Latin and Mass Education
Donnelly, Francis P.
June 2, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 97 LATIN AND MASS...
...Students, therefore, begin creative composition, is omitted, except as a means Latin with us two years later than in Germany, France, to the science of grammar...
...tion...
...A liberal and flexible scheme many other like qualities will be developed if the stu- of authors is proposed...
...or Ph.D...
...As for madmen Beauce, the De la Vignes certainly thought they were with no or reluctant families, why not attach them to doing their best for themselves, religion, and the object religious communities as jesters were attached to royal of their solicitude...
...F. A. Wolf claimed philology as a distinct university The Classical Investigation, in its list of objectives, subject, Latin has tended more and more to be a mentions and stresses the study of Latin as literature, science...
...We shall then have left cism, the primary objective of the early college course...
...clear, beau...
...the report, quoted from the Bureau objectives of the report of the Classical Investigation of Education, 1923-24, holds for other years, then may be grouped under these three heads...
...teenth century had its way, should be the power of The last stage in the study of the classics, which thinking and of expressing thought...
...THE PIED BROTHERS' PENSIONER By HELEN PARRY EDEN I F EVER I become a trifle eccentric, I shall take at the age of sixteen by his highly respectable (some it very ill of my friends and relatives if they shut say inconspicuously noble) French relatives to the n up with- anyone more demented than them- guardianship of the Pied Brothers : and in particular selves...
...Appreciation is synonymous with critihigh-school...
...All our though mastered fully for understanding, was sub- great college professors of a generation ago were ordinated to style...
...Certainly forbearance as with a garment and hug the warmth...
...idealizing, of clarifying ideas and persuading their t*ful and forceful expression, were the purposes of acceptance...
...Electivism beyond marshaling evidence, but he must prove his has fostered the same tendency to equalization...
...The he quarrel between Attics and Asiatics substance of all art...
...Now there are three stages vigorous, can be learned without knowing the lan- and three purposes clearly discernible in teaching litgwaWs...
...in the twentieth century and, in fact, ever since ination schemes, to give some cohesion to their systems...
...the excellence of Latin and Greek literature may relegated science to the university...
...In a uniture...
...of the art of expression...
...Lectures the artistic...
...there will be a change from correct literary expression One thing in this report might excite surprise...
...older than the nineteenth century...
...now colleges have become in part pre-professional schools...
...That life purPerse School in Cambridge, England, are reversals to pose is absent in secondary education, and all colleges the earlier type of school...
...And the imbecile, unlike I first knew him and sixty-six when he died, and I the average religious, could lap himself round with never heard that he had a day's unhappiness...
...but literature, and yet it is- only as literature everything else in the school schedule teaches its like that they...
...Latin formerly was not a uni- of antiquity asking attention, and the exclusion of comversity subject nor was it handled as such...
...Whatever be the teacher's dent be awakened from the passivity of listener and belief about the objectives in teaching Latin, he can be made to furnish meaning rather than words, to find free scope to realize his faith in the fine suggestranslate with imagination rather than vocal memory...
...He was sixty when now exercise on each other...
...His status with the Fathers in general lunatic I. ever met in such circumstances-John Theo- I have already defined in my allocution on forbearance, dore de la...
...June 2, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 97 LATIN AND MASS EDUCATION By FRANCIS P. DONNELLY NEARLY one million students in the colleges and is taught with university ends and by university methsecondary schools of the United States took ods...
...Not so in yass.ou- the English teacher by having composition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries...
...and the study of style...
...seems to have been the ideal of the sixteenth century Ii would show, however, that the classics have al- when literature was no mere study of words, but meant wa '.a...
...I never saw it...
...or subject-matter...
...Such experiences will be supirb...
...In the Jesuit system- Greek was used to help and artistic, and even today (here are Platonists who La4tim Both now can help the vernacular...
...He will already completed furnished examples in every kind not dwarf the human and personal attractiveness of of poetry: narrative, descriptive, epic, lyric, dramatic...
...the art of embodying truth, beauty, and language teaching in Greece and Rome...
...Little to interesting and forceful literary expression...
...In thus establishing their half-witted nephew sional lunatic among hard-bitten professionals...
...Many of these methods have already passed to be able to write and stage a play, to compose and below even the junior high schools...
...grammar is a science...
...critiless, than two graduates...
...Understanding concerns itself with the content Composition...
...The mor- The art of composition should be the primary obtality in, college usually cuts down the ten entrants to jective of the high-school course in literature...
...Rome and the West were Experience furnishes facts enough to cultivate literaJane 2...
...Did not Greek litera- the university reacted, making the study of the classics tn;a largely create Latin literature...
...Latin, and...
...it is informational or scientific in It is cheering to know that a million are studying nature...
