Loading ...The lawmakers argue that the Bible is the most influential book in Western civilization and that biblical literacy is a worthy academic pursuit for the students of Kentucky.
An atheist activist, predictably, is up in arms about the proposal. For more, click here.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 10:23 am and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Bad Behavior has blocked 0 access attempts in the last 7 days.
Presented by: ArkansasOnline | Frank Lockwood on behalf of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Copyright © 2010 BibleBeltBlogger.com | All rights reserved.
February 9th, 2010 at 11:27 am
The folks who propose these Bible classes in public schools always say that they only want to teach the historical and cultural and literary aspects of the Christian scriptures. At least they always say that in public. Their supporters and backers seem to have a broader goal in mind. Critics, both atheist and religious, have an obvious concern, that one segment of the population will subvert the constitutional protections of religious freedom by using the taxpayer funds and government force to advance the interests of a particular religion.
If the advocates of the Bible studies are honest about the limited purpose of the classes, perhaps they would accept a compromise that might allay the fears of the public. To avoid any conflict of interest or unintentional bias, every teacher who leads one of these classes must swear that they do not consider the Bible to be scripture. They would not be permitted to use any study guide developed by a private company that had any ties whatsoever to a church or religious group. Would Sen. Boswell make this little concession in the interest of improving the education of the fine children of Kentucky?
February 9th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I graduated from high school longer ago than I’d like to admit, but certainly after the Supreme Court banned the teaching of religion in the public schools, as was often done in the past. And yet, in high school, I had a course on “The Bible as Literature,” and it was my impression at the time that this was a widely-taught course. The class (at least as it was taught in my school) didn’t teach any religious doctrines, but discussed the forms of literature used in the Bible and the types of documents that had been put together to form the Bible. It was an interesting class, and I don’t know of anyone objecting to it, in part because it was taught by an English teacher that was widely respected in the community.
I thought then, and think now, that there is nothing wrong with this sort of instruction. Today, more than thirty years (gulp) after I graduated, though, I fear that the grass eaters are smarter now than they were then, or at least more politically savvy about injecting their own narrow prejudices into any discussion of the Bible. So, it might be harder to get a truly neutral class going today than it was then.
All in all, though, I’m in favor of teaching about the Bible in school, so long as what is taught is academically respectable. Knowing these folks, though, I doubt that it would be. Also, one wonders which Bible they will teach. The actual text of the bill refers to the “Hebrew scriptures,” or the “Old Testament,” along with the New Testament. Do they mean to include the Apocrypha in their Old Testament? If not, they’re hardly being fair, because they’re limiting the Bible to what one narrow group deems canonical. Of course, one of the sponsors, David Boswell, is identified as being Catholic, so they might include the Apocrypha.
February 9th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
If there’s anything this country doesn’t need more of, it’s another place to talk about the Bible. Seriously, there are buildings on every street corner where people gather who would be more than happy to discuss the Bible with anyone who walked through the door. I have about ten channels on my satellite dish that talk about little else than what’s written in the Bible. There is no shortage of Biblical information in America. If you are seriously curious about the Bible, google it, but don’t spend my tax dollars on supplying that same information in public schools. Come on, folks, we’re behind in science and mathematics. How about we work on science and mathematics?
February 9th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Cheese, I believe the Bible has a passage or two about cubits. Regardless, its an important document about world history.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I vote no on this proposal, even as an optional elective course. I could understand a social studies elective class of cultures and religions of the world, perhaps. I am with cheese on this one, and I love learning from the Bible.
What an unnecessary mess this would create, for believers and non-believers alike. I am all for religious education, especially learning the Scriptures, but not at public school. We have enough issues with public education. Let’s focus on strengthening the teaching of math, science, art, music, history, READING, literature, English syntax and grammar, physical and nutritional education, wood and metal shop, technology, and more. My grandaughter is taking Chinese at her middle school. Sign of the times. One could take Latin at my high school, WAY back then.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Wow. For once, I’m the one promoting the intermixing of church and state.
Cheese, you’re absolutely right that America (and Kentucky in particular) is full of churches that would love to teach you THEIR VERSION of what the Bible means. It would be nice to also present someone who might offer a larger perspective, about what different cultures and different religions taught or teach about particular passages, and even more so, to share modern Biblical scholarship, a light that rarely shines inside a church, particularly among the evangelicals.
