This Commentary by Thomas G. Palaima over on the Austin American Statesman website struck a chord with me personally and hit on something I've been fuming over for a few weeks now so forgive me if this critique includes a bit of my own commentary on the matter as well.
The commentary starts off as a summary of education in America with a prose-like sound to the words. Perhaps not prose, exactly, but literature, at the very least. The commentary does not get to the "juicy stuff" and actually become a commentary until the last several sections of the commentary. This author hits on a subject I took in high school, Latin, and even uses my personal high school, LASA, as one of the main examples and arguments for keeping this subject in schools. LASA, which is technically no longer part of LBJ but is its own high school (but is still on the same campus and in the same building as LBJ...), is the magnet academy for Liberal Arts and Science which I graduated from in 2009 with my foreign language credit being in Latin. Mr. Browne, the Latin teacher there, is one of the most dedicated, thorough, strict, successful, inspiring, and all-around awesome (I might even say bad ass) teachers I have EVER had the joy of being taught by. Needless to say, when I heard that not only his job, but that of Mrs. Browne, his wife who is the head of the Spanish department at LASA, was on the line I was furious not only for their sake but also for the sake of the future LASA students who would no longer get the experience I was able to have. This has been a tender issue with all Latin student graduates from LASA ever since we heard the news. In fact, many of us showed up at a meeting the school had to attempt to argue for the job of Mr. Browne. I was not present but I can not imagine the impact was enough.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, onto the actual commentary. Thomas G. Palaima is a regular contributor to this portion of the Statesman's website and it is clear in his writing. A quick google search shows that he is not only a good writer, but also the perfect person to be writing this particular commentary: He holds a Ph.D in Classics, is a professor of Classics at UT Austin and holds a chair in the Classics department at UT Austin. Needless to say, I believe he is more than qualified to write this commentary.(And that is not just because I agree with him with my entire heart and soul).
As far as his evidence or fact checking the statistics he lists, specifically for LASA, I lived most of those statistics, I do not need to fact check. Yes, ALL of the Latin students that took the AP exam scored AT LEAST a 3. Most students who obtained a 3 were disappointed in that grade and in fact most students made HIGHER than a three. Yes, Latin not only has increased my vocabulary and overall reading skills but also my ability to learn, read, and understand other foreign languages.
As for his intended audience, hopefully anyone who is able to read would see the sense in this article however I believe it will only truly hit home with other scholars, teachers, and students that are already familiar with, and angry at, this particular budget cut.
P.S. Why cut Latin rather than Japanese? I have been a Japanese student in my past, I love the language, and I don't WANT it to get cut, however I can honestly say it has not helped me nearly as much as Latin has. I'm simply pointing this out.
As always, this has been a student's perspective. (However in this case I believe this makes me more credible rather than less credible.)
I was personally struck by Lura C's 'Hitting Home: The Last Latin Student' published in her blog "A Student's Perspective," March 8, 2011. I had also read the "Austin American-Statesman" article about the Brownes' with great regret. And I had seen the list of AISD teaching positions to be eliminated and thought eliminating the Latin teachers was a big mistake.
ReplyDeleteI took four years of Latin in public high school in Dallas. My first year Latin teacher Mrs. Elsie Jones required us to look up and list all the Latin derivatives we could find in the dictionary for new vocabulary words. That required practice had a very marked impact on me. Early in the tenth grade, we took the required Iowa vocabulary tests. In going over the test results, my English teacher told me that I was 99% which was the highest score in the class. I beat out the future class valedictorian who planned to go to medical school. In tenth grade, I was on "easy street" when I took first year Spanish. I not only used the similarities in the vocabulary words between the two languages, but I had learned from Latin the structure of language which served me well in picking up French and Italian. I so enjoy being able to just know the meaning of a new word. Latin also served me well in biology courses when I was a biology major.
To my happiness and surprise, I discovered in an article 'The New Case for Latin' in the December 2, 2000 issue of "Time" that in the 1970's and 1980's the federal government gave funding to underperforming elementary schools for Latin classes. Everyone was surprised by the spectacular results. With one year of Latin, students were five months ahead of other students in reading comprehension and vocabulary. They also had large gains in math, history, and geography. Last summer, Latin came gave me the freedom of comprehension in Italy's churches and museums because I could read in several languages.
But, I was disappointed to see the article end with Congress cutting the funding and school districts biased toward Spanish over Latin because it is more important that the "kids to be socialized to the outside world." Often I have been thrilled over and over again that I took Latin.