What Happened to Latin Among the Romans?
Douglas Domingo-Forasté, California State University Long Beach
Latin and Los Angeles High
Los Angeles' first public high school was located downtown, near what is now First and Broadway. Los Angeles High School, created on an elementary school site in 1873, cost of $20,000. In 1882, to make room for the County Court House, the school moved within downtown to the present site of the Board of Education. In 1917, it moved again to its current location on Olympic Boulevard in West Los Angeles with 1,937 students. Los Angeles High was always known for its superior buildings and “always a tower and always a clock” was its catchphrase. Sadly, the 1971 Sylmar earthquake structurally damaged its beautiful neo-gothic building. While the public, its alumni and school officials debated the possibilities of restoration, a fire broke out in the building and the Board of Education let out contracts for the building’s demolition and a new poured concrete complex on the same site.
One of the great wonders of Los Angeles is Los Angeles High. In a city that until the 1880’s land boom barely registered a notation on the map, perhaps the second most important classical public high school in the nation was founded. The curriculum was roughly the same as St. Vincent’s classical curriculum and the 1898 Blue & White yearbook includes of set of stern-faced Latin and Greek teachers headed by Mr. A. E. Baker and included Susan M. Dorsey who would go on to be the first female Superintendent of Schools in Los Angeles. She is honored in another Los Angeles high school named after her. She also established a Classical Center because a teacher at Franklin High, Miss Josephine Abel, “had a passion for realien and under her inspiration the pupils made up quite a museum of articles reminiscent of Roman civilization.” Those artifacts were later dispersed to various museums after World War II.
Los Angeles High had three courses of study, the literary, the classical and the scientific. In 1881 the literary course required four years of Latin and the Classical course four years of Latin and three of Greek, though Greek was reduced to two years by 1884. The curriculum attempted to fulfill the entrance requirements of the University of California founded in 1865. Modern languages were introduced at Los Angeles High in 1893. And in this same year the demise of classics might have been predicted had the situation not changed. Total enrollment stood at 675, but only 282 were in Latin; and a mere 25 were studying Greek. Only twenty years earlier every student had taken Latin and most had taken Greek. Incidentally, Los Angeles High’s spinoff commercial high school, Polytechnic High, founded in 1897, also taught Latin. Manual Arts High School, founded in 1907, was the first high school in Los Angeles not to offer Latin.
