about the foundering ship that is US Public education.

[dr. t]

Since the entire premise of this thread was on whether Latin was an appropriate substitute for other more commonly spoken languages in public schools in the US...

 

I'd say we're talking about the foundering ship that is US Public education.

 

I mean, if we're talking about the premise of this thread, we're talking about private US education, though.

[unræd]

I'm not suggesting that the we "focus on those nuances when the basics aren't met," i.e. suggesting that Latin should be taught instead of English reading comprehension, or even that it should be taught instead of Spanish! Going back to the "entire premise of this thread," the question was just whether or not Latin fulfills the aims of a foreign language requirement for someone who's already taken the language.

 

And while I understand the point of view (and the real, gut-level frustration that inspires it) that it's a waste of resources to teach people synchronized swimming when others are drowning, that assumes that schools and educators can only do one thing at a time, and poses its own problems of leaving sets of students' needs unmet. Since many students at my high school (an urban, inner-city public school) struggled with basic, fundamental academic skills and my family didn't have the money to send me to private schools or enrichment programs, does that mean the school shouldn't have offered advanced classes in elective subjects as options once basic requirements had been met, and I should have instead spent four years learning, among other things, just to balance a checkbook? I'm biased, obviously, but I think that'd have been a shame.

Edited June 30, 2015 by unræd

[Eigen]

I think the argument is more that high school is not the place for elective or advanced courses.

 

It's part of the "education creep" of the US system. We've consistently added years to required public education, rather than focusing on the basics and letting "university' take care of the rest of it as many EU countries do.

 

If we only had 10 years of public education (which was common even in the US not so very long ago) and had university (i.e., the first two years of general higher education that followed into a "college" education (ala France and the UK) this would not be so much of an argument. The base public education focuses on educating people who will go no further- it fulfills the basic skills needed to be an educated contributor to society. University allows people to broaden and enrich their education, if they wish to- they can also go to a vocational school instead.

 

As to your case, Unraed, you probably would have been one of those better off being "done" with highschool at 9th or 10th grade, and going to university early.

[TakeruK]

In the province of Quebec in Canada, there are 11 years of elementary+middle+high school, then 2 years of "CEGEP" (translates to "General and Vocational College") and when you enter CEGEP, you can choose whether or not you are in the "pre-University" path, in which CEGEP is college prep and you will do a 3 year bachelor degree after CEGEP (so the total time is also 16 years = 12 years public school + 4 years college) or you can take technical/vocational training to enter the workforce after CEGEP. (Or you can just graduate after 11 years and enter the workforce, CEGEP is not required).

 

I think the only Grade 12 courses I took that I think would have been useful to me if I didn't go to college was English 12. I think reading the literature and discussing those ideas do lead to a better educated public. However, my other Grade 12 courses: Math, Calculus, French, Chemistry, Physics would only be useful as college prep and nothing else. (The other courses I took in Grade 12 were not technically Grade 12 level courses, just general electives like Guitar, etc.). In my school, for students who are not college-bound, the only required course to graduate is English 12, and they could fill the other 7 course slots with whatever interests them, which I think is nice. I am not sure what is better though: For non-college bound students, perhaps moving English 12 material in the 11th year of school and finishing school in 11 years, or keeping that 12th year so that all students have free access to enrichment/vocational courses such as the shop classes, music, drama, home economics, auto mechanic, etc. 

[unræd]

So you're advocating a reduction of the required time spent in high school and a concomitant increase in available public funding for early college programs? That's actually something that, depending on the details, I'd support!

 

But I'm not sure what it has to do with the question at hand, which is about an existing curricular requirement in the current educational system as we have it, not as we'd like it to be. While answering "no" to that very narrow, specific question about a single requirement in the system as it stands now because you think the entire system should be radically restructured in a series of wholesale reforms that would, in the process, eliminate a whole slew of requirements is honest in terms of what that system would look like if you had your druthers, I'm not sure how productive an answer it is in the absence of those reforms.

Edited June 30, 2015 by unræd

[TakeruK]

So you're advocating a reduction of the required time spent in high school and a concomitant increase in available public funding for early college programs? That's actually something that, depending on the details, I'd support!

