A Complete Education

I have a Jeopardy question for you.  You know how to play Jeopardy, right?  The host gives the answer, and the contestant  provides the question.

The category is “Classical Education.” 

The answer is:  "This course of study improves SAT scores and facilitates the learning of modern Romance languages as well as technical vocabularies in science, medicine, and law."

The question is . . . "What is the study of Latin?"

 These are indeed the standard “Reasons Students Should Study Latin.”  They are impressive, but it turns out that these reasons are minor compared to the real value of Latin study, which is twofold:

1. Mental Development
2. English Language Skills

I won’t have time tonight to develop these two reasons fully, but I hope to whet your appetite to read an article by Cheryl Lowe of Memoria Press called “An Apology for Latin and Math” and watch a short video by our friends at Classical Conversations called “Three Reasons to Study Latin (for Normal People Not Language Geeks).”  All my comments tonight are taken from these two resources.

In her article, Cheryl Lowe makes the bold claim that “Latin develops the intellectual power of the mind as no other subject can.”  She compares the study of Latin to the study of math.   Lowe explains:  “Math is systematic, organized, orderly, logical, and cumulative.  In a cumulative study, each skill builds upon the previous one, nothing can be forgotten, everything must be remembered.  All knowledge and skills are interrelated.  The student continues to build a tower of learning block by block, until he has reached a very high level of skills and knowledge.”    

You see, math actually develops the intellectual powers of the mind because math forms the mind of the student to accuracy, logical thinking, and  problem solving.   In other words, math is formation not information.  Math is forming the mind not just filling it with information. 

Math is formative because math is a language rather than a subject.  A language is more basic and fundamental and more demanding than a subject.  We know this is true:  A student who does not do well in math one year will struggle mightily in subsequent studies unless he goes back and shores up weak areas.  But think about a student who doesn’t do well in world history one year.  Next year he can still go on to American history with great success.  A student who struggles with biology can still be successful in chemistry.  Lowe says, “Subjects are not as demanding as languages, and thus, will not produce the same caliber student.”  That should give us something to think about as we plan our homeschool  programs! 

I’m not here tonight to talk about math, however.  I doubt if anyone needs to be convinced that a rigorous and comprehensive study of math is essential for students.  But you might be wondering if there is anything on the language side of the curriculum that compares to and balances the rigorous and formative study of math.  The point of Lowe’s article is that “Latin provides the missing component in modern education, the systematic language training comparable to and balancing the mathematics side of the curriculum.”

In fact, although math is important, it is actually secondary to language skills and, indeed, is dependent on language skills.  “A truly educated person," Lowe notes, “can be pretty lousy at math, because language skills are still the measure of the educated person, one who can speak and write with clarity and has power over his native language.”

Lowe goes on to explain why nearly all the claims we made about the study of math apply to Latin as well -- but not to English, science, history, or modern foreign languages.  Like math, Latin is "systematic, organized, orderly, logical, and cumulative."  Each skill "builds upon the previous one, nothing can be forgotten, everything must be remembered.  All knowledge and skills are interrelated.  The student continues to build a tower of learning block by block, until he has reached a very high level of skills and knowledge.”  Like math, Latin forms the mind of the student to accuracy, logical thinking, and problem solving.  It is formation, not information.  

I don’t have time tonight to elaborate on each of those arguments, but I do want to focus on just one aspect of Lowe's claim:  The study of the English language does not balance the mathematics side of the curriculum.  There are a few reasons for this:

1.     It is difficult to learn grammar from our native language because we use it instinctively.  Students are reluctant to analyze their own lanugage because they can already use it with great success. 

2.    English, like other modern languages, does not have "the structure or form, the logic or rules" of Latin. "English is lax and loose" and constantly evolving.  It just "doesn’t follow the rules."  Latin is by far the easiest way to learn about English grammar. “English grammar is abstract, whereas Latin is concrete.”  When students learn a highly-inflected language like Latin, which is very different from English, they begin to see how their own language works, often for the first time.  Lowe says that studying a classical language is “like putting on 3-D glasses, so that you can see how your own language works.”  

 3.    English is a hybrid language, or we might say, a Germanic language with a hybrid vocabulary.  I’ll give you an illustration from the second resource I mentioned:  “Three Reasons to study Latin (for Normal People Not Language Geeks).”  It’s a great video, and I urge you to take a look.

 The hybrid vocabulary of English includes both Germanic and Latinate words.  Since English is a Germanic language, it should come as no surprise that it includes Germanic words which convey concrete, everyday realities like house, man, woman, swine.  But because William the Conqueror brought Norman influence to England in 1066, many Latinate words made their way into our language as well (60% of English vocabulary, in fact).  These multi-syllabic words express abstract realities like masculinity, femininity, virtue, republic, liberty.

 Each half of our hybrid vocabulary has completely different root words, pronunciation rules, and spelling rules.  Students learn the Germanic half of English when they study phonics.  But what is the system for learning the Latinate side of English?  Studying Latin, of course!

The video that I mentioned highlights this advantage with two simple examples:

If you know a Germanic word like father, then you also know words like fatherly and fatherhood.

But if you know a Latin word like pater, then you also know patriarch, patriarchal, patriarchy, paternal, patrimony, patriot, expatriate, compatriot, patronize, and patronizing.

If you know the Germanic word death then you also know the words dead, deadened, deadly, deathly.

But if you know the Latin word mors, then you also know mortal, immortal, morbid, moribund, mortician, mortuary, postmortem, rigor mortis, mortify, and mortgage.

 And it’s these Latinate words that form the vocabulary for science, medicine, and law, making Latin study so valuable for students going into these fields.

Bottom line (quoting Cheryl Lowe):  “Latin develops and enlarges the mind to a far greater degree than math and brings the necessary balance to the curriculum.  The study of Latin is a complete education in that it develops the intellectual powers of the mind and, at the same time, develops English language skills far more effectively than English grammar, thus achieving the two most important goals of education at the same time.”

 “Latin, like math, gives the student the experience of studying one subject to a mastery level. This is what is missing in modern education, where we try to teach everything, and we cover too many subjects too superficially. The student is always on the surface, always a beginner, just stuffing in a lot of unrelated facts. There are few opportunities to use higher order thinking skills when you are merely a novice. It is only when the student has studied a subject enough to have some depth that his mind can be stretched and challenged with higher order thinking skills. Latin and math give students the invaluable experience of studying one systematic subject to a mastery level over a long period of time, K-12 and beyond. This is a key to mental and character development and is the most valuable academic experience a child can have in school.”  

--Patricia Samuelsen teaches The Great Conversation and Latin at Schola.