Boston Latin School

“ Boys entered the Boston Latin School as young as six and a half years of age and often parents had them begin Latin at an earlier age, some parents teaching their little ones to read Latin words when but three years old along with the English. Young Timothy Dwight would have been prepared to enter college at eight years of age had not his grammar school been discontinued because of having no teacher. A boy in 1686 entered Harvard College at eleven years of age and another boy in 1799 graduated from Rhode Island College (now Brown University) at barely fourteen years of age. ”

“ Boston Latin School, 1,387 hours. The French boyarrives at the end of his classical preparatory course of study, having been subjected on an average to less than two hours of recitation per week in mathematical subjects. The average American pedagogue would certainly rise with protests deep, and disgust profound, if ever it were proposed to him to fit a boy for college with an allowance of only 8·7 per cent of the whole school course for his arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. ”

“ Even within the special advanced work classes which are designed to prepare Boston public elementary school students for the examination schools, African-Americans and Hispanics fared worse in the examination schools' admissions process than whites. Finally, there was evidence that African-American and Hispanic applicants to Boston Latin from private elementary schools do much better in the admissions process than their Boston public school counterparts. ”

“ While there are many factors that probably contribute to this difference, I consider it unlikely that the Boston public school system is not shortchanging its black and Hispanic students in some fashion that contributes both to this difference and to the consistent relative lack of success in such students' obtaining invitations to attend Latin School in the period following the Court's finding of intentional discrimination. While societal discrimination alone is insufficient to justify a racial classification, it does not follow that it is irrelevant. ”

“ To meet the strict scrutiny standard, a challenged racial classification must serve a compelling governmental interest and must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal. See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200, 224-25, 115 S.Ct. 2097, 132 L.Ed.2d 158 (1995) . The Boston School Committee argues that the Boston Latin admissions program serves two compelling interests: promoting diversity in the public schools and remedying the vestiges of past discrimination. The majority rejects both arguments. ”

“ The Latin school flourished everywhere. There is evidence that every social class participated to some extent in the new education although illiteracy must at the same time have been common. It seems clear that the layman who had received these early educational advantages could understand Latin hymns or read them if the texts were available. Both sexes shared elementary education and lay women as well as nuns occasionally had access to advanced instruction. ”

“ He came into contact with intellectual and cultivated men for the first time in Boston after he joined the Unitarians. His efforts to educate himself were certainly strenuous. He acquired the Latin, French, German, and Italian languages sufficiently well to read books written in all those languages, and his knowledge of English authors was, of course, very wide and extensive. Nevertheless, the want of a systematic education in his early youth, and of regular, symmetrical intellectual training, was always a great disadvantage, as it necessarily must be to every self-made man. ”

“ On the other hand, if the education is likely to be continued beyond 14—say, to 16 or 17—presuming that the Latin is well taught by a good scholar, good enough scholar to select what is most important as a means of discipline, and to pass by what is only required in an University course; in short, able to give a thoroughly English character to the Latin training and to make it interesting—then, in such a case I have no doubt that, to learn even the elements of Latin would be a real saving of time during the years spent at school, a gain of strength and clearness of mind for after life. ”

“ It is a psychological impossibility to pass through the apprenticeship stage of learning foreign languages at the age when the vernacular is setting without crippling it. The extremes are the youth in ancient Greece studying his own language only and the modern high school boy and girl dabbling in three or perhaps four languages. Latin, which in the eight years preceding 1898 increased one hundred and seventy-four per cent. in American high schools, while the proportion entering college in the country and even in Massachusetts steadily declined, is the chief offender. ”

“ The last edition was published in Boston in 1838. In a prospectus, containing commendations of the work from many eminent men of learning, the Honorable Josiah Quincy, LL.D., president of Harvard College, said of it: "A work which was used for more than a century in the schools of New England, as the first elementary book for learners of the Latin language; which held its place in some of the most eminent of those schools, nearly, if not quite, to the end of the last century; which has passed through at least twenty editions in this country ”

“ That many teachers possess only a scientific and partial culture is generally less their own fault than that of the irregularity which characterizes the examinations of these teachers by the authorities.
"It is a most ridiculous position which Latin occupies in the practical-school. It bears no relation to any of the other branches, and, since the pupils learn French quicker than Latin, it is senseless to say that they learn Latin in order to be able to learn the modern languages." ”

“ The common mediaeval system (and in this the spirit of the Renaissance was still mediaeval) depended on the common Church, and especially in education, in the use of Latin as the universal language of learning. During the sixteenth century both were overthrown. Luther was stronger than Erasmus, and the new languages, Italian, French, Spanish, English, quickly began to encroach on the claims of Latin to be the one language of the school.
The religious revolution need not detain us. ”

“ The nature and needs of the adolescent mind demand bread and meat, while Latin rudiments are husks. In his autobiography, Booker Washington says that for ten years after their emancipation, the two chief ambitions of the young negro of the South were to hold office and to study Latin, and he adds that the chief endeavor of his life has been against these tendencies. For the American boy and girl, high school too often means Latin. ”

