Newsletter #8 - Why Latin?

When it comes to classical Christian education, there are often many questions about Latin. After all, why should we spend time and effort teaching children a language that has been dead for over a thousand years? Isn’t Latin dreadfully dull? Wouldn’t our children’s time be better spent learning Spanish, Welsh, French or Mandarin? Wouldn’t they be better off learning a programming language like Python or Javascript?

Our answers to those four questions are, respectively, ‘read on and find out’, ‘no’, ‘no’, and ‘no’! The case for Latin has been made extremely well by a large number of scholars. Our friends at Memoria Press have some great resources outlining the importance of Latin in a classical Christian education if you’re in the market for some extra reading.

But, since we intend, God willing, to teach Latin at St Anselm’s School it is important for us to have a defence of its instruction at our disposal.

So without further ado, here are three great reasons to embrace Latin:

1. Latin gives us a framework for understanding language.

Imagine embarking on a study of the human eye: retina, lens, pupil, optic nerve, cornea, conjunctiva, and so on and so forth. However, there is a catch… The only resources you have at your disposal are your own eyes and a mirror. In vain you try to get a sense of what’s what but there is only so much you can do short of removing your eye from its socket (which is not advisable).

You would be far better off with a model or labelled diagram, wouldn’t you? The problem is that the object of study is also the means of studying. It’s exactly the same when we try to understand the English language through the us of the English language. When we learn how to conjugate verbs in Latin, we learn that there is such a thing as ‘conjugation’ and such a thing as ‘verbs’. Without the distraction of the English language, we’re better able to think clearly and logically about language itself.

2. Latin prepares us well for other language learning.

There are some obvious languages that are heavily influenced by Latin: French, Spanish, Italian. But there are less obvious language learning benefits as well. Simply having been trained through the methodical and ordered syntax of Latin, students are much more likely to be able handle the demands of learning any other language. Tanya Charlton, of Highlands Latin School, recounts that one of her sons who showed little enthusiasm for Latin during school nonetheless realised its benefits when later studying Japanese in University.

3. Latin has shaped the world.

Latin has been used by God (through His church) throughout the course of the last 2000 years. Whilst Hebrew and Greek were the most significant languages of the ancient Christian world, Latin, not Hebrew or Greek, has been the lingua franca of the Christian scholarly tradition for millenia. When we learn Latin, then, we are not just learning a language. We are learning a culture, a history, as well as ideas and values that have contributed to the “great conversation” of which we, too, are part.