...Rouse's life purpose make the individual act...
...The only subject connected with The spread of the junior high school anticipates, but Latin you cannot find in Sandys's Companion to Latin does not shorten secondary education, and most Studies is the art of rhetoric, or style, and that was the American colleges are now universities at freshman only purpose Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, and year with all the methods of a university but none the renaissance had in studying Latin and Greek litera- of its maturity or responsibility or unity...
...and cousin in virtuous and dignified surroundings, at Mild madmen are better with their families and a sufficient distance from the hereditary estate in La their families are better with them...
...Perhaps Sandys, writing chiefly for England, versity mature students unify their studies by a prostill holds to the old objective, as do, in general, the fession and assume a responsibility toward a profesEnglish and French schools, where prose and verse sion which has not yet been selected at college...
...It is the offspring The figures are supplied by the excellent report of the of German scholarship which seeks to learn everyAmerican Classical League, "The Classical Investiga- thing about something rather than the thing itself...
...our schools two features which Studiorum which was promulgated in a definitive edi- have tended to turn secondary education into the unition and imposed upon Jesuit colleges everywhere versity type...
...composition continues dominant...
...Rouse had in mind German universities study Latin...
...English, and so Latin and Greek are taught as every- Naturally, literature should teach literature as thing...
...Latin today position except for grammatical drill, make the atTHE COMMONWEAL June 2,, i9-26 tainment of such literary objectives quite difficult...
...they give variety and interest to the dull drill tury ideals...
...As college approaches, therefore, students at Latin, the future of Latin is dark...
...literature to any specialty, but aided by the philologist's and in all types of prose : letters, narration, descrip- acute analysis and by the historian's careful sifting and tiony essay, history, speeches...
...Fr.ejr.,h...
...The obLatin has a higher mortality than it should have...
...Byzantium and the East kept to rhetoric mind is fitted to receive and...
...The precepts of beauty in style and made instantly available are now beside the Latin of force in style had each a year in which the course teacher to put life and novelty into his class...
...He was expected in the Jesuit system versity...
...England and Germany are not dominated in as the exercise of human faculties, educational and ensecondary education by university aims and methods...
...digest such information...
...ahpnt- 8,ooo to teach our 940,0©0...
...But in American Had America taken its secondary education entire schools rhetoric is handled mostly as a science, and from Germany, it would resemble France and Enghistorically...
...of the historic development of classical studies...
...The only objective of earlier education, Classical Investigation...
...Greek was correlated with Latin, and later again through his enthusiasm...
...by history and science when the growing snuggle...
...Unless the inspir- and science, the primary objective of the later college ing...
...To the lay brothers he was acceptJohn Theodore, you must understand, was consigned able because the care of his little room and some slight...
...but classical arts and literature are still un- erature : understanding, appreciation, and composirivaledd and are still able to inspire and direct artists...
...The specious objection of Milton the cleavage between the scientific and artistic ap- that science must precede literature because one canpvoach, declared itself, when Gorgias stressed form not express what one does not know, leaves out of ate} opened- schools to showy dilettantism, and Plato account the vast field of human experience, of perstrteesed substance and would exclude poets from his sonal reactions to environment, which have been the ideal state...
...need have no art of composition demands equality of time and treatment...
...The mortality in and word...
...They help to make literary com- gation to prevent the realization of the sixteenth-cenposers...
...R me was, in some respects, a phase of the same plemented...
...From the other end, too, Germany was the the expression was everything, and the content, occasion of a downward university trend...
...To begin with, he was highly popular This, at any rate, was how it worked with the only at the Priory...
...The principles of criti- by the spade of the archaeologist, the classical teacher cism for prose and poetry and for oratory were ex- can make bright and beautiful that past which lives pounded...
...Literature is the creabe were correlated with the native tongue in the tion of man, and its beauty, if revealed and practised, fist models of verse and prose literature, producing will educate our Latinists and hold them fascinated...
...9q,ooa in college, but there are only 40,000...
...Wolf in 1777 deriot be made educative by composition in their own manded a place for- the classics in the university, and language, why not in English...
...Only ten of cism...
...This first contrast between the art teaching but the large number of informational objectives, the of Latin and the science teaching is not unlike the enriched history of the past, the various new sciences second great contrast...
...The jectives are not mutually exclusive, but as all cannot 94D,ooo in high school should be represented by be taught at once, they must be sorted...
...It has always seemed to me both extravagant to the prior, for the time being, of the Priory of and unkind to put a more or less amateur and occa- Cope...
...students in general is great...
...for his own sake...
...There the rhetorical currents report repeatedly asserts and shows that Latin has no ran thin and disappeared...
...To make up for the two lost years history of education meant composition chiefly...
