What Happened to Latin Among the Romans?
Douglas Domingo-Forasté, California State University Long Beach
Instructive Lessons 4-6
Fourth, we need to adjust to a changing population in our schools. At least in our large cities, a significant proportion of our students are non-white and non-English speaking. We must demonstrate that Latin offers them as much as it does the child of privilege and as much as computers. We must demonstrate the practical value of Latin for knowledge of language and facility with reading and writing in general and the doors a knowledge of Latin, Greek, ancient history and culture open to students. Unless we tacitly choose to relegate Latin to private secondary schools and wealthy public school districts, we must make Latin accessible and attractive to those for whom studying Latin and Greek might easily seem arcane and frivolous. At one point in its history, probably after one of several accidents in the Pacific, Los Angeles High forced all its students to demonstrate they could swim. Clearly Walter Edwards made Latin equally important for many students. We need to extol the value of Latin for not only its intrinsic interest, but for its ability to provide access to a milieu that the students of elite private New England schools inhabit.
Fifth, the University of Southern California, before it was turning out national champion football teams and Heisman Trophy winners, produced a cadre of high school Latin teachers to staff those many public high schools. Today USC does not offer a teaching credential and the only active credential program in the Los Angeles six-county area (Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Bernadino, Riverside, Santa Barbara) with its 21 million people is at California State University, Long Beach. One out of every 14 people in the United States lives in this six county megalopolis and for that population one university department with eight faculty handle the responsibility of replacing an aging public school Latin teacher force and providing credentialed teachers for new positions. In California, the Department of Education process to certify university credential certification programs is excruciatingly painful. College faculty who write the material demonstrating the ability to teach subject matter competency must learn the educational dialect of bureaucratese and submit countless revisions of their proposals to offer the credential. The payoff hardly seems worth the effort to many. But it is essential. Though some states offer credential reciprocity, many teachers cannot transfer their credentials between states. California is notorious for this problem. Thus each state must have its own active credential programs. We cannot completely rely on the University of Massachusetts to produce credentialed teachers for the country. Moreover, the No Child Left Behind Act mandates fully credentialed teachers in the near future and will exacerbate the current national teacher shortage.
Sixth, effective cooperation with university schools of education is is imperative. Some have long disparaged the faculty of education and its curriculum. What students learn in their education classes seems relatively simple compared to the intricacies of Latin conditional sentences. Yet at a minimum, on a purely practical level, their help in establishing teaching credential programs is a sine qua non in a literal sense. But classicists must also learn to value the knowledge our colleagues in education impart. Educational methodology may not be the complete waste of time we may have assumed it to be. An understanding of the future periphrastic does not in and of itself make an effective Latin teacher. Knowing modes of classroom discipline and practicing documentation of lesson planning, and even understanding adolescent health issues may be necessary components of a good secondary Latin teacher. As teachers more and more act in loco parentis in helping students cope with the difficulties of adolescence, a course in health may be just what the doctor ordered for aspiring Latin teachers.
Finally, we must seek out public schools where Latin once flourished and attempt to restore Latin again. For some schools Latin provides a level of prestige that sets them apart and makes them the equivalent of expensive private high schools. The Classics Department at California State University, Long Beach has entered into a discussion with Los Angeles High, about 25 miles from Long Beach, to allow it to teach a section of beginning Latin (101A and B) on the Los Angeles High campus to its seniors, While the former high school principal was interested, several problems with the current administration still remain and the goal is to have the program in place by fall 2006. A recent student riot between African American and Hispanic students has diverted the current administration’s attention from the possibility. Other difficulties also persist. Los Angeles High is on different tracks so that students take vacations at different times and go to school at different times. Classroom space is always an intractable problem. Unlike at a college, teachers stay with their classrooms and use them for offices as well. Where then does on put a Latin that meets only once per day and may not have the same time parameters as a high school class? Law enforcement clearance to work with minors is an important issue in this day of potential sexual assault by teachers. Money to pay student registration has remained a sticking point. Servicing California State University, Long Beach students’ need for beginning courses and yet providing enough extra resources to pay a teacher to teach at Los Angeles High is another issue. Potential competition with modern languages has made the language faculty less than willing partners in this proposal. Required concurrent enrollment in advanced French or Spanish may allay that worry.
Is Latin likely to make a huge resurgence? Probably not to the degree or the position of Susan Dorsey’s day. But if Latin can take hold in prominent schools with good students and good teachers, it is likely to influence another generation of students as it did so many of Walter Edwards’ students.