 

But I'm not sure what it has to do with the question at hand, which is about an existing curricular requirement in the current educational system as we have it, not as we'd like it to be. While answering "no" to that very narrow, specific question about a single requirement in the system as it stands now because you think the entire system should be radically restructured in a series of wholesale reforms that would, in the process, eliminate a whole slew of requirements is honest in terms of what that system would look like if you had your druthers, I'm not sure how productive an answer it is in the absence of those reforms.

 

I think the conversation here did evolve a little bit from the original question. We went from discussing that particular case (at a private school) to discussing attitudes towards courses like Latin and Calculus in general at public schools to now discussing what we think are good general goals for public education as a whole! I think it's fine for discussions to evolve though, I wrote my opinion on the specific case (yeah, I think it's good to offer enrichment courses as long as the core curriculum doesn't suffer) and had nothing further to say on that, so I moved on to the other issues being discussed here. 

[Eigen]

So you're advocating a reduction of the required time spent in high school and a concomitant increase in available public funding for early college programs? That's actually something that, depending on the details, I'd support!

 

But I'm not sure what it has to do with the question at hand, which is about an existing curricular requirement in the current educational system as we have it, not as we'd like it to be. While answering "no" to that very narrow, specific question about a single requirement in the system as it stands now because you think the entire system should be radically restructured in a series of wholesale reforms that would, in the process, eliminate a whole slew of requirements is honest in terms of what that system would look like if you had your druthers, I'm not sure how productive an answer it is in the absence of those reforms.

 

Absolutely evolved. As TakeruK points out, we went to public requirements (i.e., the ones I linked from states requiring languages to be from a specific subset for accreditation) and then to public schools. Always interesting how threads jump. 

 

Going back to the point at hand, I think the requirement (and course transfer) at a school depends on *why* the course is in the curriculum. If the course(s) are there to promote communication with non-native speakers of a language, Latin is only so useful. If it's there for a general knowledge of another language (or as the foundation for future language studies) then it's much more relevant. 

 

All of the discussions I've seen surrounding high-school language requirements come under the former argument, and as such, I can see the reluctance of a school to let Latin (although Greek is still spoken) pass as a foreign language.

 

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Latin should be required (at least a semester) for every entering college student as part of general requirements, but I don't think it's appropriate at the high school level, especially if it replaces (rather than being in addition to) a more commonly spoken language. 

[unræd]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Latin should be required (at least a semester) for every entering college student as part of general requirements, but I don't think it's appropriate at the high school level, especially if it replaces (rather than being in addition to) a more commonly spoken language. 

 

Oh no, I also very much think it's fine--and good, and useful--for discussions to evolve! This has become, I think, I really interesting conversation; I didn't mean to suggest that we needed to restrict ourselves to the OP's question.

 

But the two aren't unrelated. You'd said that advanced electives didn't belong in the high school curriculum, but that was in the context of your suggesting an alternate structure for it. A quick clarification, then, as we move from the ideal to the actual: given that we do unfortunately have four full required years of high school and not the targeted, shorter, "basic knowledge for a few years and then let people progress to college level work more quickly if it makes sense for them" system you proposed, and given that while you may think I would have benefited from a true early-entrance opportunity it wasn't available to me financially outside of the public schools, do you still think Latin (assuming it's not replacing a spoken language like Spanish) is categorically inappropriate at the high school level in the system we actually have now, and not in an ideal one?

 

I guess I'm still thinking about having to take Making a Budget IV my senior year instead of German, or IB chemistry, or art history, and shuddering. 

 

For what it's worth, the The National Council of State Supervisors for Languages's paper on the rationale for foreign language study mentions more reasons for foreign language study than just the promotion of communication with target language speakers--although that is certainly one of them.

Edited June 30, 2015 by unræd

[Eigen]

Technically, we don't have a full 4 years required of high school. I know I didn't do them. 

 

There are lots of early admission colleges, and you can always GED out.

 

I think looking at Latin as a true elective (i.e., not fulfilling a foreign language requirement) is interesting. 

 

I hesitate, personally, to say anything is categorically inappropriate- there are always tradeoffs. My main worry would be that I think the benefits are minor relative to the costs- i.e., the diversion of funds (and instructors) from another language to Latin. Even if those teachers/funds are just used to reduce class sizes. 

 

I think that most students who benefit from advanced work will benefit just as much if it's delayed a few years (from high school to college) especially given that the vast, vast majority of high school education (esp. public) is a vague shadow of the same coursework at a collegiate level. For example, AP Chemistry covers in a full year less (and in less depth) than a semester of college chemistry. 

