Quo Vadis?

It’s a beautiful autumn morning at Somewheresville Classical Academy. Mr. Jones delights in the sun shining through the crimson and golden leaves outside his classroom window. Coffee cup in hand, he greets each sophomore entering his classroom: “Salve, discipule!” As the students take their seats, and begin their daily exercises, Mr. Jones grabs his copy of Pharr’s Aeneid, and with a smile on his face recalls his grad school lounge conversations over how best to render sunt lacrimae rerum. Once the students have finished their warm-up exercises, Mr. Jones directs them all to open their books again to Virgil’s masterpiece. The students all comply, though some audibly groan. “Again?” “It’s so boring...” “It’s so hard.” Twenty–five minutes later, Mr. Jones’ joy has soured considerably as Billy and his buddies just won’t stop talking in the back of the room, two students are nodding off, and most others have that glazed-over look on their faces. Yet, Susan, eyes intent upon her text, is tracking every point about Virgil’s use of the passive periphrastic here and the ablative absolute there. When Mr. Jones is on his lunch break, he laments to the mix of Latin teachers at his table about how inattentive and even disrespectful the sophomores are. “Billy is always trying to get away with something.... Can you believe those two were falling asleep again!? Why can’t those kids take a cue from Susan?” Ms. Smith, one of the Junior Latin teachers, chimes in: “Tell me about it! My students can barely write a coherent sentence in Latin.” Mr. Wilson, about his seniors, adds: “Well, I’m just happy if my students can correctly recite one of Cicero’s lines from the Catilinarian Orations!” 

This anecdote, obviously fictional, is unfortunately representative of too many Latin departments today. Teaching Latin is a bedrock of classical education, but in this contemporary renewal of classical education, three plagues beset middle and high school Latin departments: 

     1. Schools do not begin with the end in mind.
     2. Schools do not employ a developmentally appropriate curriculum.
     3. Schools do not hire teachers first but Latinists.

Thankfully, like Apollo ending the plague in The Iliad through a restoration of right order,[1] we similarly can cure these three plagues with right reason.
The first plague is in many ways the most important to cure. Aquinas teaches, “Although the end be last in the order of execution, yet it is first in the order of the agent's intention.”[2] Those in charge of curriculum must first ask the question: “To what end are we teaching Latin?” Too often classical schools teach Latin because the school leaders, themselves never having had a classical education or any foundation in Latin, simply (and rightly!) know that teaching Latin is the sine qua non of classical education. What these well-intentioned school leaders fail to recognize is that there are several worthy ends a school may prioritize, but not all can be pursued given the limitations inherent in schools (principally, time). Though there are undoubtedly more, here are five excellent ends for teaching Latin school leaders may have in mind:

1. Reading fluency 
2. Facility with classics (e.g. The Aeneid)
3. Cultural knowledge of ancient Rome
4. Ecclesiastical and/or liturgical knowledge
5. Communicative fluency

Note how these five ends are rather distinct; pursuit of one does not meaningfully contribute to achieving any of the others. If my students are to make genuine progress in reading Cicero, though they will likely acquire cultural knowledge, there will be little achieved in the way of ecclesiastical knowledge or fluency in Latin communication. Conversely, communicating in Latin is rather difficult given the relative lack of language input a student receives even if the class is taught entirely in Latin, and most are not. According to the University of Oregon’s research[3], fewer than 30% of high school students having studied four years in a language achieve even Intermediate-Low status on the American Council on Teaching Foreign Language’s (ACTFL) proficiency scale.[4] There is no evidence to suggest Latin students are above that range. Thus, making substantial progress toward communicative proficiency requires a Herculean effort, leaving little time for reading proficiency or any other end. 

School leaders must follow right reason in teaching to the end.[5] Ovid’s wisdom should be followed: principiis obsta (et respice finem)[6]. They need first to determine which end is primary for their Latin program so that many ailments commonly associated with teaching Latin fall away. Which resource(s) to use? Well, if you want to achieve reading fluency, probably don’t choose Wheelock’s Latin.[7] Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, however, is well-respected for facilitating reading fluency. How much time to spend on writing Latin? Well, if your goal is communicative fluency, a lot! However, as writing does not provide any input,[8] if your goal is something else, probably not much time should be dedicated to writing in Latin. Though this plague has perhaps the simplest cure, each end result for each “patient” will look significantly different.

