Let's Talk More About Latin and CI

This is the position of ACTFL on learning classical languages (ACTFL Position Statement of 7/30/12):

…communication for a classical language refers to an emphasis on reading ability….

Here is the link:

http://www.actfl.org/news/position-statements/use-the-target-language-the-classroom

John Piazza, a teacher of Latin in San Francisco, responded to it with this:

…as for the exemption, it’s the same as it was a decade ago. The president of ACTFL is a traditional Latin teacher. She is protecting her kind. They’ll hold onto that “Latin is different” defense as long as their pursed lips can utter it. The up-side is that, while the exemption can be used as an excuse not to teach with CI, it cannot be used to prevent teachers from following the recomendations of the main text. Any department that wants to squash a CI Latin teacher (and it is happening at some schools), will have to find (make up) other reasons….

My own comment:

Kids gravitate toward what they like, and Bob Patrick’s and David Maust’s and others’ classes are just packed with probably way too many people. But there ya go. It’s probably a safe bet to say that the kids aren’t in those classes for the teeth clenching, I mean the declensions.

I think a teacher of Latin would be let go a lot sooner for numbers than for being boring, and it is interesting that the current ACTFL president is a traditional Latin teacher. I think that is fascinating. This is great John:

..they’ll hold onto that “Latin is different” defense as long as their pursed lips can utter it….

They must not like y’all very much. It just seems to me that the Latin accent, at least for Americans, is (or doesn’t sound like to me) to be very difficult to say. It doesn’t appear to be something like French to learn in terms of weirdness of sound. I’m in an area here that I know nothing here about so correct me.

But does it not make sense that since we now know that people learn languages based on sound and in an unconscious way, since we know that, then could we not perhaps at least explore the idea of speaking Latin and what that means just a teeny bit more before we make such an incredibly strong blanket rejection of a very plausible idea?

After all, it is an idea that is working big time in at least three classrooms that I know of in Atlanta and Los Angeles and San Francisco right now. Do we really want to put a sentence that strong into a national position statement? I know a Greek word* for that. Hubris.

Now I know that that is a very badass word in the original Greek sense but I don’t mean it that way. I mean it here as “lack of humility”. How did I know what the original Greek meaning of hubris was, by the way? Did I memorize a bunch of shit in a classroom in college like, apparently, the current president of ACTFL would have her students do? Hades no, I just looked at Wikipedia.

That is another thing we might want to consider in this discussion – the role of instant knowledge in a world where, up until Al Gore invented the internet, scholarship meant memorization. Here are our handful of Latin teachers saying to the world, “Let’s not memorize all that shit, it’s boring. Let’s learn it via speech – it’s a lot more fun” and then getting largely ignored for their efforts.

Who gets to say that Latin is different? What are the credentials of the exemption writers? With whom did they make the decision? What’s their deal? I think that the answer to all these questions is that they don’t really believe that some dude grinding his grain on a Roman campaign in the north of what is now Germany ever actually said anything to the dude with the weird helmet next to him who was sharpening his sword.

Of course he did, and all those people who lived then in that whole empire did too. And so it morphed into new languages and is no longer used but that doesn’t mean that it is dead – like Kate Taluga told me about her language Myskoke – it is merely sleeping.

So our Latin teachers here can be likened to a good strong cup of coffee to the language. And guess what? If it is a language, then the auditory part is the most important, as per current research. Right? C’mon, if you’ve read this far here, it means that you may agree that the best way to build a language house in a person is to make the very base foundation out of auditory materials.

I mean, have we learned ANYTHING from Krashen (when I say Krashen I say all those guys so don’t be offended, and it is mainly Krashen anyway) but that people learning languages by hearing them first, then reading them, then coming out with the the output later?

I can see that tossed off position statement really pissing John and them all off. They know what should come first, they are willing to put their asses on the line and speak it in their classes because they know that their students:

will learn to read in Latin better and faster

will not be bored and will include more than 4% of the students in the room

When that is done, there is no more need to keep Latin in ghost form, locked up in the head in the world of analytical wonderful scholarship (read: bullshit brought to the classroom on the backs of pedants).

Let’s just say it: this ACTFL position on Latin is about power and control and pride and ignorance. It may be ignorance born of not having the reseach clear (how many people want to make a bet on that? – I say it’s true), but how does that fact justify such a statement by a national parent organization?

I know what we need – we need a rapper to do some songs in Latin and get them out there in Buckhead and South Central LA and over there in the City by the Bay. Something simple but with a catchy base concept that people could glom onto and relate to and maybe dance to. Then the people could see that it is actually a spoken thing and get their order of acquisition in order. Sounds like a plan to me.

Of course, what do I know? I’m just a French teacher.