To: Prof. Ross Scaife, UKY February 12, 2001 From: Prof. Mark Riley, CSU Sacramento Subject: UK Institute for Latin Studies
I am writing this letter to express my opinion on your Institute for Latin Studies. Having taught Latin at the university level for some 30 years and having discussed the goals and methods of this Institute with Prof. Tunberg, I feel that I can point out at least two ways in which this Institute uniquely contributes to Latin studies in this country: first by its training of students who begin the study of Latin only in college, and second by its emphasis on communication in Latin.
Today, certainly in California and the other western states, few high schools teach Latin. As a result, students who develop an interest in the language start relatively late in their careers. None of the 60 or so students who began Latin at CSU Sacramento last Fall (many of them juniors or seniors) had studied Latin before, and however interested they may become in learning Latin - either to develop the tools necessary for their literary studies or to continue work in history or a related field -they do not have the time as undergraduates to learn the language well. Just today I have had a distress call from a former student of mine who is currently enrolled in a doctoral program in English lit. at a nearby University of California campus, and who is now required to know more Latin than she could acquire in her short time with me. Her current university does not really have a class, which meets her needs as an English graduate student. She wants to know what I can do to help - really very little. For students like her an intensive advanced program such as UK's Institute for Latin Studies is ideal: after receiving a BA in whatever subject, these students can concentrate on language training and on wide reading in Latin authors for a year or two before proceeding to further studies elsewhere. They will then have skills in Latin much superior to their fellows. I wish there were such an institute here in California. As it is, we Latin instructors at universities with small Latin programs spend most of our time teaching elementary classes and grieving that our good students have nowhere to go to develop their skills at a more advanced level. Your Institute for Latin Studies however is such a place.
In addition to language skills, at the Institute for Latin Studies these students read from the entire range of Latin literature, from Roman time through the Renaissance. Its curriculum is not just for prospective classicists. Most of my students, like the English lit. student just mentioned, are not in ancient studies, but in medieval or renaissance studies, and need a knowledge of the Latin literature contemporary with Charlemagne, Sidney, or Rabelais. Your Institute is, I believe, unusual in its inclusive curriculum.
The Institute's second contribution to the Classics profession is its training in the active use of Latin. I was for many years the chairman of a state university Department of Foreign Languages, in which teacher training was our primary goal; I also have personally supervised student teachers in French and Spanish. As a result I am familiar with the California State Department of Education and its policies and guidelines for teaching foreign languages. These guidelines, which mirror the ACTFL guidelines published a few years ago, mandate "communication" (by which they mean "speaking") as a primary goal in the classroom. Lessons should be conducted in the target language; textbooks should be written in the target language; and so on. Because of these guidelines, until recently there were no Latin textbooks approved by the state of California for purchase by school districts, because no Latin textbook includes enough "communicative" exercises. (Districts can buy any book they want, but only approved textbooks are subsidized with state money. If a district buys an unapproved textbook, it must pay full list price.) The recently developed ACTFL guidelines for the teaching of classical languages also demand some level of communicative practice.
Now everyone recognizes that the study of Latin (and Ancient Greek) does not demand the same level of verbal fluency as the study of Spanish, but even so, some level of verbal communication is required in order to improve vocabulary retention, to practice skills in grammar, to learn the nuances of a language, and (no small matter in high schools) to boost respect for the Latin students, who must be able to say something in Latin, just as the Spanish students do in Spanish. If a Latin student continually hears Latin from his teacher - classroom commands and the like - that student will consider Latin to be a language like any other, not some verbal puzzle to be deciphered.
The UK Institute for Latin Studies is unique to my knowledge in its use of Latin as a medium of instruction. I should point out that we have five or six hundred years worth of teaching materials which use Latin to teach Latin: school plays (Robert Burton's Philosophaster is in most university libraries), grammars, commentaries in Latin, dialog and phrase books for contemporary Latin learners, songs, and so on. There is no lack of material, but there is a lack of institutional commitment to this kind of teaching. But Latin teachers, textbook producers, and teacher training programs will have to meet the demands of the state departments of education for Latin communication in the classroom and for a more active use of the language. In my opinion your Institute for Latin Studies is a model for further spread of the active use of Latin in the classroom. I whole-heartedly support both the goals and the methods of your Institute for Latin Studies. I urge the University of Kentucky to continue its funding.
cc: Prof. Robert Rabel
Prof. Terence Tunberg
Created on ... March 26, 2001