Quo Vadis? Laboring in the Classical Vineyards: An Optimal Challenge for Gifted Secondary Students.

This article puts forth an argument for the optimal match of the subject matter of Latin for verbally precocious students at the secondary level, beginning no later than the middle school years. It delineates the major benefits for students of learning the language and links those benefits to a view of differentiation in curricula and instruction of the gifted. Furthermore, the article provides a blueprint for schools on developing a Latin program of study over the secondary years. ********** He studied Latin like the violin, because he liked it. --Robert Frost Latin has become something of a tradition in my family. I studied the classics for 8 years, then taught it for 5. My husband took 4 years of Latin, and now our daughter is declaring her college major in the classics. For me at least, laboring in the classical vineyards seems to be a natural progression, a necessary step in life. The Latin bug infected me most strongly in college. I had one of the fore-most authorities on the language as my classics professor for 4 years. Dr. Wheelock's Latin (1995), now in its sixth edition, is still being used as a college text to introduce new generations to the language. When I directed the Midwest Talent Search at Northwestern University, we routinely offered Latin in the summer program to middle school students, and it was his text students encountered. Wheelock's text still populates the shelves of classics professors at my university and others. As my own daughter has come to appreciate Latin, so too did Wheelock's daughters. In the foreword to his newest edition, they discuss the importance of Latin in their lives growing up: The etymology of a word would trigger lengthy discussion, often tedious for us as adolescents but abiding as we became adults ... as young girls we were peppered with phrases of philosophical power from the ancients, and our father would show how these truths and lessons were alive and valid today. (Wheelock, 2000, p. xiv) Thus, the enduring personal relevance and educational value to be derived from a study of the classics cannot be underestimated. Students today may find the same riches in learning this language as did generations before them, as the benefits are deeply ingrained in the intellectual fabric of our contemporary world. Benefits of Taking Latin for Verbally Precocious Students: The Optimal Match While the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (2000) reported that only 1.3% of high school students currently take Latin, the College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement program, reported a 95% increase since 1993 in students taking the Latin exam for college credit. States like Virginia, for example, offer Latin for gifted middle school students in selected school districts, run a countywide summer program in a rural area of the state, and offer it as a regular option for elementary students at a college Saturday program. Moreover, each year the state sponsors a 3-week Latin Academy in which selected students have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the subject with classics professors from across the state. What has caused such a resurgence of interest in a subject frequently made fun of for its irrelevance? Perhaps the new American obsession with standards and substantive learning may have helped bring about the trend. Critics would contend that (1) Latin is a "dead" language with no practical value; (2) it does not "train" the mind as once believed; (3) it is difficult; (4) it is text-based learning, not aural-oral in technique; and (5) it is irrelevant to today's youth. Nevertheless, many educators and students have found it to be useful in many ways. Latin has many hidden benefits that are not often explicated and, therefore, are not well understood. It is especially well matched to verbally precocious learners who have the capacity to handle abstraction and rigorous analytical activity. …