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December 3, 2007
Latin, the eternal language
I have long believed that all students should have some experience with the Latin language. Sadly, it was not offered in my high school by the time I was old enough. It had been offered years ago. But I did manage to take a year's worth of Latin in college. Truly, a knowledge of Latin helps to make you a better writer and speaker--or at least I can see the effect of my own study of the language on my own speaking and writing. This is likely due to the fact that knowing Latin causes you to be keenly aware of grammar.
So I was delighted to see this in the NY Times:
AT first glance, it doesn’t seem tragic that our leaders don’t study Latin anymore. But it is no coincidence that the professionalization of politics — which encourages budding politicians to think of education as mere career preparation — has occurred during an age of weak rhetoric, shifting moral values, clumsy grammar and a terror of historical references and eternal values that the Romans could teach us a thing or two about. As they themselves might have said, “Roma urbs aeterna; Latina lingua aeterna.”
...
Following in his father’s footsteps, George W. Bush studied Latin at Phillips Academy (the school’s mottoes: “Non Sibi” or not for self, and “Finis Origine Pendet,” the end depends on the beginning).
But then President Bush was lucky enough to catch the tail end of the American classical tradition. Soon after he left Andover in 1964, the study of Latin in America collapsed. In 1905, 56 percent of American high school students studied Latin. By 1977, a mere 6,000 students took the National Latin Exam.
Recently there have been signs of a revival. The number taking the National Latin Exam in 2005, for instance, shot up to 134,873.
Why is this a good thing? Not all Romans were models of virtue — Caligula’s Latin was pretty good. And not all 134,873 of those Latin students are going to turn into Jeffersons.
But what they gain is a glimpse into the past that provides a fuller, richer view of the present. Know Latin and you discern the Roman layer that lies beneath the skin of the Western world. And you open up 500 years of Western literature (plus an additional thousand years of Latin prose and poetry).
Read the whole thing.
Posted by William Polley at December 3, 2007 12:48 PM
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Comments
I had 2 years of Latin in high school. It was distinctly unglamorous.
Posted by: Gabriel M. at December 3, 2007 3:36 PM
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Posted by: William Polley at December 3, 2007 5:04 PM