The Latin oration at this year's Harvard Commencement

Is Latin Worth Studying? A response to a Latin critic

Susan Evans at the Homeschool Channel has written a post entitled "Don't Study Latin," an admittedly provocative title, particularly to those of us who teach it. The post is a representative example of what many people think about Latin, and for that reason alone is worth responding to.

First, she says, "At the risk of ticking people off (and the more you're ticked off, the more it's probably true), I would like to say that people who study Latin are snobs." She invites her reader to throw tomatoes if they disagree with her. I will not stoop to hurling vegetables, but I will point out a few logical problems with her argument.

First, to call those with whom you disagree "snobs" is a clear example of the ad hominem fallacy, which involves a personal attack on the person you disagree with. I don't think Evans means this in any hostile way (in fact, I think she is partly just poking fun), but it is still a logical mistake--and one that has little to do with the merit of whatever position someone holds.

If we were to argue, for example, that all mathematicians were snobs, would that say anything substantive about the truth or usefulness of mathematical constants, differential equations, or the Pythagorean Theorem? Does the personal state of the practitioner of some discipline qualify that discipline in any meaningful way? If Einstein had been caught shoplifting, would that mean that E no longer equaled MC²?

Second, she says, "All I'm saying is that the study of Latin is dreadfully boring. You're punishing your children. Are you just checking off the boxes of what you should do for a classical education just to say you did it? Or worse, to boast about your children?"

The assumption here seems to be that we should not study subjects that are boring, and that the fact that some people might find a particular subject boring is the fault, not of the person studying it, but of the subject itself. Does that mean that if our children find math boring then we should not teach it to them? Or literature or history? Does the merit of the subject depend on how exciting our children happen to find it? And then, of course, there is the matter of whether it really is boring and, if so, why? Is the teaching of English grammar punishing your children? There are many students who find English grammar terribly boring.

Latin is like any other subject in this respect: if taught poorly it is boring; if taught well it is not. But, again, this has little to do with the merit of the subject itself.

In regard to people studying Latin "checking off boxes," Evans does not give us any evidence to believe that this is in fact the reason people study Latin. They are certainly not reasons anyone who promotes the study of it would give. Who are these people who are studying Latin to check off boxes? And are there other subjects which Evans would find valuable that are also taught in order to check off boxes? If there are, is that a sufficient reason to denigrate those subjects? And again, is Latin any different from any other subject in this regard?

If you are going to criticize something, you need to be careful not to mischaracterize it in the process. This is commonly called a "straw man" argument. It is much easier to attack a mischaracterization of a position than the real position. You owe it to your opponent to deal with the best arguments for his opinion, not the worst ones you can find.

The arguments for studying Latin are:

1. Latin is a better way to understand the grammar of your own language--and the system of grammar in general. It is always better to study grammar in a language other than your own, since you tend to see right through the grammar of the language you already know. It is particularly good to study the grammar in an inflected language, since it has an organized noun and adjective system in addition the the organized verb system all languages have. Familiarity with an inflected language is almost the only way to really understand grammatical cases, since, in non-inflected languages like English, Spanish, and French, the cases are essentially invisible. And it is even better to study an inflected foreign language that is also regular. Evans says that if you are going to study a classical language, you should study Greek. Greek would work for the purpose of learning grammar better, but the problem with it (and German and some other inflected languages) is that they have many exceptions to their grammar rules. Latin is the most regular of all inflected languages, and is therefore easier to study.

2. The study of Latin also assists greatly in the development of critical thinking skills. The first reason has to do with its sheer complexity. As with any foreign language studied using a grammar-based approach, it requires the understanding and use of important linguistic distinctions such as person and number. As an inflected language it also involves distinctions of case, gender, and number. There are other sophisticated distinctions involved in Latin such as those between quality and quantity in adjectives, those between the different kinds of ablative cases, and those between the different noun declensions and verb conjugations. Someone has observed that just matching a Latin adjective to the noun it modifies in case, gender, and number involves 17 mental steps. Making distinctions and seeing resemblances are the two basic thinking skills, and Latin is full of them. This may be why there is a high correlation between the study of Latin and high performance on college entrance exams.

