more on how we promote Latin and thoughts on Cicero

[ginlindzey]

I was mildly taken to task for my pro-ancients stance in my notes to Latinteach/previous blog entry. What about those who enjoy learning more about English? Grammar, derivatives, etc?? What about people who take Latin for those reasons??

Well...I probably stuck with Latin to begin with for all of those reasons. I liked finally understanding who/whom. Once I really started paying attention to derivatives, I liked that too. I liked morphology. I liked the secret code aspect.

I HATED TO READ. Ok, maybe not hate, but I never felt inspired about it. Which was ok, because I never felt that inspired to read things in English when I was in school. Oh sure, I was a good little student, but I wasn't doing a lot of reading for pleasure--certainly not like I do now. I mean, now I have two or three books going: I'm rereading Course of Honor (Lindsey Davis), reading a bit of Cicero in translation, reading Lingua Latina (in Latin), and I have an article somewhere I wanted to read about creativity being a habit of the mind.

When I was younger, I wasn't that interested. I was usually doing creative stuff. I did some calligraphy; I played piano (not that well, but well enough to enjoy it myself); I rode my bike all over San Antonio. But I didn't have my nose in a novel all that often. Short stories, maybe. Scripts maybe as well. But nothing long.

And here was all this Latin to read. Except that we weren't reading Latin, we were decoding it or translating it. We were NOT reading it.

So I clung to what I liked because I didn't know there was anything else to like.

And I fear we have a generation or two of Latin teachers who probably were probably not much different in their approach toward Latin. I know colleagues that don't want to teach advanced Latin because they are no longer comfortable with it, if they ever were. Oh sure, if they had hours of free time like they had in college to translate every single word, carefully parsed, into English. But we're all adults now with frantic lives, for the most part. Ok, mine is, that's for sure.

So we have people who stick to this love of Latin for its side benefits of helping English. And I can't help but wonder if this is because they never got to where they could really ENJOY *READING* Latin? I'm not there yet. Hey, I'll be very honest about that. I can't just sit down and easily and comfortably read any Latin author. Oh, I read Martial in small doses, but in a Loeb. (Mind you, I noted one that I'm sure is translated wrong--probably artistic license--but I wouldn't translate it that way.) Reading...who gets to a point with a BA in Latin who can read with comfort? Who has been taught explicit reading skills for Latin? Oh, I suppose the people at U of Michigan are teaching it, but I haven't seen anything of the sort at my alma mater, but then what do I really know?

I know this. I know if we taught Latin at least with a goal of learning to read from left to right, learning to read sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page, and not word by word, stopping to grab a dictionary the first time we see something new, we might develop readers. I know if we could figure out how to get students writing sooner as opposed to doing exercises and forms we might also build up more linguistic confidence.

There might be all sorts of side benefits from Latin, but the ONLY WAY we can really sell a DEAD LANGUAGE (and no one get their knickers in a twist because I've called it dead!) is if we talk about the importance of communicating to those who are dead as well. The wisdom of the ancients shouldn't come in sound bites that can be printed on posters. The secrets of true communication shouldn't be revealed (or attempted to be revealed) through translations.

And as long as we're teaching our students to do no more than 10-20 lines of independent reading at a go, we'll never do more than teach sound bites.

With luck I'll be at a new school next year. I might even have to teach out of a textbook different from Cambridge. One thing I know, I have to do things differently myself. I can't just talk the talk. If I want students to write more, I have to figure out how to make that more doable for them and still gradable for me. I want to do a reading log, in Latin. Not sure how. Now sure how to grade. Not sure of anything.

I do know we do ourselves no favors by not facing these issues honestly. If the goal of a French class is to ultimately get a student to a point of fluency that would allow him or her to function in France--to read newspapers, literature, hold conversations, and write--then we need to consider similar.

I haven't read much Cicero. Suddenly I'm interested. Can you imagine writing letters to Cicero? Why not? You could pretend to reply to one of his letters taking on the persona of the person he wrote to. How about discussing some philosophical thread in Latin? Picking apart a defense in Latin?

Oh, I don't know. I suppose I'm rambling now.

I do know this: we can't settle for the same. I want my students to be SIGNIFICANTLY SUPERIOR Latin students compared to what I was. I want them to feel able to take more than one Latin course per semester at college. I want them to learn how to READ READ READ.

And then let them be whatever they want after that. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, graphic design artists. But let them form a PROPER opinion of what Latin is about, not that it's only for SAT scores and English skills. Otherwise, guess what? We LOSE all the arguments for keeping Latin. Because SAT scores and English skills can be had elsewhere.

But learning how to READ the language and communicate with those from centuries gone by who want and need to speak, THAT is our argument.

Comments

Re: I'm in total agreement

[ginlindzey.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I particularly like the animal book. But really, even these readers aren't quite what they should be, but it's a decent step forward.