"But when am I ever going to use this?"

"Having a strong background in Classics has, in my opinion, proved beneficial in my studies of medicine. Doctors don't have to major in Biology to learn how to think and become good physicians. I believe Classical Studies provides that ability as well as any major offered in the college curriculum." -- Thomas Turner, MD 

Our modern high-school curriculum has fallen victim to a mindless form of pragmatism wherein all classes are seen as preparing students for a future "job" of some sort.  The traditional belief that schooling should train the whole person, body, mind, and spirit, to live a full and meaningful life publicly, domestically, and occupationally is constantly challenged by those who shout (ever more loudly): But what is ___ good for?  You may insert any number of things into the blank: History, Poetry, Calculus, Latin, Art, you name it.  Anything that concerns the good, the true, and the beautiful, but which does not concern a specific technical skill, is under assault from students, parents, and even teachers.

Huge sums of money are spent on "vocational" training, meaning training in classes that are directly related to specific career skills, but far worse than this, the classes that focus on developing a rounded person, a complete and "educated" person, feel pressured to become more "relevant."  "Relevant" generally means "able to help the student in a future job."  It is as if our society were willingly descending into a new "Dark Age" as we jettison the knowledge and culture of the last 6000 years and train our children to become amoral information processors or living tools doing their share to increase the GDP.

The problem with those who want more "career education" is that they do not see how quickly the career market is shifting.  It is nearly impossible to predict exactly what new career fields may be developing in the next 20 years.  However, we do know this: A student who is able to learn, to communicate clearly, and to solve problems, linguistic, cultural, and occupational, will always be employable, and most likely will be doing the "employing."

Studying Latin accomplishes all three of these "career" goals: It teaches the student how to learn, how to communicate clearly, and how to solve new problems.  It is the ultimate vocational training, without specifically teaching a student how to turn a wrench or clean someone's teeth.  The careful student of Latin can tackle any career.  As Dr. Turner said in the quotation above, studying any particular subject, like Biology, does not necessarily teach someone how to think.  However, Latin does, and so it trains our students for future careers without sacrificing our culture in the process.

But more important is the fact that traditional study of Latin starts out with a grammatical framework.... As American students begin Latin, they become acquainted with the "Latin grammar" system, which they can indirectly transfer to their work in English. What it gives them is a standardized set of terms in which to describe words in relation to other words in sentences, and it is this grammatical awareness which makes their English writing good. -- Professor William V. Harris, NYU

The grammar program built into Microsoft Word has chosen to underline the final word in the above quotation. Incorrectly, I should add. Obviously, MS Word has not studied Latin! If it had, it would certainly know the difference between facit bene and facit bonum.

 As a teacher of both English and Latin, I have seen the futility of attempting to teach English grammar to students in their native language. For some reason, we resist systematizing that which comes so naturally to us. So we must approach our own language by a different road, and the best road for that is Latin.

Careful attention to Latin grammar drastically reduces, I will not say eliminates, the need to study English grammar as a separate subject, and if English grammar is studied in conjunction with Latin grammar, say in the 1st-4th grades using a program like First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise Bauer, then there is a synergistic effect benefiting both languages. In short, learning Latin grammar improves writing skills in English.

Latin and the Global Economy

I never touched a trained mind yet which had not been disciplined by grammar and mathematics—grammar both Greek and Latin; nor have I ever discovered mental elegance except in those familiar with Greek and Latin classics.  -William Milligan Sloan

In the new global economy, English has taken the dominant role as the language of international diplomacy, international business, and international travel.  The highest level of mastery with our own language, then, is the door that opens to our socially and technologically integrated world.  Next to this is the door that opens to those who can quickly acquire a variety of new languages (through the knowledge of language structures and roots) as the situation may demand.   

Latin is the key to both of these doors.

Latin teaches a deep, thorough, grammatical understanding of language that enriches and expands a student’s understanding of English (and language in general).  Take, for example, the concept of the infinitive.  The Latin verb for “love” is amō.  The infinitive for that verb is amāre, a word which means “to love.”  Notice that the one word in Latin must be communicated by two words in English.  So, when writing a sentence in English about a deep feeling of love, should an author write “to deeply love” or “to love deeply”?  Because the concept of the infinitive is contained in both the word “to” and the word “love,” as demonstrated by the Latin verb, it is good style to keep those concepts together (just as in Latin).  This is the reason why traditionally we have been told by our grammar teachers that we should not “split an infinitive” (“to boldly go where no man has gone before” excepted!)

Now, you could try, and fail, to learn the concept of the infinitive through your native language.  However, there is a better way: Learn Latin!  If you know that amāre means “to love,” then you know conceptually and on a deeper level that you should not split up that idea (in the same way that the word amāre itself cannot be split.)  The whole of English grammar makes sense only in light of Latin grammar.  No student of English grammar, then, should expect to gain any level of mastery without a commensurate knowledge of Latin.

21st Century Skills

Give me a student who has been taught his Latin grammar, and I will answer for his chemistry. –German chemist Bauer to Francis Kelsey

In my high school, teachers like to talk about giving our students “21st Century Skills.” What they often mean by this phrase is “our students need more ___” (fill in the blank with computer classes, science, math, technology, etc.) However, technology, computers, and science in general are changing so quickly that the material learned one year may not apply to the next. For example, my son Caleb wants to be a video-game programmer. When he started taking classes in this field only two years ago, app development was an emerging field and there were no classes for creating new app's. Now it is a multi-billion dollar market and Digipen is offering its first app development class.

Real “21st Century Skills” are not abilities pertaining to particular technological developments, but rather the ability to think, to adapt, and to solve new problems with whatever technology arises. That is what Latin equips students to do, and that is why even my son Caleb, who wants to study video-game programming, still studies Latin. Latin provides the foundation for critical thinking. That is why the chemist Bauer could say that he did not care if his university students had balanced even one chemical equation in high school: he preferred students who knew their Latin well!

“To read the Latin and Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury… I thank on my knees him who directed my early education for having in my possession this rich course of delight.” -Thomas Jefferson

Our American founding fathers lived in a culture saturated with the Classics (i.e. Latin and Greek). Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution could read and write Latin. How many of our legislators could boast the same today? It is difficult to imagine the type of country our founders would have created had they not known so much about the history and government of ancient Rome, from the abuses of its first 7 kings (the last of whom they threw out in 509 B.C., declaring themselves a Republic and electing new leaders every year!), to the prosperity and growth of the Republic for nearly 500 years, to the decadence and power of the Empire for nearly 500 more years. This history permeated the books and classrooms of early America, where preparing for college meant studying Latin and Greek and the respective histories and cultures. What would America look like if the founders hadn’t learned Latin?

This weekend Caleb and Sophie helped me put together this blog to help deliver classroom content a little more efficiently.  Click on the tabs at the top of the page to access different audio and video clips.  I plan to post a new Conversational Latin, LLPSI Grammar and Syntax Video, and flashcards to the page every week for the next year (a little ambitious, perhaps, but I work best with a goal in site). Also, I will post links to our weekly homework on this blog.

Let me know what you think.