3. It is the mother tongue of Western civilization, being the basis for English academic vocabulary in general, and the vocabulary of the sciences in particular. Fully 60 percent of academic vocabulary is Latinate. One and two syllable English words are largely Anglo-Saxon, but larger words are mostly derived from Latin. Consequently, a student who knows Latin has a much easier time negotiating academic English. He will know the meaning of words he has never seen before--and more deeply understand the ones is already familiar with.

Anyone who challenges the wisdom or utility of teaching Latin needs to deal with these arguments.

"Plus," says Evans, "the people of Greece actually speak Greek. I've been to Greece, and I've heard Greek being spoken. It's definitely a live language." This is true. The problem is that the Greek spoken in ancient times is quite different from that spoken today. I remember a Jehovah's Witness coming to my house, who I invited in. His Greek accent was thick enough so that he was hard to understand. When we began discussing the New Testament, I got my Greek New Testament out and we looked at it. He was clearly unable to understand it.

Evans says, "The bottom line is this: our time is precious and limited. Don't you want the greatest amount of good done in the least amount of time? If you can actually learn the Latin roots while at the same time learning a real live language that is the second language of our country, why not do it?"

For one thing, simply learning Latin roots outside of the language is an inferior means of learning the roots. You will know the roots much better if you actually study the language. Learning something in context always results in learning it better. I agree that our time is precious and limited. So why not study a language that teaches you grammar better, that, because of the mental training, is the best preparation for the later study of logic, and that is the root of the very language we speak--not to mention the foundation for the languages that Evans says we should study instead.

Latin primarily, and Greek secondarily, were once staples in any good school and only ceased being so when they were pushed out by the progressivism and pragmatism that has driven our schools into the ground. They were used because they were an essential part of the old, classical liberal arts curriculum--a curriculum that intellectually prepared students for any other subject because it trained students in the arts or skills that were common to all subjects. They were part of what we did to pass on the culture of the Christian West to each successive generation.

It is a system of education that deserves to be revived, not reviled.

Contra delicia: Should we eat our pets?

The farmboys over at Front Porch Republic have an excellent post today in which, in response to the question, "Should we eat our pets," they respond: "There shouldn't be any such thing as pets." Pets, they argue, are a symptom of our industrial age decadence.

Oh, and check out the Wendell Berry quote: it's stunning.

The author, Caleb Stegall, points out the etymology of the English word 'pet'. What he didn't take note of is that the Latin word for 'pet' is 'delicium', the root of the English word 'delicious.'

I'm sorry, but that just can't be an accident.

Another good reason to bring back Latin

A New York teacher points out what I have always believed: that the real benefit of Latin instruction is its role in helping with critical thinking skills:

At the high school, Barbara Sugarman has taught the language for 20 years.

Translating sentences from Latin helps teach analytical skills, she said.

"That's the ultimate goal, to be able to think," she said. "Kids have a solid foundation between the classical world and our world today. The contributions made by the Romans are still part of our culture. The kids see it's not just a textbook course. It's a course that's very relevant to them."

Read more here.

Science and classical education

E. Christian Kopff, speaking to the H. L. Mencken Club on how classical education helped even the great scientific thinkers:

The greatest figures in the Scientific Revolution, for example, were classically educated: Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and most of the other figures found in Charles Murray’s eight lists of scientific achievement in Human Accomplishment. They had studied ancient texts and could read and write Latin. The Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries was very self-consciously a return to the ideals and even the texts of ancient science. Copernicus was well aware that he was reviving the heliocentric hypothesis of Aristarchus of Samos from the Third century, BC. The atomic theory used by Newton in his optics was based on Gassendi’s brilliant philological recovery of ancient Epicureanism. Galileo quotes Plato’s Meno and Timaeus over and over again. The education of scientists remained classical through the time of Linnaeus in the 18th century and Charles Darwin in the 19th.

Sceptics object that they had no choice. The case for vocational or technical training was made in the late 18th century by men like Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.