The second plague, a failure to employ a developmentally appropriate curriculum, may well be classified as a pandemic in Latin departments. The caricature (or, perhaps, the accurate portrait) of middle and high school Latin classes is the picture drawn above: “reading”[9] The Aeneid.  The College Board still requires large sections of that most famous epic poem in its AP Latin curriculum.[10] Yet, as the previously referenced University of Oregon study implies, few fourth-year Latin students are beyond early primary education levels of language proficiency.[11] Assigning The Aeneid to most high school Latin students is akin to assigning Hamlet to kindergartners. To be sure, both works are among the paragons of high literature in their language. However, if we recognize that expecting our kindergartners to “read” Hamlet is wildly developmentally inappropriate, why don’t we see a similar problem for adolescents “reading” The Aeneid?[12] 

So, what is the Homeric cure? Just as Odysseus allowed his fair skin to be shriveled and his beautiful eyes to be dimmed by Athena so that he could achieve his primary end, reunion with his beloved Penelope,[13] so too must school leaders and teachers humble themselves to suffer a more developmentally appropriate curriculum for the sake of their beloved students. The Church calls this principle the Divine Pedagogy, where God progressively reveals Himself to man according to man’s ability to receive that revelation.[14] Perhaps Saint Paul enjoyed the “solid food” more than the “milk” he gave to the Corinthians[15] just as we Latin teachers likely prefer more reading Cicero or The Vulgate to the simple stories of that puer molestus, Sextus, found in Ecce Romani I. Yet, if we are truly called to teach adolescents as Saint Paul was called to evangelize “Carnal Corinth”, we must subjugate our desire for philosophically and spiritually enriching material for that which best achieves the school’s chosen ends.[16]

The final plague, hiring Latinists rather than teachers, is the most difficult to cure; however, from the standpoint of the student, curing this plague is unquestionably the most important. The first two plagues can more or less be achieved by administrative fiat, but this third cure necessarily involves school leaders handing over the administration of the medicine to others. Furthermore, the student’s deficient Latin development through a poorly organized and developmentally inappropriate program is like the flu: frustrating, obnoxious, but not likely fatal. Daily encounters, however, with someone who loves Latin rather than one who loves teaching children will inflict grave and lasting damage, more akin to a serious concussion than a mild cold. 

The onset of this plague is quite understandable. Since Latin is seen as difficult, the ability to teach it is not widespread, and administrators generally have no personal experience with the language. They wrongfully apply to Latin departments a solid principle of hiring in most every other department: teachers must be relative experts in their field. Now, it is absolutely correct that 6^th –12^th grade math teachers should be relative experts in mathematics, the more so as we move up the grade levels. This is true in large part because by the time a student has reached 10^th grade, he has been regularly and formally studying math for around 60 minutes per school day for at least 10 years. But even students in 11^th or 12^th grade in most Latin programs have only been formally studying Latin for a few years, and that generally with less time and attention than in math, science, or writing. At the risk of beating a dead horse, students in Level 4 high school Latin are scarcely beyond early primary levels of proficiency. Hence, those students do not need an expert in Latin any more than a first grader needs an M.A. in Literature to teach him reading and writing. Ironically, the reverse of a Latin dictum holds here: not “sine scientia, ars est nihil” but “sine ars, scientia est nihil.”[17]

To cure this plague, educational leaders and teachers must allow the following truth to transform their schools: for the accomplishment of its goals, the school depends almost entirely upon teachers.[18] A pithy corollary follows: hire teachers, not resumes. Find the dynamic, engaging, gravitationally powerful teacher and hire him or her. Ideally, said teacher is an expert in Latin. However, if he or she is not, do not be afraid! Hire him or her anyway[19] provided you have a reasonable professional development plan in place.[20] When it comes to staffing for upper-level high school Latin classes, teachers still do not need to be “Latinists”;[21] teachers need to create an engaging classroom environment and possess sufficient content knowledge so as to answer most reasonable student questions. A good teacher who does not know the answer to a student’s question will, like a Judo master, find ways to turn that seeming attack to his own advantage, which is really the student’s advantage. 

Let us then rejoice in the on-going Latin renaissance in middle and high schools throughout the country and beyond. Let us not be deterred by these three plagues of purpose, curriculum, and teachers often hindering the great good pursued by Latin teachers and students alike. Instead, let us proceed confidently in the knowledge that remedies for these plagues are so close at hand. Let us never forget: veritas curat.[22]