From My SA:

While most local students are taking final exams in classrooms this week, one Latin teacher arranged for the San Antonio Museum of Art as a testing site.

The museum has an extensive collection of Greek and Roman art, classical pieces from between 300 B.C. and 400 A.D., so Saint Mary’s Hall teacher Ned Tuck figured he’d have students interpret and translate Latin inscriptions right off the exhibits.

Most of the museum’s student visitors — some 10,000 of them a year in grades K-12 — simply spectate. But Tuck’s idea is exactly what civic leaders envisioned when they set a goal in the SA2020 plan to improve local education by using “the city as a classroom.”

In this case, the lesson was that Latin isn’t a dead language.

“I get so frustrated when people say that,” said Sydney Kranzmann, a junior, 16, who took the exam Tuesday evening. “All the romance languages come from Latin, I tell my classmates taking Spanish and French. And it helps on the SAT exam with better understanding English vocabulary.”

Latin, spread by the Romans to become the language of literate medieval Europe, was still used in Catholic liturgy and taught in schools up until the 1960s. It declined as a school subject but has had resurgences of popularity, most recently among students looking to improve SAT scores, distinguish themselves among peers studying mainstream languages or, as some of Tuck’s students said, to satisfy curiosity over words used in Harry Potter’s spells.

In San Antonio, the learning of Latin is alive and well. For example, in Northside Independent School District, 1,175 students are taking it at four levels, starting in ninth grade, said Rosanna Perez, the NISD instructional specialist for international languages.

“Students taking Latin tend to do better in other subjects and it’s great for those who are hoping to study medicine or law,” Perez said.

Museum officials said Tuck is the only teacher they’re aware of whose final exam was conducted there, but any teacher could replicate the approach, as the museum is free on Tuesday evenings.

“I think teachers are challenged nowadays with trying to find ways to keep students engaged, so this is one way I thought I could do this,” Tuck said. “We’re lucky here to have an art collection like this that other Texas teachers don’t have access to.”

Seven of his 55 Latin students wandered the museum Tuesday, filling in answers as they debated the art, translated the words on Roman coins and tried to interpret what the artist meant to say when creating a statue of Cupid and his wife, Psyche. The marble statue, from around 117 A.D., originally adorned a villa of the emperor Hadrian.

Tuck allowed the students to collaborate on the exam’s answers, making the museum’s halls a forum, fitting for Latin students.

“It’s a fun experience because what we’re learning does come to life when we see the exhibits, even though that’s in the past,” said Katie Kneuper, 17, a junior. “And as exams normally are done individually, this allows us the real-world experience of how it is to work with others, as that is something you do when you get a job.”

• via: SAMA worthy test site for Latin students (My San Antonio)

From a Penn State press release sort of thing:

Yale University’s famous motto is Lux et Veritas, Latin for “light and truth” while Princeton’s crest reads Dei Sub Numine Viget (“Under God’s power she flourishes”). The University of Pennsylvania based its cautionary motto — Sine Moribus Vanae or “Letters without morals are useless” — on a line in one of the Roman poet Horace’s odes. But in 1898, when someone pointed out that the line could also be translated as “Loose women without morals”, the University rushed to revise the wording.

Although Latin — an Indo-European language at its height during the Roman Empire — is nobody’s native tongue these days, it certainly remains a topic of conversation. The usual point of debate? Whether learning Latin is valuable for modern-day students.

“I don’t think people know what they mean when they dismiss Latin as a dead language,” said Paul Harvey, associate professor of classics at Penn State. “Of course it is not spoken in many places, save for the Vatican and a few classics departments. But whether a language is currently spoken is irrelevant to the continuing value of learning it and to the value of literature written in that language.”

Even if you never read Virgil or Cicero in the original, explains Harvey, “Latin is the root language from which variations developed into today’s modern Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and a few less-spoken European tongues. On a practical level, it is far easier for those with a firm foundation in Latin to learn a modern Romance language.”

Whether you’ve studied Latin or not, most people already use it constantly, Harvey adds. The ancient Latin/Roman alphabet is the most widely used writing system in the world, and is the alphabet of English and almost all other European languages. Up to 60 percent of modern English words derive from Latin, directly or indirectly.

Latin is our foundational language, explains Harvey, and that awareness may be a factor in the current revival of interest in Latin in our schools. One indicator is the number of students taking the AP Latin exam has doubled in the last decade. “From what I’ve seen and read,” Harvey said, “the revival in schools—including inner city schools—has less to do with a renewed interest in the classical past than a realization that the more Latin students learn, the higher their SAT verbal and analytical scores.” In fact, students of Latin had notably higher mean SAT Verbal scores than students of Spanish, French or German.

“Furthermore,” Harvey notes, “there is a continuing appreciation that studying Greek and Latin — the classical languages of Western civilization — demonstrably enhances the ability to write cogently in English.” The reason for this is “rather straightforward,” believes Harvey: “The successful study of a highly inflected language forces students to understand better the grammar and syntax of their own native language and that, in turn, encourages clarity of expression and analytical thought.”

In today’s era of online chat acronyms and text-messaging abbreviations, the ability to write well in English may be an increasingly rare and valuable career asset. Future attorneys, doctors and scientists would be well advised to study Latin to get a jump on the professional jargon, says Harvey. “And students wishing to study practically any aspect of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance literature, art, music, and history are at a serious disadvantage if they do not know Latin well.”

With such clear advantages to students, why don’t more schools encourage the study of Latin? The language may have suffered from an image problem in years past, concedes Harvey. The association of Latin with the wealthy and privileged “is a modern hangover from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries when only the educated elite studied Greek and Latin,” he notes. “The classical language curriculum pretty much dissolved after World War II.”

Contrary to its image, Harvey adds, not all works in the classical canon are somber tomes. “Most folks don’t realize that Greek and Latin literature includes an extraordinary range of works in different genres, including risqué and very funny love poetry.”

Of course, risqué and funny may not be everyone’s taste either. But as the Romans said, “De gustibus non est disputandum.” One must not argue over matters of taste.

• Probing Question: Is Latin valuable for today’s students? | Penn State Live.