History does not usually allow us to study events with a true control group. There is an exception to this situation in 19th century Germany, where there were two distinct educational paths. One led from the old Classical school, now with more Greek added, and culminated in the classical or humanist “Gymnasium,” from which students then went on to the university. The other path was devoted to math, science, technology and a modern language (usually French) and led to the technical high school or “Realschule,” from which the student went on to a professional school or a job in industry. This critical mass of technically trained graduates working in factories protected by the tariff spurred German industrial growth in the generation that preceded World War I.

The decades on either side of WWI witnessed brilliant work in Physics: the concept of quanta, the theories of special and general relativity and the development of quantum mechanics. One might expect that the most important work in these fields would be done by graduates of the technical school system. Nearly the opposite is true. Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Niels Bohr were classically educated. Einstein attended a Swiss technical high school, but he had spent his first six years at a classical school, where his sister remembered his best subjects as Mathematics and Latin: “Latin’s clear, strictly logical structure fit his mindset.” Heisenberg wrote, “I believe that in the work of Max Planck, for instance, we can clearly see that his thought was influenced and made fruitful by his classical schooling.” Heisenberg insisted that his own insights into nature came from his classical education. Its combination of math and physics with language instruction led him to read Plato’s Timaeus in Greek. He was impressed by Plato’s rational appeals to understand nature mathematically rather than as a purely physical reality: “I was gaining the growing conviction that one could hardly make progress in modern atomic physics without a knowledge of Greek natural philosophy.”

Victor David Hanson on using Latin as a weapon against the illiberal white separatists who run our schools

Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline
in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more
for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on
Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together.
Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar
and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of
expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of
Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except
perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at
Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek,
Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I
came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women
studies—indeed, anything “studies”— were perhaps the fruits of some
evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor
minority students in the public schools and universities were offered
only a third-rate education.

The Undead Language: Latin making a comeback

Yesterday's New York Times, on the comeback Latin is making in the nation's schools.

Barak Obama's Latin slogan--and a proposed one for McCain

Okay, I never thought I would see the day. Reuters is reporting that Barak Obama has a Latin campaign slogan: "Vero Possimus," which is a rough translation of "Yes, we can." Literally, it translates "We are truly able" or "We truly can". The last time I saw a Latin slogan for a campaign was when the English made seats for the House of Lords elected, and some of the old codgers, apparently not hip on the 20th century, employed the Dead Language in their own campaigns.

I'm being slightly facetious, of course. I'm a Latin teacher. I love it.

Obviously the McCain campaign will now be scrambling to invent their own Latin slogan so as not to be embarassed by Obama, and I have just the thing. Ready? We now unveil the McCain campaign slogan:

Commeatus Veritatis

That is a rough translation of the "Straight Talk Express." Literally, it means "Convoy of Truth."

Take that Democrats.

Wikipedia. In Latin

Latin Wikipedia is here. Take that Latin skeptics.

Op Ed Piece in Latin

Didn't catch this earlier. An op ed piece in the New York Times--in Latin. Thanks to Drew Campbell for pointing it out on his blog.

Answers to Criticisms of the Four Subject Curriculum: An apologia for teaching dead languages

Well I profess to being surprised that my minimalist education proposal has caused such a fuss. If only those who fussed at me knew how much I liked being fussed at. What a casus belli I seem to have innocently introduced into the education discussion! I guess that's what happens when you challenge the status quo.

I attribute most of the dissent to my proposal damnant quod non intelligunt: that the critics of this proposal are not necessarily understanding what I have proposed. Now I take some of the responsibility for that, since my original post was meant as a sort discussion starter or abstract, although, apparently, some have mistaken it for some sort of ultima ratio.

I want to begin answering some of the objections to my proposal, and I want to start out with one aspect of this one, since I think it is the most general of the criticisms of my Four Subject Curriculum:

So, your four critical subjects are: a language that no one speaks anymore, a formal system, a method of entertaining yourself and others, and a skill that involves inputting and outputting information. There a few very large gaps, which at least include critical thinking, learning where you fit in the world, and interactive learning.

I want to address just the first implicit assertion in this one: that studying a dead language is somehow inferior to studying living languages.

Yes, my plan does include a language no one speaks anymore--if you mean that ad litteram. Yes, no one speaks Latin per se, but that does not ipso facto mean it is not useful to teach. And, in fact, it is not a priori true that a language that is no longer spoken conversationally should not be a major part of a curriculum. Certainly it is not prima facie true that a dead language is better than one that is not, but neither is it true that just because something is ad patres that it shouldn't be considered as a valid curricular subject.