 

I can't speak to your situation (as I don't know it), but most public universities will accept people early admissions with eligibility for fellowships. My state, in fact, encourages it. You can start replacing your high school courses with either CC or local university courses assuming your scores would be enough to gain you entrance to the college. I can't speak for all states, but most that I'm aware of offer similar programs starting as early as the 10th grade. 

 

So while I wouldn't say it's categorically inappropriate, I would say that high schools, by and large, are not equipped to offer the level of advanced instruction that the students who need advanced instruction deserve, and trying to offer a weak facsimile takes away from resources needed by the average student. The vast majority of high school teachers are simply not appropriately prepared (and many lack the background entirely) to teach the advanced material you're suggesting. In STEM at least, I'd say most math teachers do enough of a disservice in public schools through misteaching basic algebra, and to carry that on to calculus is a really bad thing. 

 

I'll be the first to admit I'm an anomaly- I actually skipped the entirety of a normal middle school or high school for home-based unschooling, and taught myself languages & science/math via library books. I also ended up starting college a couple of years early. Most of my formative experiences with the public school system from from substitute teaching and working in the local schools for science enrichment & science teacher training. 

 

Thanks for linking the paper on the rationale for foreign language study- definitely more interesting than my simplistic utilitarian approach. 

[knp]

As someone who had a couple years of Latin at one of the public schools that was equipped to offer it well, I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this. I chose Latin because it seemed more challenging than French, but just two or three years later, Latin was replaced with Japanese. I had a fairly circuitous route to getting to the culture I now study, and I still wonder a bit whether I might have liked doing East Asian languages instead.

 

Even though I'm not Latin's biggest fan, I oppose prohibiting Latin from serving as a language requirement. Some public high schools can offer it well, and I don't think we should say that Latin cannot count as a language requirement. Do I think it's the best use of resources? Not really. Do I think that, because it isn't spoken, we should prohibit it from counting? Also no. Although I think that Latin should never be the only language offered, I think it can have a good role to play in the language mix offered at a high school. It would have been awesome if my high school had offered Cantonese (!), but that may not always be possible. If the choice my high school faced was between offering both decent Latin and decent French on the one hand, or on the other hand offering extra sections of French, I think having Latin was the right choice. Latin was way better for me than French would have been, so I'm glad it was an option.

 

Latin really does help with learning other languages, too, even languages that you probably would not find in many high schools. This is a big point in its favor: you can't offer every difficult and useful language in every high school, e.g. all the different varieties of spoken Arabic, but if a student wants to learn one of those in advanced, university coursework, Latin will give them a nice boost. For my work, I've had to learn a language outside of the Indo-European family, and Latin has been a huge help. With my Latin background, I am much more familiar with the different ways for words to take on meaning -- and specifically, very comfortable with semantic principles besides pure word order -- so, at least so far, Latin has helped me find this other language more intuitive than most of my classmates do.

 

That said, the fact that Latin isn't (and probably shouldn't be) taught as a spoken language in high school is a huge disadvantage. For my work, I have, in fact, ended up having to know French. I don't have to know Latin. My French is now okay, and I can read Spanish and Italian, too. But I pretty much can't speak any languages besides English. If I had started out taking high school French, I wouldn't have chosen this career that requires it. But I do wonder if not starting to learn a new spoken language until I was in my twenties permanently crippled my ability to master the ability to speak foreign languages. I've only been taking and practicing French for three years now (and a bit on and off), so I hope this worry will end up being moot. That said, reading and writing come much more naturally to me than speaking does, and I have to put at least part of that on Latin.

[Between Fields]

I'll preface this by saying that I'm a former president of the national collegiate honor society for the study of Greek and Latin, and the classical languages are pretty essential to some of my current research.

 

According to the Princeton Review, Classics majors score markedly better on the GRE and do better in medical school, law school, and graduate school admissions. (http://www.princetonreview.com/college-majors/64/classics) The benefit of Latin is not to emerge from high school or college with a speaking proficiency in the language (sed possim dicere scribereque latine, si necesse sit...), but to develop the critical thinking skills that engaging with a highly-inflected, richly literate language produces. Even in a best case scenario, two years (or even four) of high school French or Spanish is not going to develop much more than conversational fluency, and it's rare that students ever get to practice these language in situ. I took two years of French in high school, and one in college, and though I can read pretty well, basic conversations are a challenge.