But, Cheese is also right that we need better education in math and science than we do in Biblical studies, if only to try to figure out what Perplexed’s cubits mean. As always, being a liberal, I want it all.
February 10th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Because the nation is overwhelmingly Christian, the Bible becomes a more significant book. I took a high school class 50 years ago in Texas that addressed the Bible as both literature and as an historical document that had great influence on the world around us. The teacher was a Southern Baptist professor of comparative religions at the Southwestern Baptist Seminary. He was surprisingly unbiased and taught us nothing about Christian theology, although there was some discussion of how the Bible has been interpreted by both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, there was no attempt to promote either. The teacher was amazingly neutral in his teaching. I found it quite interesting even though as an Episcopalian I had entered the class with some trepidation, unjustified as it turned out. I would recommend that any such course be coupled with one on comparative religion.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
a cubit is an ancient unit of measure, I beleive it was from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow. Most biblical temples were built using this unit of measure. I beleive 40 x 40 x 40 was a standard size.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
No child needs to learn in school what a cubit is. Have you ever used a cubit outside of a conversation on the Bible? No. The same goes for Roman numerals, Latin, and standard units of measurement. Rid them from the curriculum, let children google them if they’re curious, and teach things that have lasting value, i.e. the metric system and languages that are spoken by living people.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
The worry of whether or not one would be exposed to unwanted teachings is exactly why we have our “seminary” classes outside of school in a “release time” format. No one is forced to go, LDS or not, but all are invited, LDS or not. This way the students get a chance to receive instruction if they choose and still can take enough credits of regular classes to graduate. If the area does not have “release time” (during school) then they normally have it available before school. I did 2 years of each as our town in Oregon didn’t have the release time until I was a junior.
In a town where we lived in Idaho, the local Baptist church also had such a program.
February 11th, 2010 at 5:24 am
In most cases in life, the best way to prepare for the future is to learn from the past.
February 11th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Welcome back, David. Those out of school programs that you mention were sponsored and paid for by private organizations, right? That seems to be the big sticking point here. It’s funny that a lot of folks who normally speak favorably of small government and low taxes change their tune like this. Awfully inconsistent. Anyone true fiscal conservative would drop this silly idea for no reason other than to avoid the hefty legal fees.
February 14th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
And abandon God’s honest foot and pound? I’m surprised at you, Cheese . . .
February 15th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Learning from the past to prepare for the future is the whole point of studying history; it is not why we learn measurement or study languages. Take units of length. The link, the inch, the chain, the rod, the foot, the yard, the furlong, the mile, each has its own base, and the number one needs to get from one unit to the next must be carefully memorized. Moreover, adding these units mentally is very difficult. How many inches are in 4 miles, 13 feet? All these units should go the way of the cubit and be left for scholars to interpret. The meter and its prefixes are far easier to remember and process on a practical level. How many centimeters are in 4.8 kilometers? We have ten fingers and ten toes; it only makes sense for human beings to use a base-ten counting system whenever possible. Oh, and did I mention the rest of the world is laughing at us?
February 16th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Are there schools that assign Foxe’s Book of Martyrs as required reading? That’s a really important historical text, too, with all sorts of implications for religious tolerance, the power of a more or less free press, and of course the dangers of and definition of a state religion.
February 16th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
MDSF, I grew up in a household where Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was still read, which shows how much of an old line Episcopalian my great grandmother was, but I don’t think I caught up with it again until college.
Cheese, I know how to count to twelve, even without having that many digits, and those who can’t are welcome to the metric system. There is more to life than avoiding the difficult. If the rest of the world is laughing at us, they can laugh all they want until their next natural disaster, at which point they’ll stop laughing. I don’t imagine many Haitians are laughing at us right now; a lot of good the metric system did them.
