The Classics in High School

by Mary Lee McConaghy

With the above words I introduce Latin each year to about 60 freshmen-telling them my name, that I am their Latin teacher, and that they are now Latin students and the best students at St. Louis University High (positive reinforcement, even on day one, works wonders!).

These words, because they are spoken in Latin, can initially intimidate and bewilder freshmen. But those feelings vanish when they hear that A's on quizzes merit doughnuts, that Optime stickers abound for correct classroom answers, and that they will learn pick-up lines such as Salve, mea columba, tu es pulchra puella—"Hello my little dove, you are a beautiful girl"—which come in handy at the Friday night mixer the first week of school.

When I was asked to write about Latin in Jesuit high schools today, I had the opportunity to speak with colleagues Jack Emmet, or "Latin Jack," as he's known at Cincinnati's St. Xavier High, and Christopher Lauber, at Fordham Prep in the Bronx. I learned that we were three Latin teachers with differing techniques who had nonetheless experienced many of the same results from the students. Though our unifying trait is an enthusiasm for our subject, we approach it differently.

Take texts, for instance. Chris is enthusiastic about the Oxford Latin Course he uses because it emphasizes history and gives information about the daily life of the Romans. Jack enjoys the Ecce Romani series as it gives his students the chance to use a language lab and develop a feel for conversational Latin. Throughout my years at St. Louis University High, I have used the traditional Jenney-Scudder First Year Latin for freshmen, supplemented with stories from the Cambridge readers.

Tradition

Denarius of Trajan, 2nd Century AD. Courtesy Loyola Marymount University/Mac James

I prefer more-traditional texts because the structured approach helps the 30 students in each Latin section stay organized and focused. Also, because Latin is an inflected language and therefore highly structured, students should experience this aspect of the language as they are learning it. One has only to think of Cicero's orations and the hours he spent rehearsing his speeches to see the components of the language as they evidenced themselves in the actions of the Romans.

Although the paradigms at times seem quite tedious to the students, there are ways of bringing a modern flair to them. I have had students break dance while giving the principal parts and meanings of difficult third-conjugation verbs or sing a creative rendition of Britney Spears's song "Oops . . . I Did It Again" that gets a new title: "Oops . . . I Conjugated Again." Besides the Optime stickers earned in class, I give Latin bumper stickers, buttons, posters, and bookmarks for superior work on exams and sometimes for special occasions, such as a student's dies natalis.

I also introduce conversational Latin at the beginning of each class through questions and discussions on topics such as the days of the week, the date of the month, and the gods and goddesses. This preparation pays off, allowing students in sophomore year and beyond to tackle selections from the writings of Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Catullus, and others. They get an idea of the political and social milieu of Rome as it moved from the chaos of the end of the Republic to its position as self-proclaimed ruler of the world, the Imperium Romanum. These periods illustrate to students the relevance that ancient Rome has to current events, especially politics. When one reads the words of the "movers and shakers" in the Roman political arena in the first century BC (Caesar and Cicero come instantly to mind here), it becomes obvious that things really haven't changed that much in the last 2,000 years.

Fashion, Roman style

Other readings allow students to learn the relevance of ancient Rome's culture not only to current affairs but also social mores. When they read Ovid's first century BC advice to young women in Ars Amatoria (the Art of Loving), to go to the games to see and be seen, Friday night football games come to mind. When the same author suggests that blonds should wear dark clothes while brunettes should don light-colored stolas, students get a sense of Ovid's concept of love as war, that men and women should suit up for battle! Just consider the cliché "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"; Ovid's words ring as true today as they did to his much earlier audience.

The students put Ovid's advice to work at our annual toga party, a dinner dance to which we invite three girls' schools. The dress code is toga or stola, and after a Roman-style dinner come skits based on Roman and Greek mythology performed by actores and dancing (strictly contemporary music). At the end of the evening the reaction of the students is that they have enjoyed the party ab ovo usque ad mala, from soup to nuts!

"Latin isn't good for anything, it's good for everything!"

Jack Emmet also views group projects as enjoyable and informative ways for Latin students to study different aspects of classical culture, mythology, history, and literature. He recalls a group of students who taped a project at a park. The lake there became the River Styx, the students wore appropriate Roman garb, and the title of the project was "To Hell with Aeneas"! I myself have had students utilize Forest Park in St. Louis to stage battle scenes between Hannibal and the Romans to the sounds of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana."

Jack, Chris, and I all agree that fostering a competitive spirit is particularly apropos for boys' schools. All our Latin students participate in the National Latin Exam, and Jack and I also train the students for team competitions sponsored by the Junior Classical League.

And all three of us have success stories to tell. Jack has one about a student who translated some Ogden Nash poems into Latin that ended up being published. Chris is proud of the number of Fordham Prep students who study Latin or Greek all four years and take honors or Advanced Placement Latin. I like to relate the tale about a junior who gave his class project in the person of Julius Caesar, standing in class and quoting paragraph after paragraph from the Bellum Gallicum, in Latin, from memory, until he "caught" himself and switched to English for the rest of his report.

When the three of us talked about why the Classics endure, one of the most obvious reasons that came up was the practical aspect of studying Latin. It is helpful first of all in getting students into college through the success it can bring on the SATs. One of this year's seniors told me that he attributed his score of 800 on the verbal section directly to his study of Latin.

Once students are in college, they become even more aware of the value of their classical education-I've had students come back to say how much the study of Latin has helped them in subjects ranging from political theory to physiology and psychiatry, from English to Western Civilization, and particularly law.

Surprise

Another surprise for me is the number of students-not always the straight A scholars either-who return to tell me that they are majoring in Latin or are majoring in political science or engineering but picking up a minor in the language.

Mary Lee McConaghy, "Magistra" to her students, has been teaching Latin and Greek at St. Louis University igh School since 1979. She has a PhD in Classics from Washington University in St. Louis.

What students discover is that because the job market is so changeable, they need to prepare for a variety of situations and be able to write clearly, think logically, and speak eloquently-areas for which the study of Latin is extremely well-suited. A University of Massachusetts professor said that every year corporations contact him for the names of his Classics majors because those are the students who are most capable and who can be best trained for new positions in the company.

But perhaps the most important key to understanding the longevity of Latin is the language itself. Consider this quote from an August '97 National Geographic article: "The enduring Roman influence is reflected pervasively in contemporary language, literature, legal codes, government, architecture, medicine, sports, arts, engineering, etc." Then consider that if we removed all of the words drawn directly from Latin, that sentence would read: "The ..."

How can anyone say that Latin is a dead language? As Jack Emmet tells his students "Latin isn't good for anything, it's good for everything!" It is present in everything we say, it forms the basis of our system of government, it is the background of so much of what we see, especially in buildings built in the early 1900s that derive their form from classical architecture (my seniors experience the influence of the Greeks and Romans in this area when we take our architectural tour of St. Louis each spring). The poet Horace best described the lasting effect of Latin and the influence of the Roman Empire when he wrote these words about his own poems:

If this article is of interest to you, you are invited to see also the following articles from the same issue of Company Magazine:

• Classics in College
• A Classicist in Rome