Great. Almost 20 years after I was a hard-core Latin fanatic, with top grades, a Junior Classical League membership, and a silver medal on the statewide Latin Exam, Latin has finally become cool:
Pop culture and a link to standardized test score improvements have resurrected the tongue of Roman emperors and philosophers in Delaware high schools and across the country. Thanks to fictional wizard Harry Potter, a handful of toga-wearing movie stars and adolescents' love of retro, all things classical are also cool.
Latin classes became passé in the late 1960s and vanished from most public school schedules by the 1980s, foreign language educators said...
Interesting. At my rural, public high school in South Carolina, one could take four years of Latin in 1986. However, there was only one Latin teacher and I don't know if she has retired unreplaced.
Now, with the growing nationwide emphasis on improving standardized test scores, Latin is making a comeback. Several studies, some dating to the late 1970s, have shown students who take Latin tend to have higher verbal scores, according to the National Council of State Supervisors of Foreign Languages.
Surely, no one is surprised. More than half of all English words have Latin roots. Learning Latin may have educational benefits not conferred by other langauges, too:
In 2003, students who took Latin to fulfill their foreign language requirements had a mean score of 559 on the verbal component of the SATs. French students scored 524 and Spanish students 501.The mean national verbal SAT score was 507.
Does taking Latin make one smarter, or do the smart kids take Latin, I wonder? Some teachers believe Latin is the cause; higher test scores are the effect:
"Students occasionally come in and say they've raised their verbal scores. I have one this year who went up 100 points after two years of Latin - she was thrilled," said Allison Richards, a Latin teacher at Caesar Rodney High School in Camden and president of the Delaware Classical Association. "There's also an advantage in higher-order thinking skills that any foreign language will develop. But Latin helps in particular because Latin is a very logical language."
Probably why I loved both Latin and geometry.
My experiences with Latin were 100% positive, thanks in no small part to my teacher, Mrs. Easterling. I remember we all had to write, on the first day, a little blurb about why we were taking the course. Everyone else wrote, "Because I want to go to med school" or "Because my parents are making me." I wrote that I had read in fantasy books that if one wanted to raise a demon, one had to use an ancient language like Latin or Greek. Hence, Latin seemed so much more practical to me than Spanish or French.
Not only did Mrs. Easterling not call the school counselor, she took me under her wing (I was very shy at the time) and made me feel like her favorite student. I have a feeling Latin teachers are themselves not cut from the same mold as everyone else, and their quirky love of this "dead" language is a delight to behold.
Latin, sic itur ad astra.
Posted by kswygert at January 5, 2004 11:23 AM