February 16th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Wow, Caleb, I certainly didn’t expect that kind of response from you. Spoken like a true American patriot: emotionally defensive, poorly researched, and utterly moronic. Let me get this straight. You can count to twelve. Congratulations, that year in kindergarten was not a complete waste for you. Unfortunately, the issue I’m raising has little, if anything, to do with counting. The issue concerns multiplication and division, and math that’s done mentally, not on a calculator. Standard units are not fatally flawed because people cannot count to 12. They’re doomed to die, because they lack a standard conversion ratio. 12 is a very fine number, but knowing how to multiply and divide by 12 in your head will only help you convert feet to inches and vice versa. To convert other standard units, one must also be equally adept at multiplying and dividing by 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, 20, 32, 2000, and 5280. This list certainly doesn’t even cover every type of conversion, but you get the point: It’s cumbersome. The beauty of the metric system is that all conversions can be performed by multiplying and dividing by factors of 10. In terms of mental math, this equates to nothing more than shifting the decimal point to the desired position. It requires virtually no mental computation whatsoever. I am not avoiding the difficult. You are ignoring the simpler solution. And furthermore, I don’t know why you brought up natural disasters, but natural disasters do not target people who use the metric system, nor do they avoid people who use standard units. They affect us all. Man-made disasters are another story however. Our history is rife with incidents in which somebody was injured or killed because somebody else failed to make the appropriate conversion. Our lone resistance to the metric system is not just stupid; it’s dangerous. We should do the mature thing, which is to lay standard units to rest and join the rest of the globe in adopting the metric system. The sooner, the better.
Stick to studying the law, Caleb. You’d be a cold and hungry mathematician.
February 16th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Cheese, is this right? You want to change to the metric system because its easier?
February 16th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Um…do you think that’s a nutty reason, perp?
February 16th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Engineering problems aren’t solved by easier formula’s!
February 16th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
As an engineer I feel qualified to disagree with you, perp. The best designs and solutions are the simplest ones. They are cheaper to produce, easier to maintain, and they usually perform more efficiently. It may sound counterintuitive but complexity is often a sign that someone didn’t invest enough time!
Cheese may be overstating the benefits of decimalization but her main point is correct.
Next we can reexamine your assertion that the Bible is “an important document about world history.” It may be each of those– an important document AND a book about world history– but the importance of the Bible has little to do with its rather suspect recording of human events.
Caleb, Kentuckians will never allow the USA to abandon certain archaic measurements. Long live the furlong!
February 17th, 2010 at 7:30 am
touche’ Jose
February 17th, 2010 at 11:11 am
I thought liberals valued diversity. Our dogmatic hold on the Standard system offers a “creative” alternative to the that boring old base 10 system. I would like to see the world convert to a base 12 system where the numbers 11 and 12 are converted to their own unique symbol and we start over at 12 rather than 10. The decade would have 12 years in it and the century would have 12 decades in it. Think about it, we have a base 12 clock and hours in a day (even the rest of the world didn’t give that up). Also, 12 is easily divisible in half unlike that pesky 5—do you round up or down?
Anyway, the main reasons the U.S. hasn’t followed the rest of the world on this is 1) we don’t care what the rest of the world thinks, we’re the alpha dog of the pack (or so we think), 2) we accidently surveyed virtually the whole damn country into townships based on the 36 unit square mile and base 12 measurements and we’re not about to go out and do it all over again since it took us nearly 150 years to do it the first time, 3) and finally, what is a meter anyway? It doesn’t relate to anything in our daily lives like a cubit would. I can measure a room by pacing it off with my size 12 shoes and say how many “feet” it is. I am 6 feet tall, what is that in meters? You can visualize six of my feet stacked up, similar to “hands” high on a horse.
There is value to the metric system, but in some ways the standard system is more practical.
Back to the point: Nothing wrong with teaching the Bible as literature or history, but it’s tricking to not offend. You go too far either way and you’ll have angry parents saying your indoctrinating or not valuing it. Just include it in a regular English Lit class along with the standard “Scarlet Letter” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
February 17th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I admit I was pulling your chain a bit there, Cheese, but Jose and Perplexed are right that we do have emotional attachments to our measurements. Now don’t get me wrong; I have no problem envisioning John’s six feet of height as two meters, because I figure a meter is just a yard with a tail on the end, and I have no problem envisioning my Double Quarter Pounder (not counting the cheese) as a Quarter Kilogram, figuring that a kilogram is two pounds, plus a bit. I figure that a liter is just a quart with another couple of spoonfuls in it, and a kilometre a little over half a mile.
But I am, like most Americans, far more comfortable with the English system, and yes, there are things going on in Kentucky that do use some of the more esoteric English units. As Jose says, the furlong is a well known measurement here because of our interest in horse racing, and I’ve never seen a rural Kentucky deed that didn’t have some measurement in it in rods. This winter has certainly turned out the firewood sellers, and I’m not sure what the metric equivalent of a cord would be. Our beloved Bourbon whiskey, though, has gone the way of the metric system, with the 750 ml bottle replacing the fifth, and the liter bottle replacing the quart. The shame of it all . . .
