Proposed charter schools include all-boys Latin prep

[Harold F. Schiffman]

It's interesting to look at the curriculum in Boston Latin School, at
least at first, and certainly still in 1712:
http://bls.org/cfml/l3tmpl_history.cfm

	"THE CURRICULUM OF THE BOSTON LATIN GRAMMAR SCHOOL (1712)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1712 Nathaniel Williams, master of the Boston Latin Grammar School,
sent to Nehemiah Hobart, a Senior Fellow at Harvard, the following letter,
in which he describes the curriculum pursued by the students at the Boston
Latin Grammar School as they prepared for admission to Harvard College:

1 1.2.3. The first three years are spent first in Learning by heart & then
acc:[ording] to their capacities understanding the Accidence and
Nomenclator, in construing & parsing acc:[ording) to the English rules of
Syntax, Sententiae Pueriles, Cato & Corderius & Aesops Fables.2

4. The 4th year, or sooner if their capacities allow it, they are entered
upon Erasmus to which they are allou'd no English, but are taught to
translate it by the help of the Dictionary and Accidence, which English
translation of theirs is written down fair by each of them, after the
reciting of the lesson, and then brought to the Master for his observation
and the correction both as to the Translatio & orthography: This when
corrected is carefully reserved till fryday, and then render'd into Latin
of the Author exactly instead of the old way of Repitition, and in the
afternoon of that day it is (a part of it) varied for them as to mood
tense case number &c and given them to translate into Latin, still keeping
to the words of the Author. An example of which you have in the paper
marked on the backside A [not available]. These continue to read AEsops
Fables with ye English translation, the better to help them in the
aforesaid translating. They are also now initiated in the Latin grammar,
and begin to give the Latin rules in Propr: As in pres: [Propria: As in
praesenti] & Syntax in their parsing; and at the latter end of the year
enter upon Ovid de Tristibus (which is recited by heart on the usual time
fryday afternoon) & upon translating English into Latin, out of mr
Garretson's exercises.3

http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/grammar.html

This is probably no longer the curriculum today, but still--rote learning!
Will this lead to higher SAT scores?

HS


On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, Kephart, Ronald wrote:

> >  >From the Philadelphia Enquirer, Thu, Oct. 13, 2005
> >
> >"When you look at SAT scores, the kids who take Latin, as a group,
> >score the highest," Hardy said. "Latin puts an academic tone on the
> >school that gets people serious from when they come in the door."
>
> Well, I don't have anything against Latin, but I bet a program
> centered on the rigorous teaching of any language would accomplish
> similar results.
>
> >  He said Latin also helps students with English grammar...
>
> The study of any language would help here, seems to me, because what
> we're looking for is the metalinguistic toolkit that enables students
> to reflect back on English.
>
> >...and vocabulary...
>
> OK. This is probably true, because the prestige vocabulary, the
> vocabulary likely to be tested on SAT, is largely Latinate. The SATs
> represent a sort of ongoing colonization of the mind; does the year
> 1066 mean anything?  (How many native Anglo-Saxon words are
> specifically tested for on the SAT, I wonder?)
>
> >...and provides a pathway for learning other languages. "Latin is
> >something that takes some effort to master," he said. "If you can
> >get kids to fight the fight to master it, they won't be afraid to do
> >anything."
>
> Any language well-taught takes "some effort to master." The prestige
> Latin holds in this regard is, in my view, still more
> mind-colonization. Again, recall 1066 and then think of the folk
> notion of French being harder to learn than Spanish.
>
> Anyway, as I tell my linguistics students, there's nothing special
> about Latin that isn't true of every other human language.*
>
> Ron
>
> *No Latin teachers were harmed in the writing of this email.
>