A Living Language

...The European child coming to America with a knowledge of French, German, Italian, Greek, or Hebrew, almost invariably puts to shame our American-born pupils who speak only the mother tongue and precious little of that...

...By the way, if school time is to be spent in drilling children in history, geography, civics, let such drilling be given after the age of twelve or fourteen...

...It is concise, organic, graceful...

...What passages in modern or ancient writ are more worthwhile, whether from a literary, linguistic, or pedagogical viewpoint, than such as these, of which we have a rich and abundant sunburst: "De profundis clamavi ad te Domine...

...In this country dreadful onslaughts have been made on classical training...

...Concerning his own struggles with the classics, Sir Esme Howard once remarked to the writer—"It seems to me that I did little during seven or eight years of my school life except study Greek and Latin, yet neither subject made any real appeal to me for I saw in them no practical use...

...They will be surprised and delighted to find themselves actually talking Latin...

...The superstitious restriction of interest in Latin to a certain very limited period in the history of the language has been the bane of Latin study in this country...

...Scientific" methods are fatal in the primary school, no matter what the subject...

...That Latin is hard for children, no one will deny, but it is not too hard...

...In trying to make a foreign language interesting there is always danger of making it unidiomatic...

...Why, ask they, should we be afraid to let young people read the postAugustan authors...

...This would be true wisdom, because, as Saint Thomas Aquinas says, "they are called wise who put things in their right order and control them well...

...The kindergarten method has triumphantly worked its way up to the university...

...things that appeal to the heart and mind at seven and still more at seventy...

...They do not seem to realize that a knowledge of meanings is essential...

...In the days of the Spanish Armada the wrecked warriors found the peasants of the Irish coast able to understand and converse in Latin...

...ad locum, unde exeunt flumina, revertuntur ut iterum fluant...

...Can young children learn a dead language ? Perhaps not...

...Their imagination and enthusiasm take fire...

...Does there exist a more fitting instrument for enriching the mind, refining the taste, and elevating the feelings, than the Latin Vulgate, studied side by side with the English translation...

...The difficulties in a child's education have been puffed up into so-called tremendous problems, so that those mothers and teachers with the instinct and the intuition which alone can overcome these difficulties, have abandoned the field to the standardizing pedagogue...

...He began Latin early...

...It forms the philological basis of the group of languages spoken by the greatest number of people the world over, including English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese...

...too late to take that grip on the mind which an early beginning assures...

...Failure is inevitable...

...Schoolmen who have learned their psychology from textbooks sometimes assert that public school pupils could not learn Latin as they had seen it taught in certain private classes, implying presumably, that the children of socially registered parents have a monopoly of brains and perseverance...

...It was the main part of the curriculum until the student's facility in language made practical the beginning of philosophical studies...

...He is confusing vermiform with vermifuge of childhood recollection, while vestigial is dimly reminiscent of garments...

...Because we have not inured them to serious effort and responsibility, their minds have not developed as they should, and they are not fit for serious intellectual work...

...For over a thousand years Latin was the international language of the Christian countries...

...Another point frequently mentioned as an obstacle to the extension of Latin teaching is that teachers qualified to teach Latin are lamentably scarce...

...There is, however, a wealth of material within its borders to fulfil all the requirements for an attractive and instructive reader, adapted to the capacity of young boys and girls, and graded so as to provide an easy, safe and pleasant ascent to more complex writings...

...But Latin is not a dead language except as teaching makes it so...

...By way of summer courses, a good teacher could acquire Latin enough to carry her with flying colors through the primary years...

...True education implies discipline, not for discipline's sake but for character's sake...

...Latin as a mere appendage of a curriculum is not worth much...

...As things are now, Latin is begun too late for mastery by any but the extraordinary...

...Here is no orderly progression from the simple to the complex, no mastering of one set of difficulties before plunging into another set of greater ones...

...An additional advantage is that English literature has developed in close contact with Latin literature...

...No great argument will be needed to persuade those who regard education as primarily character-making, that Latin is the most available vehicle through which the school, whether religious or secular, may lead its pupils to spiritual things...

...The favored position of Latin in the high school curriculum has been deprecated in the strongest terms...

...35* THE COMMONWEAL February 3, 1926 A LIVING LANGUAGE By ELLA FRANCES LYNCH OBVIOUSLY, it would be of little avail to rehearse the defects of what is called modern education, if we were helpless to better conditions...

...Compared with either French or English, Latin presents no difficulties of spelling or pronunciation...

...It is a pity that it should be regarded as a possession for scholars only...

...In the middle-ages and for a long time after, Latin was learned and used habitually by great numbers of people to whom it was not the mother-tongue...

...Some of my teachers were great scholars, yet they did not, probably could not, converse in either tongue...

...But in Latin, more, perhaps, than in any modern language, we have available for young beginners a treasure-house of vibrant, living, classical literature, if by classic we mean not only immortal but gifted with eternal youth...

...To teach Latin, it is more important to know how to teach than to know Latin...

...Education is not all romance...

...The intensive study of words makes the child a totally different human being from the usual product of graded schooling, and enables him to learn in far less time the ordinary textbook assignments...

...What could be more illogical than to make of the first Latin lesson for callow brains a disquisition on declension, gender, number, case...

...Their ambitious followers of this generation have almost succeeded in turning it into an exact science, as if a child's mind and soul could be vivisected like a poor dumb guinea pig...

...Why choose for beginners the books of Caesar, who stirs no responsive chord in the modern young heart, and keep after Caesar for three wearisome years...

...It takes a great deal more ingenuity than formerly to make children realize that "before culture the gods have placed sweat...

