Daily press. [volume] (Newport News, Va.) 1896-current, 1907-10-27
4 WORD About LATIN
Chicago Professor Says Pres
ent Method Of Teaching
1t is a Farce.

ut may sound like heresy for n man
In my position 10 say it," remarked
the high school principal in the Chi
cago News. "and it certainly Is incon-
sistent when l tell you that read
that language with about the same
readiness that do my own. and en-
JOY Virgil in the original quite as
much as | do Milton. But on that
very fact | base my chief objection,
for it is only the merest handful OF
students that gain proficiency enough
In the classics to reap any enjoyment
IN after years for their present druid
gerry in the rudiments of grammar
and prosody. If Latin Is not thorough
~ learned. so that one can take up
q book in that tongue and read 1t as
one would Tennyson or Shakespeare
or Macaulay my idea that It would
better be let severely alone.
The average student. with whom
years of painful classroom work have
made me familiar. comes to high
school with the idea that Latin isl
going to open for him the higher ave.
mncs 10 the higher education and
tat II he doesn't acquire it the gates
leading thereto will be closed on him
forever afterward. Ages have lent i'll
awe and reverence; tradition fosters
the attitude; our scholastic methods
of teaching. nm Inheritance from the
middle ages, help TO keep tn tradi-
ton alive. We encourage the ambi-
tious one by telling him that at any
rate ais efforts cannot fail TO reap due
reward. since If worst comes to worst
and he gains nothing else from his
struggle with irregular verbs and de-,
clensions, Mt any rate he will have
had the mental discipline for his
pains. 1t all comes from tue old
fashioned notion that mental drudgery
means mental development, when rs n
matter OF fact the truth of the prin-
ciple is open to serious doubt.
But, as was saying the average
student comes to us with zeal for
acquiring the language OF the ancicnts.
drudges through his grammar plods
laboriously and painfully through the
dryas-dust commentaries of Caesar
and pieces together an Grafton or So
OF Cicero's, which interests him about
rs muh rs Kant 'CritiQuc of Pure
Reason might. Finally he is dragged
by the heels through Virgl's Aenelu,
by which he Is more dismaycd than
enlightened. and his Latin education
10 finished. Active life claims him
md nmety-ninc times -. hundred
he will never open the covers OF al
latin book again.
&c. Stanley Hail. president of Clark
university. has remarked that the
baby Latin in the average high-school
class is kind of sanctifled relic
ghost of ghost, suggesting Swift's
lStrudibruss, doomed to physical NOR
tally and shriveling, with increasing
horror of all things new quote him
Oh course, only because | agree with
him.
ITO return to orr high.school stu.
dent he vii have learned handful
lof etymolosics. which are supposed to
help his English and which are sup
posed to help his English. and which
may do it in very restricted sense,
ana in so far rs anybody knows to
the contrary. Certainly he ought to
reap slight reward in return for the
incalculable injury that has been visit
ed on his vernacular by the twisting
ana wrenching given 1t during the pro-
cess of TRANSMITTING the words of the
Romans into his native speech.
The injury is douhly grave when
We consider the fact that in this for
native period of life every hour Is
worth its weight in gold for what it
may be made to yield in the treasures
of our rich. pithy Saxon speech. Hail,
commenting on the remark OF Jewett.
the great translator of Plato. that 1T
Is almost impossible to render either
of the great dead language into Eng
fish without compromise, observes:
This tends to njure the idiomatic
mastery of ones own tongue. which
can be got only by much hard expert
ence in uttering our own thoughts be-
fore trying to shape the dead thoughts
of others into our language. We con-
found the little lmoWsedge of world
histories which Latin gives with the
far higher and subtler sentonce-sonse
which makes the soul of one language
so different from that of another and
the training in which out not to end
until one has become more or less of !
stylist and knows how to hew out
modes OF expressing his own individ- |
uality in great language
ut is quite n different thing when
Latin is thoroughly learned and when
and not a smattering is the
aim. but it is only the very fewest
that gain proficiency even when the
work of the universities supplants the
high school. while the great majority
acquire the little learning that Is dis
astrous to the vernacular."