 

Modern language pedagogies that emphasize speaking also emphasize memorization, not only of vocabulary but of sentence structures and formulaic expressions. (I know this isn't universally true, but it's an approach that is common in high schools.) The fluidity of Latin and Greek word order and sentence structure make this sort of instruction less possible, and so students have to learn the actual grammar and practice using it to dissect texts. I know my English grammar backwards and forwards, and was able to pick up Italian pretty quickly. I never read a single non-adapted work in French, but by year two of Latin, they had us reading Caesar and Cicero in the original Latin. 

 

Can I put Latin on my resumé and expect to get a job speaking that language with anyone? No. But I've used it countless times in my English (the discipline) studies to enhance my understanding of a text or improve my relationship with a professor by demonstrating my commitment to rigor. But I also have French from high school that I could put on my resumé and still not be able to get a job that would require that language. 

 

Really, none of the high school language options can actually promise proficiency in that language--the purpose is more about cultural enrichment, and beginning to look into a language. In all practicality, students don't need chemistry, physics, or anything more than an integrated earth sciences course in high school, either. Thankfully, high school isn't strictly vocational, and we're still hanging on to some vestiges of the liberal arts there.

[TakeruK]

In reading some of this over, I realised something: I do think if the requirement is a "foreign language requirement" (i.e. the purpose of having this requirement is to expose the student to another language) then I absolutely agree that Latin should count for these credits. However, if the requirement is a "modern language requirement" (actually the way it's worded in some places) where the purpose is to provide the student with some basic functional ability in the language, then I do agree with the school's decision to not allow Latin to count. Latin should still count as elective credits towards a high school diploma though. 

 

Also, I would disagree that high school language courses is not enough. Maybe this depends on each program, but when I was in high school, taking a foreign language from Grade 9 through 12 (as I said above, anglophone Canadians must take French up to Grade 8) is usually enough for a student to speak, read, and write the language at a functional level. For example, enough to read a newspaper, write a letter, have a non-technical conversation. In order to be fluent, further practice would be needed, but students who do well in the Grade 9-12 classes would be proficient enough to get around if they were traveling to a country that speaks that language and enough to add "Basic X" to their resumes. If you want a comparison, based on looking at typical college syllabus, French 9 through 12 in Canada is equivalent to the French language instruction you might find through the first 2 years at the college level (in both Canada and the US).

[quirkycase]

This conversation has taken an interesting turn.

 

I think the "foreign" vs "modern" language requirement is an important distinction as well. Early on in the discussion, I was thinking strictly in terms of a foreign language requirement. I didn't realize that some schools worded it as a "modern language requirement." (I was homeschooled so my knowledge of high school practices is limited.)  In that case, I can see the argument for not allowing Latin to fulfill that requirement. 

 

Perhaps language teaching in Canada is much more effective, but in the US, I don't know of anyone who could actually speak the language they had been taught in high school.  Also, at least in my area, I know that many schools only require(d) one year of a foreign language.  Naturally, this is not nearly enough time for most people to be able to use a language functionally.  Whether you take Latin or a modern language at that point seems moot.

[rising_star]

I took 3 days of Latin followed by 4 years of Spanish in high school. When I showed up at college, I basically could not speak Spanish, especially not without practicing the sentence in my head a few times (or, preferably, writing it out and then reading it). I took 3 semesters of college Spanish and still wasn't very comfortable or confident speaking Spanish. Then, I studied abroad in a Spanish-speaking country and got over being tongue-tied out of necessity, which works really well.

 

I'm not opposed to the teaching of Latin in high school. In fact, Latin was the language that pretty much all of the "top" students at my high school (the ones taking AP classes, doing dual enrollment at the local college, in the National Honor Society) took. They competed at Certamen (is that the name?) and other Latin competitions on the weekends (such participation was mandatory) and they all seemed to have a lot of fun. I'd wanted to learn a language you could actually speak, which is why I took Spanish instead of Latin.** Are there aspects to learning Latin I wish I'd had? Absolutely. The knowledge of grammar and word origins would've been phenomenally helpful. But, I ended up learning a lot about grammar by subsequently studying Spanish and an African language in college. The African language operates totally differently grammatically than English or Spanish, which really expanded my knowledge of linguistic possibilities. 