February 17th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
John, I would say that true liberalism values an open mind. That means a diversity of options, of which we might choose one. Of course we might keep our options open and change our minds later. Conservatism would mean holding onto what you have and refusing change.
I don’t see how anyone thinks that our current system, based on the old English units, is more practical than the metric. Back in college (decades ago) we were introduced to both sets of units in physics class but then quickly dropped the English system. Scientists and engineers were already moving to the metric, both in the academy and industry.
I haven’t checked this but I think that the USA is on the metric system in some official way, but unlike in some countries it’s not imposed on the consumers here. If you haven’t noticed there are lots of products which use the metric system, from your two liter soft drink bottle and 750 ml wine bottle to the 4.0L engines in automobiles.
February 17th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
The metric system is officially used by the U.S. Military and I think Congress passed a law saying that we are all “officially” metric, but will not enforce such on a federal level—at least not to the exclusion of the English Standard system.
No doubt at all that the metric system works best in the scientific environment, but for everyday use other systems are better for certain situations. I’m sorry, but I will always be 6 feet tall and not 1.79 meters or 179 cm. People can relate better to “feet” for some reason. I work in the publishing and printing industry and we use picas and points to measure paper and graphic sizes. The pica system is base 12, not base 10. Base 12 is much more easily divisible on linear and square areas for the size of units we deal with.
If America had adopted the metric system 200 years ago when it was first created, the conversion would have been more easily made. But like I said, we have the township system, survey makers and all, that we simply cannot redefine without making a colossal mess of things. I think all deeds to land in the old Northwest Ordinance territory (basically everything west of the Appalachian Mountains) are based on these surveys and boundary markers. The English system is not going anywhere. Even in Canada, though the roads and maps are in metric, the homes and other aspects of their society are still in feet and inches.
I suppose if we had a history and culture of accepting dictates “imposed” on us from above, like Canada and European countries, and the rest of the world, for that matter, we would be using the metric system more. But, we’re Americans. We don’t like anybody, and especially our elected officials, telling us what to do! We are naturally anti-elite, and we don’t like our “betters” telling us what is better, even if it is.
Side note: The reason we have the English system is because we at least had a standard system back in the day when most societies had tons of incompatible systems. The reason the rest of the world, excluding the areas of former British colonies to some extent, is on the metric system was because they had no other universal system prevalent in their society to challenge it when the demands of modernization demanded some standard.
February 17th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
“…but for everyday use other systems are better for certain situations”
Nope, I just don’t buy that one. It’s certainly easier for you because that’s what you are accustomed to, but there is no inherent reason why people should have trouble imagining their weight in kilos or their height in cm. In fact, many people do just that.
A friend from England told me about when the British converted their monetary system to decimals in 1971. He laughed at how the little old ladies fretted so! The idea of 100 pence in a pound was just TOO confusing, so why couldn’t they stay with the traditional system? That was so easy…two sixpence to the shilling and 20 shillings per pound and so forth, not to mention tuppence and thruppence, farthings and florins and a half crown. But the bad government insisted on changing and a few years later our neighbors across the pond seemed to have adjusted to decimals just fine.
February 17th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
In addition to being an American, I’m also a citizen of the world and a fan of democracy. The people of the world have spoken, and they’ve chosen the metric system. It is the future. Our standard units are a relic of the past.
Yes, making the transition will be costly and difficult. But the longer we hold out, the more costly and difficult it becomes. The best time to make a change for the better is sooner rather than later.
Surveyors will survive. In fact, they’d probably welcome the challenge and extra business it would bring them.
The reason I brought this whole thing up is because I believe, to compete once again in the world market, Americans need to streamline their education process. We don’t need to teach children things that will not be useful to them in the future. Standard units are relics; Roman numerals are relics; the Latin language is a relic. There is nothing new being published in Latin; why bother teaching it to our high schoolers? If we want to compete in the twenty-first century, we need to be teaching twenty-first century skills, not relics.
