I'm not trying to sell it short by focusing on reading skills. I'm big on oral skills too and usually am considered quite neurotic with regards to pronunciation. (Too many teachers who don't know where the accent goes...)
If we lived in an ideal world where we could design Latin programs to be whatever we want them to be, then heck I'd have students reading lots of Vives and playing cards and reenacting 16th century dialogs or reading about Columbus's Voyage to the New World. My point is that we don't in most cases. Most cases we have our curriculum dictated to us, often ending with AP Vergil or Cicero.
And that being the case, we shortchange our programs by selling Latin's secondary values: improved English skills and verbals on SATs and whatnot. And I think there are probably more than a few teachers who teach Latin solely for those reasons who would rather not have to teach upper division classes because their own Latin was never that good, or isn't that good anymore.
I know teachers that water down their courses and make it nothing more than vocabulary and Junior Classical League events, and maybe do some independent student with their brightest students.
I know teachers that use only crossword puzzles to teach, yea verily to teach Vergil!
People who are my age (41) who took Latin when I did are mainly the types who can say, amo amas amat and puella puellae puellae and not much more. They might remember JCL events fondly and perhaps they do write better English and have a broader vocabulary. But it wouldn't matter what passage of Latin you put in front of them, whether it was Caesar or Eutropius or Vulgate. They didn't LEARN TO READ from left to right, develop any sense of fluency, etc, and thus they can't begin to approach a passage in the right way.
Heck, I'd love to do a King Arthur in early British history as recorded by Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Maybe I will do that one day. BUt it wouldn't be to translate or decode. It would be TO READ. Better yet, to discuss in Latin.
And do we really have that many students who are incapable? I think the real problem is that too many teachers do not understand where the disconnects happen with Latin. THey don't understand that when they have a student memorize morphological forms they tapping the lowest level of cognitive ability. Same with memorizing vocabulary. And the same teachers, when faced with students who know their forms but can't translate a passage in front of them, just assume that the student is stupid or just not up to the challenge of Latin. It never occurs to them that they are requiring students to jump from knowledge level skills (on Bloom's Taxonomy) to higher level skills of analysis and synthesis, without ever stretching them with midrange cognitive skills or walking them through the analysis steps that the brains in the class are doing automatically.
I fully believe that ANYONE can learn Latin, if the teacher knows what he/she is doing.
I want to teach students how to read so they can pick up Erasmus, Bede, Monmouth, Eutropius, Vives--WHOMEVER--and enjoy these authors as AUTHORS, not persons writing in a secret code.
So we need to talk about why we really learn Latin--to communicate with those who spoke the language, whether they be ancient or medieval or Renaissance or whatever. And if we teach Latin so that only a handful of those who enter Latin 1 will ever learn enough to "communicate" then we are blowing our jobs. Our jobs should not be about teaching word power unless the course is explicitly about teaching word power. Our jobs should be about teaching LATIN, THE LANGUAGE.
Scratch "ancients" in my argument. Focus on the COMMUNICATE part.
Re: How we promote Latin
If we lived in an ideal world where we could design Latin programs to be whatever we want them to be, then heck I'd have students reading lots of Vives and playing cards and reenacting 16th century dialogs or reading about Columbus's Voyage to the New World. My point is that we don't in most cases. Most cases we have our curriculum dictated to us, often ending with AP Vergil or Cicero.
And that being the case, we shortchange our programs by selling Latin's secondary values: improved English skills and verbals on SATs and whatnot. And I think there are probably more than a few teachers who teach Latin solely for those reasons who would rather not have to teach upper division classes because their own Latin was never that good, or isn't that good anymore.
I know teachers that water down their courses and make it nothing more than vocabulary and Junior Classical League events, and maybe do some independent student with their brightest students.
I know teachers that use only crossword puzzles to teach, yea verily to teach Vergil!
People who are my age (41) who took Latin when I did are mainly the types who can say, amo amas amat and puella puellae puellae and not much more. They might remember JCL events fondly and perhaps they do write better English and have a broader vocabulary. But it wouldn't matter what passage of Latin you put in front of them, whether it was Caesar or Eutropius or Vulgate. They didn't LEARN TO READ from left to right, develop any sense of fluency, etc, and thus they can't begin to approach a passage in the right way.
Heck, I'd love to do a King Arthur in early British history as recorded by Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Maybe I will do that one day. BUt it wouldn't be to translate or decode. It would be TO READ. Better yet, to discuss in Latin.
And do we really have that many students who are incapable? I think the real problem is that too many teachers do not understand where the disconnects happen with Latin. THey don't understand that when they have a student memorize morphological forms they tapping the lowest level of cognitive ability. Same with memorizing vocabulary. And the same teachers, when faced with students who know their forms but can't translate a passage in front of them, just assume that the student is stupid or just not up to the challenge of Latin. It never occurs to them that they are requiring students to jump from knowledge level skills (on Bloom's Taxonomy) to higher level skills of analysis and synthesis, without ever stretching them with midrange cognitive skills or walking them through the analysis steps that the brains in the class are doing automatically.
I fully believe that ANYONE can learn Latin, if the teacher knows what he/she is doing.
I want to teach students how to read so they can pick up Erasmus, Bede, Monmouth, Eutropius, Vives--WHOMEVER--and enjoy these authors as AUTHORS, not persons writing in a secret code.
So we need to talk about why we really learn Latin--to communicate with those who spoke the language, whether they be ancient or medieval or Renaissance or whatever. And if we teach Latin so that only a handful of those who enter Latin 1 will ever learn enough to "communicate" then we are blowing our jobs. Our jobs should not be about teaching word power unless the course is explicitly about teaching word power. Our jobs should be about teaching LATIN, THE LANGUAGE.
Scratch "ancients" in my argument. Focus on the COMMUNICATE part.