 

I also think language learning should go on throughout someone's life. I audited a couple of foreign language courses in grad school (same languages I'd studied in college) and absolutely loved it. I'm planning to start teaching myself another language in the upcoming year, possibly seeking out conversational partners on campus who know the language. If learning Latin or any other language early on can motivate people to study languages throughout their life, I am all for that. But it can be hard to do in public schools where money is lacking for good instruction in the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

 

**I had taken a year of a spoken language in (private) elementary school because it was required and I loved it. But then I went to public school where language classes weren't offered until high school. I taught myself numbers and phrases in several languages using books and cassette tapes from the public library when I was in elementary school but ultimately gave up on the effort because I didn't have anyone to speak to or practice with (I was trying to teach myself German and Italian for reasons I can't remember at all). So I might've been biased about wanting to be able to speak another language.

[eeee1923]

I personally feel that the educational system (especially the public) should start to integrate language learning as early as the first grade. If the goal of language requirements is to have a better command of another language as well as develop some critical thinking skills, then waiting until high school makes achieving that goal difficult for many students. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of high school students that can "learn" a language, but the majority go through the motions to complete their credit requirements. 

 

I attended public school for the most part since I moved to the US (I grew up in Israel so I knew Hebrew and a bit of English) right before high school and was one of those kids who found learning a new language a fun and interesting challenge. So I taught myself Japanese and French and even though I don't really use the languages in my everyday life, the process was quite helpful in teaching me how to use various resources out there to learn a new skill. 

[heliogabalus]

I'm a middle school/high school Latin teacher, and this is an interesting discussion. The ideal situation--which has occurred at a couple schools I've worked at--is that around 2 years of Latin and a modern language are both required. In those situations, it was surprising to me how many students wanted to continue with both, being reluctant to give up either of the languages.

 

Latin is a language and as such should definitely count towards a language requirement. As a dead language, though, the approach to it is different and offers as many advantages as it does disadvantages. When you learn Latin or Classical Greek or, I'm guessing, Sanskrit, Classical Arabic, etc. you learn as much about how language works as you do the specific language you are studying. (Only an anecdote, but: I remember taking an Intro to Linguistics class as an undergrad right after doing Greek I with Drew Keller, and feeling like the Linguistics class was a watered-down Greek class without getting to learn an actual language.)This comes in handy, and I'd say the top Latin kids in a high school tend to understand English better than the top Spanish or French students.

 

As a result, I think Latin students are in a good position to learn other tricky languages--it certainly helped me learn Slavic languages, which have a remarkably similar approach to grammar as Latin (no surprise since they tend to be conservative IE langs).

 

It's to strange argue their practicality, because I don't like to advertise Latin in that way, although there is truth in it. Mainly, by learning Latin or Ancient Greek, after a few years a kid can read some of the greatest writers the Western world has ever produced--Vergil, Homer, Cicero, Plato, et al. That rarely seems to happen with other languages (German with Kafka maybe?). My impression is that to read Cervantes, you need a lot more than two or three years of Spanish because so much time is spent on speaking (as it should). If someone believes that the reason to learn a foreign language is only to communicate with the people down the street who don't speak English, then learning to read canonical lit may not seem worthwhile. But to those who believe in the value of a humanistic education (and it's ok if you don't), then being able to read Caesar can be as important as being able to ask directions in Paris.

Edited July 1, 2015 by heliogabalus

[rising_star]

It's to strange argue their practicality, because I don't like to advertise Latin in that way, although there is truth in it. Mainly, by learning Latin or Ancient Greek, after a few years a kid can read some of the greatest writers the Western world has ever produced--Vergil, Homer, Cicero, Plato, et al. That rarely seems to happen with other languages (German with Kafka maybe?). My impression is that to read Cervantes, you need a lot more than two or three years of Spanish because so much time is spent on speaking (as it should). If someone believes that the reason to learn a foreign language is only to communicate with the people down the street who don't speak English, then learning to read canonical lit may not seem worthwhile. But to those who believe in the value of a humanistic education (and it's ok if you don't), then being able to read Caesar can be as important as being able to ask directions in Paris.

 

As someone who has studied Cervantes in the original, I'd say that the reason it's difficult to read isn't because Spanish classes emphasize speaking (mine never put speaking above reading and writing) but because reading Golden Age Spanish prose is like reading Old English. It's a somewhat different language than modern Spanish with different spelling, some changes in word usage, and other little changes that make it harder to comprehend if all you've ever studied is modern Spanish. That said, I loved getting to read Cervantes and Lazarillo de Tormes (perhaps the first European novel!) in the original in college. 