February 18th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Cheese, I would think the rise of computers would negate any differences between the US and metric measures. Now, with a keystroke, you can instantly convert any measure into any other known measurement. In practice, most areas of American life have already converted to the metric system. All pharmaceuticals are now measured in grams and milligrams, virtually all liquids sold by volume are sold in litres or millilitres, and now even American-made cars are made using metric tools and measurements.
I also have to defend my beloved Latin as well. Despite having been described as the worst Latin scholar to walk across Harvard Square, I firmly believe that we need to teach more, not less, Latin in school. The fact that no native speakers of the language are being born doesn’t negate the thousands of important historical documents that were written in that language, or the logic that one learns when framing sentences in Ciceronian Latin.
The future will come. The only way we will know how to deal with it is by our study of the past, and that includes many things that may not have a direct impact on the way we live our lives now. That is not to say that we should short our kids on math and science; obviously, they need to learn these subjects, but they need to take time for some Latin declensions, too.
February 18th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
A toast to Caleb! I whole-heartedly concur! Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-metric. I think it is a great system and should be the standard on a universal basis. Just saying that in certain industries and fields other units are perfectly viable. The whole world uses the pica system in printing, even the metric countries. The base 12 system works better in many cases. Maybe that’s why we had 12 tribes of Israel and 12 Apostles? Whoa, deep doctrine there!
As much as 1/3 of our English vocabulary is Latin based (I think). When my brother went into medicine he took Latin classes because much of the scientific naming system and terminology in medicine and biology (and almost all other sciences) is rooted almost exclusively in Latin. It really helped him to identify medicines and chemical compounds by learning the Latin rules of prefixes, suffixes and some basic grammar.
But, if we’re going to throw out other measurement systems and old dead languages, we might as well dispense with the English language while we’re at it. It is certainly not the most efficient language in the world and is full of odd rules and exceptions to those rules. My sister taught her kids some “universal” language the U.N. cooked up (I forget the name of it right now), maybe we should all just stop teaching English in the schools and go to that. Any takers?
February 18th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I think that would be Esperanto, John, though it was scholars, not the UN, who invented it: It was invented long before the UN was. Users used to wear little green buttons.
February 18th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Oh yeah, thanks for jogging my now 41 year-old brain. I think my sister said something about it trying to be used by the UN at one point, but they gave up. Hence my confusion—which seems occur more and more frequently now. Have no idea how you manage.
February 18th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Caleb and John,
The whole point of learning a new language is to familiarize yourself with a different culture and expand your ability to communicate with different people. Latin fails in this regard completely. You can’t use it to communicate with anyone. Nothing new is being written in it. And the students learning it are only exercising their abilities to write and read in a foreign tongue; they receive no training in how to speak or listen in a foreign tongue. Latin is no substitute for a living language.
Imagine the benefits if all schoolchildren across the globe studied the three most popular languages, Mandarin, English, and Spanish, from 1st through 12th grades. By the time they leave school, they’d be equipped to communicate and possibly conduct business with half the people on the planet! Furthermore, if we combine those classes with a general class in word etymology, instead of learning where about 1/3 of our language originated, they’d cover portions of the other 2/3 as well.
Learning Latin is a noble endeavor (I took two years so I know), but its practical benefits are no longer as valuable as they once were, especially now that the Catholic mass is no longer solely done in Latin. In grade school and high school, we need to be stressing those skills that stretch across all curricula. Leave dead languages for the linguists and historians. There will always be a select group of people who will keep studying Latin and those important documents you reference, Caleb, but the average joe doesn’t need to know Latin grammar or the five declensions of Latin nouns. We’ll be just fine reading Noah Webster’s dictionary and expert translations of those documents.
February 18th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Cheese is right, guys. It’s no more important to study Latin than any other old subject, say, history or classical Greek art or Shakespeare. We can’t bother with the past; the future is just around the corner.
February 20th, 2010 at 7:33 am
When Eisenhower liberated the concentration camps, he told his photographers to document every bit of that horrendous period of history that they could because in 50 years people will say it didn’t happen. The past is a learning tool, ignore it and your asking for trouble in the future.
February 20th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Good point, perplexed. When I was growing up around a lot of WWII veterans, some of whom had seen these camps firsthand, I would never have imagined that someone could deny that the holocaust happened. Once again, I underestimated the power of bigotry and religious intolerance.
February 21st, 2010 at 9:33 am
Jose blew my point out of proportion when he added history to the list of subjects that have no practical relevance to our contemporary era, but you guys are missing the point by conflating the study of the Holocaust with the study of inefficient symbols (dead languages, non-Arabic numerals, and non-metric units).
