Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-08-04
HOW TO TEACH LANGUAGES.
The Schoolmaster Who Makes His
Boys Speak Latin.
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
We notice that DIR. William Henry Den
ham Rouse headmaster of the Perse
Grammar School at tile English Cam
bridge. and one of the most accomplished
of scholars. is going to lecture at the
Harvard Summer Sch ,ol. He is strong in
Sanskrit and PAIL in Latin and Greek, in
folklore and EliZabethan literature, and
dear knows what else: and he is under
fifty at that. But it is not as the editor
of the Classical keview or the translator
of some volumes of that famous collection
of birth stories of Buddha, the ''Jataka. p"
or the author of Greek Iambic Verse or
Greek Notive Offerin4s'' ana on, it is
not q earned writer. but school
master with living ideas about the indy
ing dead languages th>,t ne interests Us.
He talks Greek and Latin, and he holds
that these should be taught orally
In regard 10 Latin. a least. this is
surely the method to be pursued. Look
at our boys struggling away at it for
years, getting so. perhaps, il they are I'M
usually industrious. that after ten years
or longer they have read probably less
than that number of Latin AUTHORSHIP
selections: and they usually forget that
pitiful little smattering in few years
Or. Rouse's pupils hear Latin; then they
speak it; then they write it, AS he re-
minds us-and we all remember Wolsey's
uHcoufllS. ana 100 correct, Ego ct rex
us'-Latin used to he the tongue of di-
plomacy. 1t is even now an international
language if not much used. yet far
surprising French in geographical range;
and in the Catholic Churcn at least it
remains a living speech.
But what's Latin to MS? may be asked.
Latin. like Greek, must go and is "go-
ing, even faster than Mr.. Charles Fran
els Adams. then regarded as such an
image breaker. could have anticipated
when he stirred the dry bones in 1882 or
thereabout. Well we are not concerned
about that going" There Will always
be scholars: and ii is not impossible that
some time there will be renaissance Of
sanity, of moderation, a reaction from
the grotesque, the strained, the decadent,
the general neuroticls:i We o..re say
that II for Il generation nobody were a.
lowed to write II book pretending to he
literature until lie had read the master
pieces of Greek literature there might he
Il reaWakenine of the sense of form and
style as we'll as a grateful damming of
OF course of secondary value. What we
are concerned with here is the method of
learning languages.
If French. German, Spanish. Italian,
were learned py car and taught by
mouth in the United States, Americans
would not he as iinguists so backward
and Justly ashamed Of themselves in
comparison with Germans. Swiss, Bel
gians or Dutch. AS a rule the Amer
lean boys and girls after years Of stupid
grind" have read a little Racine. Mo-
liere and so on a few fables. few
stories; but either they can't speak
French al all or they speak il like a
Spanish cow. So with other languages.
We hope that DR.. Rouse's visit may
stir scholars to recognize and change the
fact that for the most part the Amer
lean system of learning languages is a
waste of time and money.