Responding To “Why are we learning latin!?”
Preface
I am going to obliquely answer this question, so please sit tight until the end. If you have already watched our YouTube video on this subject, this article is going to go into a little bit more depth. I can’t seem to escape touching upon similar themes in all the articles I sit down to write, and I think that is because most of the issues for which I am attempting to provide a solution all issue from a singular origin. So, I apologize for any repeat information. I am doing my best to keep it fresh. This article is specifically about how to respond when a student, bothered with the task of learning Latin, asks you why they have to study it. I have another article coming out soon that will give real concrete reasons to keep the study of Latin alive. But that is for another day. . .
The Essay
If you have been a teacher of classical languages for any amount of time, you have undoubtedly heard this question thrown at you by an indignant young pupil, who, perhaps rightfully so, is wondering why so much time is spent learning an archaic language; why they must sit through declension after declension, sentence after sentence. Where is all of this effort leading? The question can be baffling and anxiety-provoking to a new teacher, since, as they likely acknowledge in such a moment, no answer, no matter how eloquently stated, no matter how correct, is going to free this student of the conviction that Latin is useless.
When this question was first proposed to me, I likely laid out all of the typical responses we promulgate in the handbook that parents receive when they sign their children up for a school that teaches Latin: “Latin was the primary means of communication between scholars in the West until the 20th century”; “Many of the most important works of Western science, literature, philosophy, and theology, were composed in Latin”; “After studying Latin, your ACT grammar score will dramatically improve”; “All Romance languages come from Latin”; etc. After having been asked the question on more than one occasion, I began to give it more thought and was struck by the realization that the alleged “uselessness” of Latin by its young students seems to be a unique critique, or at least, uniquely bitter against the study of Latin, when almost none of the subjects they study anywhere, but particularly at a “classical” school, are considered useful. In fact, I would argue that of all of the “classical” disciplines (I am putting “classical” in quotations because I am not sure exactly what is meant by “classical” these days), Latin is the most useful of all of them, if by useful we mean that its study is the most conductive towards achieving proficiency in some mundane task. It undoubtedly provides a strong foundation for learning any of the Romance languages; the correlation between its study and higher standardized test scores is stronger than anyone could doubt its utility there; the appearance of “Latin” or “Greek” looks great on a resume or a university application; English vocabulary and grammar is unequivocally improved. I could go on. And what utility is there in the study of geometry? music? even science or biology saving the benefits for those who would pursue that field as a career in the future?
So why does Latin attract so much student vitriol, especially in that admittedly tricky middle-school stage? In one sense, it is an issue of perception. Geometry, trigonometry, chemistry, and algebra, calculus all have a veneer of application that can trick students into giving it a “usefulness” pass. The fact is that students are going to look for a reason to complain about something that they don’t enjoy or that they feel is unfair.
Responding to “Why are we learning Latin” should not be approached by addressing its usefulness or otherwise. Students would quietly study anything if they thought it was fun or interesting, regardless of its utilitarian value. When I was in middle school, I took a compulsory shop/welding class, a class that everyone enjoyed and the utility of which nobody ever questioned. Perhaps some of my peers went on to become welders and woodworkers, and there is some utility in knowing how to operate heavy equipment safely, but the real-world application of the two-semester class is minimal. Nobody ever questions why they are playing dodgeball in P.E. The game has some value beyond ludicrous fun, values that a physical educator could and perhaps from time to time should lay out for their students. Middle-school students and younger do not make decisions to like a subject based on perceived value. Some will have more of a proclivity towards one subject or another, and those kinds of genuine impulses are helpful, but the ultimate deciding factor for whether a student enjoys your class depends on whether or not we make the class enjoyable.