The challenge for us today is that our knowledge base is enormous. No generation before us has had so many learning resources. However, it is impossible to incorporate absolutely everything into twelve years of curricula, some knowledge will undoubtedly have to wait until our students decide to specialize in particular fields, at which point there should be no limitations whatsoever on the subjects to be pursued.
My whole point is that we should spend less time on subjects that have less practical value and more time on those that do. Learning living languages has far more practical value than learning dead languages. Mastering all that can be done with the Arabic numerals ought to take full precedence over bothering with useless Roman numerals (by the way, what’s half of three in Roman numerals?), and learning the metric system (the system the whole world uses) should take precedence over teaching our insular and cumbersome standard units.
Furthermore, if any teaching at all is taking place, then history is being taught. History is inseparable from all other fields, since all knowledge originated in the past. So it is impossible not to teach some version of history, but, of course, we’ll always argue about the accuracy of the interpretation.
February 21st, 2010 at 10:27 am
Cheese, Latin of all languages, culminates such a large portion of our life, from our language, to our city lay outs, our architecture, almost everything we know to municipalities, government structure, the list goes on and on. To dismiss it and ignore it, you would have to think without a doubt man is a competent animal. Guess what, history will argue with that one!
February 21st, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Cheese, perhaps your real point is that we should avoid wasting time on lessons that were once practical but are now obsolete. Point taken. But you might want to reconsider whether seemingly obsolete subjects are truly without any contemporary value. Perhaps you see knowledge of Latin to be of value only to a few folks. I have heard many people say otherwise. My own wife studied Latin in college. She tells me that it has helped her in many ways that were entirely unforeseen.
As for:
“My whole point is that we should spend less time on subjects that have less practical value and more time on those that do.”
I have to take issue. There is so much that a person gains from a broad based education that emphasizes theory and fundamentals. Sure, a high school diploma ought to indicate that the graduate has enough practical knowledge to function in society but it would be a terrible shame if we limited our horizons to just that minimal set of tools. High school ought not to be merely a trade school. They ought to challenge students to think, not just recall facts.
Taken to its extreme it would be possible to construct a curriculum entirely of practical courses and leave out the fluffy background but what would that be like? Composition and grammar without literature. Government without history. Such an education would seem awfully cold and superficial. There is no sense of purpose or context.
As for which takes precedence over what, maybe we’re arguing over nothing much. When my kids were in public schools they did learn the metric system, along with the more common (and therefore practical) British measurements. I’m sure that they were exposed to Roman numerals at some time, but for goodness sakes all of their math used the normal Arabic numerals. Like most of their friends they studied Spanish, a very practical language. Latin was not offered even as an elective. From what in schools today there is a healthy mix of subjects, and I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.
March 8th, 2010 at 11:33 am
José, I can’t agree more. When my little sister got her Masters of Divinity from Harvard a few years ago (yes, they let a Mormon in!), one of the commencement speakers gave her entire speech in Latin. When she was done the whole audience clapped appreciatively like they knew what she was talking about. My older brother and my Dad looked at each other and almost started to laugh at this. So, Latin is still quite useful. It makes people feel like they are really smart and sophisticated!
(Although I do support learning Latin, I guess I just gave a point to Cheese on this one. Sorry. You wouldn’t want me on your debate team.)
March 8th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Harvard’s longtime tradition is for the valedictorian to give his or her valedictory address in Latin. The point in learning Latin is not that you will then be able to listen to that speech and laugh at the puns (also traditional), but that in learning Latin, particularly classical Ciceronian Latin, one learns logic and sentence construction that helps one in every aspect of life. As I always tell people, I am the victim of a traditional liberal arts education, which means that I can make puns in Latin, but don’t understand how a cell phone works.
March 8th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Caleb,
Let’s make one thing abundantly clear: Latin students are not learning logic. Formal logic, as any lawyer should know, concerns using the tools of deduction and induction to identify valid conclusions and spot logical fallacies. Its primary goal is to differentiate between statements that are true to the extent that they follow from a set of premises and others that are downright misleading or false. The purpose of studying Latin is merely to construct coherent, grammatically-correct sentences. It has nothing to do with formal logic.
Now I’m assuming when you said “logic” what you really meant was grammar. