Great way of putting it - neither can help it, but it makes me sad that we could - and don’t - offer students a wider choice of subjects. They miss out. We miss out - how many people miss out on being brilliant at X just because they were never given the chance to try X?
A long time ago when I was in grad school (in Chicago) we were homeschooling. I was studying folks like Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. Latin was for them a core part of their minds. My two oldest daughters (then perhaps 6 and 8 years old) and I enrolled in Miss McMullen's School of Classical Studies to study Latin. Miss McMullen was a retired teacher living at the end of the earth - Grand Forks, North Dakota. You bought a text and its accompanying workbook. You filled in a workbook lesson and sent it to her with a dollar bill. She would mark up your work and encourage you - in peacock blue ink. (Fountain pen.) No other fees. The three of us worked on Latin together, in parallel.
A little later I bought my first home computer - a TI/99 4A. (16kb of RAM!) I developed and used two full-screen Latin drill programs - one for declensions and the other for conjugations.
I would have been the parent who was enthusiastic and excited about Latin, and awed to meet a real Latin teacher in person.
I'm so glad my school offered Latin too. The pressures of other subjects meant I could only take 2 of 3 years offered, but it's served me so well in so many things, particularly in all languages. I got 1 question on the SAT right simply because, although I didn't know the answer, I recognized it from its Latin ancestor -- and my score got me free tuition into a very competitive college, plus offers from others nationwide.
It does make me occasionally slip up when speaking Spanish to my Mexican neighbors, but we manage. Really helps with reading Spanish, though.
When my parents travelled to Italy my dad spoke Latin but put -o on the end of everything. He helped an American tourist catch a train at Florence station and to this day my my mum thinks he put her on the wrong train
I did my year of Latin in the third form. The only thing I remember was that the teacher had ear hair growth like pampas grass. We called him "Tufty". We all would have listened to you though.
People who have no Latin are like color-blind visitors to a gorgeous garden.
Great way of putting it - neither can help it, but it makes me sad that we could - and don’t - offer students a wider choice of subjects. They miss out. We miss out - how many people miss out on being brilliant at X just because they were never given the chance to try X?
As someone who taught Classical Civilisations for years (and absolutely loved it). I too have had to defend why it's all so important...
After my five minute rant they'd have no choice but to concede....
A long time ago when I was in grad school (in Chicago) we were homeschooling. I was studying folks like Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. Latin was for them a core part of their minds. My two oldest daughters (then perhaps 6 and 8 years old) and I enrolled in Miss McMullen's School of Classical Studies to study Latin. Miss McMullen was a retired teacher living at the end of the earth - Grand Forks, North Dakota. You bought a text and its accompanying workbook. You filled in a workbook lesson and sent it to her with a dollar bill. She would mark up your work and encourage you - in peacock blue ink. (Fountain pen.) No other fees. The three of us worked on Latin together, in parallel.
A little later I bought my first home computer - a TI/99 4A. (16kb of RAM!) I developed and used two full-screen Latin drill programs - one for declensions and the other for conjugations.
I would have been the parent who was enthusiastic and excited about Latin, and awed to meet a real Latin teacher in person.
Miss McMullen deserves legendary status.
Reading this brought back lots of memories - a great post, thank you!
You are welcome!
I'm so glad my school offered Latin too. The pressures of other subjects meant I could only take 2 of 3 years offered, but it's served me so well in so many things, particularly in all languages. I got 1 question on the SAT right simply because, although I didn't know the answer, I recognized it from its Latin ancestor -- and my score got me free tuition into a very competitive college, plus offers from others nationwide.
It does make me occasionally slip up when speaking Spanish to my Mexican neighbors, but we manage. Really helps with reading Spanish, though.
When my parents travelled to Italy my dad spoke Latin but put -o on the end of everything. He helped an American tourist catch a train at Florence station and to this day my my mum thinks he put her on the wrong train
I did my year of Latin in the third form. The only thing I remember was that the teacher had ear hair growth like pampas grass. We called him "Tufty". We all would have listened to you though.
The tufts didn't put you off Romanitas, at least!