There have been a good many post mortems pronounced over the Latin language, but I think they are a little premature. Is a language useless just because it's dead? G. K. Chesterton once said that a language must die in order to become immortal--or, to put my own Latin spin on it: morte sola lingua immortalis fit.

So why, then, in the year 2008, Anno Domini, would someone consider Latin important enough to be one of the only four subjects in a curriculum? Well for one thing, I will make the claim right here that there is a direct correlation between the lifelessness of a language and its academic worth.

That's right. I'm saying that, academically speaking, a dead language is better than a living one. Now I know as soon as this is posted I'll be pronounced non compos mentis, and the object of challenges to prove it.

I'll save them the trouble.

You don't have to rely on my ipse dixit. Here are the performance results of students with various language backgrounds on the SAT test via the College Board's last National Profile Report:
Notice that the top three languages--Latin, Hebrew, and Greek--are all dead languages. None of them are spoken in the modern world. Yes, Hebrew is spoken in modern Israel and Greek is spoken in Greece. But the vast majority of people with backgrounds in these languages taking the SAT have not studied modern Hebrew or modern Greek, but the ancient versions of these languages which haven't been spoken for centuries.

The languages that do the best job of preparing students for college entrance exams have long ago assumed room temperature.

Quod est demonstrandum.

What does the title of the Pope's new encyclical mean in English?

The Pope's new encyclical is out. It is called "Spe Salvi". I have noticed quite a plethora of translations of this phrase being bandied about. So far, we've got these:

• "Saved by Hope"
• "In Hope we were Saved"
• "Saved in Hope"
• "On Christian Hope"
• "Saved by Hope"
• "Saved in Hope"
• "Saved in Faith"
• "Salvation Thanks to Hope"

Well, which is it? All by itself, it would appear to mean something close to "In the hope of salvation" or "With the hope of salvation". The word spe is the ablative form of spes, which means hope. The ablative is a sort of prepositional case and indicates by, with, from, or in. The word salvi is the genitive (or possessive) form of salvus, the adjective saved.

But it is apparently a shortened version of Romans 8:24 in the Latin Vulgate, which reads "Spe enim salvi facti sumus", which means, "For (enim) we were saved (salvi facti sumus) by hope (spe)." The form of salvi makes much more sense in the context of the sentence. It appears that some of these translations are translating this whole phrase from Romans.

More live sightings of the dead language

When you're looking for a name for your new advanced technological innovation, who you gonna call?

Rod Dreher's blog call attention to the next big thing: a "roadable, light sport aircraft": in other words, a airplane that can also drive on the road. The company that is launching this effort (yes, pun intended) is called "Terrafugia, Inc."

Any guesses as to what it means?

The title incorporates two Latin words: terra, meaning earth or land, and fugere, which means to fly (in the sense of fleeing). The new craft is a land fleer, I guess.

I have to point these things out for the sake of the folks who are always telling me that Latin is a dead language.

Classical education spells success

My own humble role in the 2007 Spelling Bee.

The only good language is a dead language

The College Board has published its national profile report and, once again, students who have studied Latin have acquitted themselves well on the test. The report shows that students with a Latin background scored higher in critical reading skills than students studying any other language with the exception of Hebrew, with which it was tied for first. Here are the scores:
Note that the languages of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem outclassed all the others by a fairly significant margin. Notice also that most schools shun these languages in their curriculum. For one of the few exceptions to this rule, check out Highlands Latin School. Also, my publisher, Memoria Press.

Morte sola lingua immortalis fit: my translation into Latin of Chesterton's dictum that "a language must die in order to become immortal."

Latin in the News: "Habeas Fascismus"

I'm starting a new little feature just for fun. Being a Latin teacher (among other things), it always interests me to see Latin phrases used in the media. This one, habeas fascismus was used in this article as a play on habeas corpus. Habeas corpus means "you may have the body." The article argues that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 suspends habeas corpus and weakens individual rights in the United States. Habeas fascismus means "you may have fascism."