“ Did it seem to be practicable, we should strongly favor making the study of Latin a part of the education of all who go beyond the common rudiments, as well girls as boys, to such an extent that they could understand the divine offices of the church. For all other uses or advantages, we are inclined to think that many pupils who occupy a great deal of time in gaining a very imperfect smattering of Latin and Greek, might better spare it for other studies. ”

“ IN the following pages I propose to offer a little picture of school-life four hundred years ago, culled from an old Latin dialogue book which was published anonymously in the fifteenth century under the title 'Es tu scholaris?' and went through many editions in different countries. All through the Middle Ages boys were supposed to speak Latin in school, and this with some reason, since if they meant to be scholars when they grew up, to be able to speak and write Latin fluently would be far more useful to them than the acquisition of any single modern language. ”

“ Next let them intermingle with the vernacular what they have heard in Latin from their teacher, or what they themselves have learned. Thus, at first, their language should be a mixture of the mother-tongue and Latin. But outside the school they should speak the mother-tongue so that they should not become accustomed to a hotch-potch of languages.... Gradually the development advances and the scholars become Latinists in the narrower sense. ”

“ Most high-school students get very little from any of them, and the one intellectually most important—the Greek—is practically excluded from our secondary schools as being of least practical value. Without in the least underrating the value of Latin to "roman-minded men," who make a manly use of it, there is no doubt that the average American high school boy gets less out of Latin than out of any other subject in the curriculum. ”

“ Surely, this must be the time when we, if we ever intend to do so, must reinforce our Latin brothers. They have done well, they have made progress, but they have gone about as far as they can in the struggle upon the moral resources at their command. Their very progress in education and civilization is widening the breach between them and their former religious teachers. A new life must come in, even the power of the gospel. This alone can save Latin-America from inglorious failure. ”

“ Any one who knows how singularly difficult it is to find suitable matter and suitable forms for the higher intellectual culture of youth, and how much more difficult it is to set aside the matter and forms once found, will understand how it was that the Romans knew no mode of supplying the desideratum of a more advanced Latin instruction except that of simply transferring the solution of this problem, which instruction in the Greek language and literature furnished, to instruction in Latin. ”

“ THE TRANSITION ACADEMY. About the middle of the eighteenth century a tendency manifested itself, in Europe as well as in America, to establish higher schools offering a more practical curriculum than the old Latin schools had provided. In America it became particularly evident, after the coming of nationality, that the old Latin grammar-school type of instruction, with its limited curriculum and exclusively college- preparatory ends, was wholly inadequate for the needs of the youth of the land. ”

“ If all the improvements in the mode of teaching languages which are already sanctioned by experience, were adopted into our classical schools, we should soon cease to hear of Latin and Greek as studies which must engross the school years, and render impossible any other acquirements. ”

“ Let us bear in mind that we limit our disquisition to the Latin classics for the present. What we say about them will be equally applicable to the Greek, as well as to the authors of all nations.
It seems to us abundantly easy to prepare books for this department. Let a certain number of colleges, schools, and seminaries join together, and through their faculties make choice of a competent scholar. Set him apart for one year for the purpose of preparing a neat, cheap school edition of the Latin classics for our Catholic schools. ”

“ REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN ITALY THE CLASSICS IN THE MIDDLE AGES The literature of Greece and Rome did not entirely disappear in western Europe after the Germanic invasions. The monastery and cathedral schools of the Middle Ages had nourished devoted students of ancient books. The Benedictine monks labored zealously in copying the works of pagan as well as Christian authors. The rise of universities made it possible for the student to pursue a fairly extended course in Latin literature at more than one institution of learning. ”

“ To be more particular, if the interpretation of an author affords nothing but words and mechanical style for the pupils to learn, if the method of the teacher has for its chief aim only the grammatical choice and arrangement of words, and if the whole school or educational system is controlled by a certain Latin spirit, which must produce a sad deficiency in other branches, then, however admirable and useful the Latin language may be, too much is sacrificed to it. ”

“ If the study of Latin must be excluded from the education of so many of our intelligent and cultured young men, or so superficially pursued as to be practically useless, it cannot be too earnestly recommended to them to learn the French, German, and Italian languages, or at least one or two of them, that they may have access to their rich and abundant stores of Catholic literature, contained not only in books, but in the periodicals, which are conducted with an ability and extended over a range of subjects far beyond what our own have yet attained. ”

“ Latin will survive for a long time in the secondary school on the ground that its illogical constructions supply an intellectual gymnastic, or because its roots are useful in learning French, understanding law terms and naming new species; but its part in education is no longer leading or dignified. ”

“ Now it was distinctly a feat for me to keep in school, and my schoolmates were socially so far superior to me that my poverty became conspicuous. The pupils of the Latin School, from the nature of the institution, are an aristocratic set. They come from refined homes, dress well, and spend the recess hour talking about parties, beaux, and the matinée. As students they are either very [294] quick or very hard-working; for the course of study, in the lingo of the school world, is considered "stiff." ”

“ In the United States of America the highest degree of educational development has been subsequent to the Civil War. The study of Latin begins in the “high schools,” the average age of admission being fifteen and the normal United States. course extending over four years. Among classical teachers an increasing number would prefer a longer course extending over six years for Latin, and at least three for Greek, and some of these would assign to the elementary school the first two of the proposed six years of Latin study. ”