As students mature, they learn to undertake more and more of the discipline that accompanies serious study for the sake of some future good. Younger students, generally speaking, are not built this way, and we would do much better to leave the subject enjoyable. This is not the same thing as making the study of Latin overly easy or a joke, an unfortunate practice into which I see more and more teachers slipping. It seems to me that many find a kind of safe haven, a respite from the monotonous, anger-inducing, overly-challenging, grading-filled, grammar-translation method. They find it in the “natural method”, and despite the good intentions of those promoting it, and despite its legitimate potential for powerful language education, it ends up becoming an excuse to oversimplify the whole process. The true “natural method” is not an easy one. In fact, I would say it demands much much more from the teacher and their knowledge than any grammar translation ever would. I stand behind both methods, as they have their merits, but only their true expressions.
The real natural method requires that the teacher possess the knowledge, vocabulary, grammar etc. to produce clear, intelligible, and interesting sentences for students about potentially any given subject. It is doubtful that any teacher would have all of the knowledge and information they need to speak on any given subject at any time, but the teacher still bears the onus of daily improvement to free himself more and more to such eloquent liberty. I have digressed, so back to the topic at hand.
When we think of rigor, a word that gets thrown around a lot in classical circles, we think of something difficult done without frills, something that promises future goods at the expense of present gratification. Rigor syndrome is an issue for “classical” schools whose teachers are often recruited straight out of philosophy, theology, and liberal-arts colleges, young graduates somewhat convinced they are signing up to continue their career of high-level thinking but from the teacher’s perspective and, lacking the art and skill of teaching imprudently apply university teaching methods to middle-school students, making no distinction between the two groups, believing that we ought to hold our students to high standards. A noble effort, to be sure, but one which only leads to bitterness and frustration on both ends. As I have mentioned in a previous post, teaching, especially younger ages, is not a simple transfer of information. The process is much more subtle and it requires a skillset that frankly a first-year teacher cannot possess without experience. Hence the challenges of the first year and a large load of vain rigor.
I am a strong believer in rigor, but we ought to be careful about how we apply it. In my personal experience (which could be unique) middle-school students are more burdened by an urgent “academic rigor” than are their high-school counterparts, partly because of the reason I laid out above, and partly because we easily convince ourselves that younger students need the “reigns”, so to speak, of rigor to keep them in line. We apply rigor as a kind of instrument for keeping students in line in the name of “clacissicity” . This is completely backward.
In my opinion, contrary to the way we may want to respond to them, the middle school years ought to be less “rigorous” in the sense that the students should be doing less work that is motivated merely by grades and promises of some vague future payout. Some of that kind of work is appropriate, even necessary, and should be considered on a class-by-class basis, but it should not be the default by any means. They should be motivated by the mere intrigue of the subject, presented in a colorful and spirited way, and the charisma and goodwill of a knowledgable teacher. Students will listen if they care about the information.
Perhaps you are reading baffled, wondering how one could possibly make Latin interesting to 13-year-olds and teach them without the compulsion of grades, to which I respond, “Which subject has more potential for interesting subject matter than Latin, the language in which most of the western worlds literature was in or translated into for a couple thousand years?” You don’t need to force declensions to be interesting. They’re not. We need to teach declensions under the veil of something that is interesting, like the Trojan War, the stories of Hercules, the founding myth of Rome, the stories of Odysseus, Electra, Aeneas, Ajax, Penelope, Sappho, Cicero, Caesar, Nero, Vesuvius, Aetna, Pliny, Orpheus, Eurydice, the gods. What period of time is more interesting than one tinged with the fabulous? I have talked a little bit about how to do this kind of thing practically in another post which you can read here. That being said, this method of teaching is not an easy one, but it is the best, and we will be keeping a lot more students in classics if we can convince them that it is something that is worth studying and not just a bunch of declensions.
To conclude and to tie this back to the title, if you are being asked “Why are we learning Latin?” by an indignant student, you are already on a bad footing for an appropriate response. We would respond most aptly to this question not by attempting to engage the student in a back-and-forth about why Latin is worth their time, but by changing the way we teach the subject in the first place. Have some fun, learn something new, and teach your students something they will remember.