The Importance of Latin in the Curriculum Essay -- Latin Language Educ

The Importance of Latin in the CurriculumMy memories of Latin in high direct are slight than fond. I remember slouching in my chair, staring blankly at my desk as I tried to remember the form of the word agricola (farmer) in the ablative plural. Much of the class consisted of mundane activities like this. We translated endless Bible passages from Latin, translated what seemed like the entire body of Greek mythological literature, and read hundreds of lines from The Aneid, The Odyssey, and The Iliad. I sign(a) up for Latin because I was considering going into medicine, and I had heard that doctors need to know Latin. As high school progressed, though, a medical career seemed less and less likely so it appeared I had no real use for Latin, except that I knew the meaning of phrases like carpe diem and semper ubi sub ubi (always wear underwear). When someone would drive me why I took Latin, I would either mumble something about how Latin is the foundation on which all modern manner of speakings are based, or I would laugh and agree with them that it was a waste of my time, and that its a dead language. And it is a dead language, at least in spoken form. Regardless of what Dan Quayle thinks, Latin is non the official language of Latin America. Latin has dropped from being the language spoken by almost the entire known Western world to an obscure language known mainly in scholarly circles. After the fall of the Roman empire to Germanic invaders in 476 AD, Latin began a shift from being the reciprocal tongue to a language used mainly by upper-class and learned people (Hammond 243). Because the Church used Latin extensively, it became, along with ancient Greek, the face in which the sword of the Spirit is lodged, as Martin Luth... ...s managed to escape from the wrath of the approaching Greek army.Works CitedAmo, Amas, Latin How Schools Are Using the Ancient Tongue to give instruction English. Time 11 December, 2000 61.Culham, Phyllis, and Edm unds, Lowell, ed. Classics A Discipline and Profession In Crisis. Lanham University Press of America, 1989.Davis, Sally. Latin in American Schools Teaching the Ancient World. Atlanta Scholars Press, 1991.Hammond, Mason. Latin A Historical and Linguistic Handbook. Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press, 1976.Kopff, E. Christian. The Devil Knows Latin Why America Needs the Classical Tradition. Wilmington ISI Books, 1999.Smith, Sharwood. On Teaching Classics. London, Henley and Boston Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.Waquet, Francoise. Latin Or The Empire Of A Sign. Trans. John Howe. New York Verso, 2001