...This done, each new lesson will make on the mind a distinct impression instead of a smear...

...Pronunciation, translation, analysis, declension, conjugation, assault the youthful mind in hostile hordes...

...Early and copious reading of vulgar Latin is not more likely to kill the classical spirit than a graded literary reader is calculated to intercept a movement toward Shakespeare...

...No method can work miracles...

...I did not know that human beings could converse in these languages...

...too late to bring into the mind the order, method, system which should be established during the habit-forming years...

...If such an attempt at pedagogical reform is seriously undertaken, the subject of a secondary language will be given an important place...

...Or: "Omnia flumina intrant in mare, et mare non redundat...

...There is scarcely a psychological, pedagogical, or tactical blunder possible in the field of teaching that is not a regular part of the Latin course...

...A majority of school failures are due to the fact that the pupils do not know the meanings of words...

...Even seventy-five years ago, travelers in parts of Rumania found the peasantry speaking Latin because it was the language of their schoolbooks and the only language which they could read and write...

...Its vocabulary is large, its spelling is practically phonetic, and its roots have unchanging significance...

...Ninety percent of our teachers, if permitted to do so, would have their pupils read a considerable amount of easy Latin before taking up the first classical author...

...Such precepts sound like moralizing when taught merely as precepts, but in the guise of Latin the child seizes upon each word with the full strength of his mind, and thus the soul is fed...

...In the Latin tongue, expressed with a simplicity that equals its beauty, we find the loftiest reaches of which the human spirit is capable...

...And is it not an agreeable fiction that students under the present system ever develop any Latin style, classical or non-classical ? Instead of forcing upon beginners a lexicon of antiquated warlike weapons, schemes, movements, give them a vocabulary they can comprehend and use to express ordinary facts, even such as the color of the cow, the size of the elephant, or the temerity of the dog in chasing the yellow cat...

...Through the medium of the Vulgate, Latin could be divested of its terrors for beginners and could be made accessible to everincreasing numbers of young school children...

...There is no valid reason why Latin should not be taught to all children in the elementary schools...

...Indeed, when Americans come to a realization of the enormous advantage held by those who master two languages in childhood, bilingual teaching in our elementary schools will be made compulsory...

...Had anyone shown me that I could buy a quarter of beef or mutton February 3, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 353 in Greek or Latin, or that people once alive had really done so, the entire outlook would have been changed for me...

...English itself is not intelligible to those who know no Latin...

...Let us return to more natural methods...

...The "powerful weakness" of the modern school is the substitution of "interest" and "enthusiasm" for discipline...

...It is no small thing that in these days of realism we can place within the reach of children such passages as: "Aurem audientem, et oculum videntem, Dominus fecit utrumque," or "Jehovah pastor meus est...

...We treat strongbodied, trouble-hunting boys and girls like mental invalids...

...Latin is the best second language for English-speaking children...

...And just as obviously, we are not helpless...

...Teachers lament that science instruction is not particularly helpful, because every textbook is so "loaded down with technical terms" that it is difficult for the students to find their way through that field...

...Take the Vulgate...

...They speak truly...

...Its cultural value is as great for the carpenter or the plumber as for the clergyman or the physician, and whatever is truly cultural is truly practical...

...Not by any means is the entire Vulgate to be treated as suitable reading or sufficiently easy for young Latinists...

...It is evident that if children acquire a large vocabulary easily retained by its resemblance to English, and if, at the same time, they are meeting singly the simpler facts of grammar, they can be made to feel at ease in the language...

...It should be possible, as it is undeniably essential, for the modern school to abandon its irrational curriculum and reoccupy itself with a rich, uncomplicated course of instruction which bears no uncertain resemblance to the model whereby great leaders have been trained, and which takes into account the real values of life and their relative importance...

...Its opponents hold that the training is long and tedious in proportion to the necessity as well as to the results, and that not many of our college graduates now attain the power to read, write, speak, and understand Latin...

...There is nothing under heaven to prevent the child of seven or eight beginning Latin, progressing steadily in it, and at ten or twelve facing its reasonable difficulties...

...He prayed in Latin...

...Here is a young man struggling to acquire by muscular effort the statement that "the vermiform appendix is a type of vestigial structure...

...A clear understanding of words, based on a knowledge of their derivation, would render the course of science easy and profitable...

...Another hindrance to success has been our unreasoning devotion to classical literature...

...But by eliminating the great mass of worthless information, and substituting a carefully arranged course embracing Latin, and including the regular daily use of the English dictionary, we should bring about an economy of time, labor and effort that would more than double the real value of a scholastic year...

...idiomatically correct, intrinsically of interest...

...However, this method, which Dr...

...The great linguists answer that the failure is due to improper methods of teaching rather than to intrinsic linguistic difficulties...

...It is pitiful and it is shameful to see youths of fourteen to eighteen doing work that is fit only for children of eight to twelve...

...The simplest way is the best...

...Then those pupils who do not enter high school but who have been trained to think, and to think before they speak, will have an excellent grounding for their life work and the proper management of their leisure, while those destined for prolonged schooling will be equipped to profit by advanced instruction...

...Eliot says is the only right method to use in teaching any subject, is fully effective only if utilized at the right stage of mental development...

...Indeed, in just a few months of high school pupils could learn all the history, geography, civics, and so on, that they now dally over for years in the grades...

...A few questions expose the fact that he does not visualize a single word in the sentence...

...Great teachers like Comenius and Froebel, great writers on education like Jean Paul Richter, looked on pedagogy as an art...

...The obstacle is not so formidable...