[heliogabalus]

Would Cervantes be more like reading Middle English or early Modern English? Because I would think Latin is closer in many ways to Modern Spanish than Beowulf is to Cormac McCarthy.

 

With Latin, though, you aren't really learning the way people spoke in their contemporary context--there already seems to be some archaic aspects to the literature (influenced by classical Greek models)--it is like learning Spanish only in order to read the classics of Spanish literature: especially Golden Age stuff. A Russian class whose goal is only to read Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Pushkin would probably look very different than a class where you expect to interact with Russians.

[TakeruK]

It's to strange argue their practicality, because I don't like to advertise Latin in that way, although there is truth in it. Mainly, by learning Latin or Ancient Greek, after a few years a kid can read some of the greatest writers the Western world has ever produced--Vergil, Homer, Cicero, Plato, et al. That rarely seems to happen with other languages (German with Kafka maybe?). My impression is that to read Cervantes, you need a lot more than two or three years of Spanish because so much time is spent on speaking (as it should). If someone believes that the reason to learn a foreign language is only to communicate with the people down the street who don't speak English, then learning to read canonical lit may not seem worthwhile. But to those who believe in the value of a humanistic education (and it's ok if you don't), then being able to read Caesar can be as important as being able to ask directions in Paris.

 

I agree with you that ideally, being able to read some of these literary works (confession: I don't recognize most of the works mentioned here) should be as valued as being able to ask directions in Paris. But then, in my opinion, there are a lot of other things with the same value: learning to play hockey, learning how to cook, sewing, how to run a business, touch typing, etc. Unless you have unlimited teachers and unlimited space, the school will have to pick and choose what to teach. At my school, based on the expertise available, we had classes like Cantonese, Business, Yearbook, Photography, Calculus, Psychology, Peer Mentoring, etc. as elective courses that would count towards graduation. However, we did not have Latin because we had no teacher who could teach it. I wanted to take a Creative Writing course but it was cancelled due to lack of interest.

 

I think schools have to make tough decisions and if they finally have money to hire another teacher, and there are still many gaps to fill, Latin is probably going to be a lower priority. Unless of course, there is a foreign language requirement and Latin would fulfill that, then I think the school should prioritize Latin over some other general elective, such as Psychology or Calculus.

 

But if there is a "modern language" requirement rather than just a "foreign language", then I think adding a course like Latin should be a lower priority than adding a course that fulfills a diploma requirement.

[unræd]

Yeah, I often get uncomfortable--as is clear from my posts here--with the language of "utility" in relation to education, but while I'd passionately make the case that everyone's life would be better with Virgil (or the poet of your choice), that's an argument that few people who don't already buy into the idea of the humanistic project think has merit, unfortunately.

 

Just to put on my pedantic hat since I'm an Anglo-Saxonist, and the number of times I tell people I study Old English and they say "you mean like Chaucer?" (or even worse, Shakespeare) makes me want to hit things: Old English is actually really, really different from modern English, and is further from Chaucer's language (Middle English) than ours is from his--and certainly much further from Modern English than Cervantes' Spanish is from Modern Spanish. (I agree with Heliogabalus that Early Modern English is a better comparison.) Just for shits and giggles, here's an example of pretty bog standard late Old English prose (Wulfstan, writing around the turn of the millennium):

 

"And riht is, þæt ænige wæpnmen on mynecena beodderne ne etan ne ne drincan ne læwede men on muneca, buton hit mid urum hlaforde sy oððon ells hwylc, þe maran godes ege habbe, þæt hit for his næweste þe betere beo for gode and for worulde, and hyra regol huru ne sy a þe awyrdra."

 

To be sure, there's a lot of similarity there to the modern language in both vocabulary and syntax, but I think an English speaker today would have a much harder time with that than a modern Spanish speaker would have with Cervantes. It's another detour, but I'm also really interested in the Latin to Modern Spanish and Old English to Modern English comparisons. My gut would be to say that our language is closer to Old English than Spanish is to Latin, but I suppose it depends a lot on what criteria we use for closeness!

Edited July 1, 2015 by unræd

[heliogabalus]

Shoot--this is old, but I'll just say that being a native English speaker who knows Latin I have an easier time understanding the gist of a page in Spanish than I do figuring out anything in Old English.