The citizen. [volume] (Berea, Ky.) 1899-1958, 1922-01-12
WHAT is LATIN GOOD FOR?
BY Prof. A. W. Burr
Part l.


too often are failing to answer. A
teacher picked up boys Latin book
and read on the fly leaf:
Dead are they who spoke it,
Dead are they who wrote it,
Die they must who learn it
Blessed death they earn IT,"
Was the boy right? Yes, if his
teacher made its study so funereal as
that, and some teachers do. They
say, Latin is for mental discipline"
and their classes grind out declen-
sion, conjugations, vocabularies, and
rules, memory tasks, dull work for
a live adolescent. He wants to know
what it is all for. They say again,
Latin will give you the thought Of
the great Roman writers, Cicero and
Virgil" and they drag their classes.
day by day, thru piece-meal rem
dering Of the Latin into mongrel,
translation English. The toiling
learners soon mutter would that
they who wrote it" had died far
sooner, and they go where thought
comes more easily and seems more
useful.
There are teachers, forgetting that
they are in the twentieth century and
not in the fifteenth, who will answer,
THE study Of Latin will enable you
TO speak and write as the Romans
did" Such make the study heavy
burden by much Latin composition
and much marking of Latin quanti-
ties. To this the natural reaction Of
the learner is, "What for? OF where
will l speak and write Latin"
But worse for Latin than what the
teacher says is what he does day by
day in the class room. Every teacher
that makes the study of Latin a
memory drill. or finding an English
word for every Latin word, or max
ing live Roman, is himself living in
the traditions of the fifteenth CEN
fury. That is what is the matter
with Latin. 1t does not, if so taught,
meet the needs of the boys and girls
Of this twentieth century, and it is
so taught.
What, then, is High School Latin
. &c oil 20
give boys and girls the habit of
noticing how things are said, con.
sciousness of language.
The English language is a system
of words and word order for putting
ideas across. But the boy and girl
have taken their English tongue, as
they did their mothers milk, without
any thought of it as means to an
end. 1t has come by unconscious i'm
itation. Language is an instrument
whose skillful use is much worth
while.
Latin is a language system that
conveys thought by words that carry
both meaning and relation. A letter
of a Latin word may be a whole
word in English. The Latin word
"puer-i" is literally "boy Of" while
the English is "of the boy "Reg-e-t"
is "rule will he" for "he will rule"
For good farmer" the Roman says
farmer good" This contrast in the
way of saying opens the eyes Of the
boy and Of the girl to their own
speech, or should, if their Latin is
rightly taught.
Comparison with something differ.
ent is one of the best ways of see
ing what thing is. This COMPARE
son Of the boys "formless" tongue
with the form tongue of the Romans
helps him 10 know how he says things.
No modern language can do here what
the Latin can do. But TO do it there
must come such questions as these.
"How do you know the case of an
English noun?" "Of Latin noun"
"How do we tell in the Latin to what
noun an adjective belongs?" How
in English" "What makes a verb
in the passive voice in English"
what in Latin?" In such ways the
boys and girls begin TO see how the
wheels go round in their own speech.
That is a consciousness of language
as the instrument of thought and of
speech. There is no better way TO
il.
But is such consciousness neces-
sary, or worthwhile? A boy today
picks up some chemistry and some
physics, but he studies these sciences
IL he wishes TO know the laws Of the
Of bodies or Of the reso-