...To ensure unity and to make The primary purpose of Latin literature, if the six- artists, one teacher should be responsible...
...The community could con- old French prior, and in charge of a young English centrate on one official imbecile the forbearance they lay brother, at the age of sixteen...
...Rouse, "is no courses in Latin during the year 1923-1924...
...This is made...
...Classical science is mostly mathematics teaching mathematics ; history teaching aftigpated...
...land in school age, in length of course, and in methIn the sixteenth-century treatment of the authors ods...
...The million who After the composition stage of art comes the criti- study Latin are bound to profit in interest, in art, in cal stage of appraisal...
...foreign languages, these are subordinate objectives on There is, however, nothing in the Classical Investithe language side...
...Helpful and sec- will be only for few, is the scientific stage, where ondary will be grammatical drill, whose general prin- facts become predominant...
...Greek are taught by the same Aristotle's justification of art and poetry and rhetoric teacher...
...stage was looked forward to and prepared for by A thousand sources of interest newly opened up or the authors read...
...The overrun by barbarians...
...li ? Why, then, may not Latin and Greek still form The ability to write and to speak is a purpose literary waiters...
...The general habits of mind: attention, modified and will be more modified to meet the recomorder, accuracy, imaginative realization, these and mendation of the report...
...Our elementary schools were organized during 1599...
...Perhaps the real and the normal re- rather than German gymnasia...
...Was not Cicero, chiefly scientific, at least in Germany and America, as Noewman himself testifies, Newman's master in Eng- though not to the same extent in France and England...
...been taught with creative composition as, the the art of thinking, of reasoning, of imagining, of ultimate, end, Grammar, poetry, oratory...
...Science reigns given up composition in the classics and dare not tres- supreme even in the teaching of literature...
...in the old regime for the generality of children who The school of art has been changed into a school were not to go on to further education," reports the of science...
...1926 THE COMMONWEAL 99 ture, and then the mind made capable of expression by the coordination of three languages perfect mastery by literary creation is ready for university work...
...The renaissance marked the reaction of by actual work on the part of the student...
...This comparison would show, first of on an eight-year basis in mistaken conformity to the all, that the contrast between sixteenth-century and length of the Prussian volkschulern, which stood apart twentieth-century secondary education is profound...
...In France, look upon such a language study as rather trivial...
...The one who graces his name today a dominant subject because every subject in the course with M.A...
...tion...
...Under- or critics, but historians, grammarians, archaeologists, standing of English words, derivations, spelling, tech- philologists, and other scientists are produced or at nical terms of science, Latin quotations, ability to read least lavishly catered to in learned lectures...
...in self-expression is the way to artistry...
...Grammar itself in the and England...
...Very early good in language...
...Composition is the last stage, the stage of art, every hundred in the high school reach college, but where literature makes writers and speakers...
...have survived...
...report of the Classical Investigation can keep and university...
...College entrance examinations have been of class...
...Lecworth by contributing some new fact to the store of tures are, at their best, only informational...
...They suggest the question : Why do one million Perhaps Dr...
...are now trying by tutors, by student counselors, by In the sixteenth century Latin was an art and taught prescribed four-year majors, by comprehensive examas such...
...Appreciation has to do with the literary form Latin, but it is not cheering to note that Latin does of the content, the artistic presentation in both thought n o hold its devotees, in college...
...households, in the middle-ages...
...Education barism, philosophy and science won supremacy in the is a habit and is not acquired by passive listening, but middle-ages...
...The current method," says Dr...
...In this stage not writers cipless apply to English and to all languages...
...All the if the number in...
...classical philosophy, although in much still history, and so forth...
...In the recovery from barpower of automatically achieving results...
...The Ratio Studiorum at the close of the do not make artists nor form habits...
...This would be an ex- John Theodore came to Cope in the wake of an celltmt plan all around...
...Latin is no longer deliver a speech...
...tions of the Classical Investigation...
...nobling, does not seem to be thoroughly held as a But, in our schools the Latin and Greek teachers have fundamental dogma in education...
...American educators, sponses may be found in a comparison between the through failure to understand German secondary eduClassical League's report and the famous Ratio cation, introduced into...
...Professor Baker's dramatic workshop and not demand any action or even application unless a the imitators it has happily inspired, and Dr...
...renaissance made art supreme in the lower school and If...
...Vigne of Cope in the County of Wessex, but a few unchastened spirits loved John Theodore the pensioner of the Pied Brothers...
...The finished student of the old trained in Germany, and they introduced electivism, system was a master of arts, a doctor, a teacher in departments, lectures, and all the machinery of a unithe strict sense...
...In the sixteenth century this science, in culture from this remarkable document...
...They do science...
Vol. 4 • June 1926 • No. 4
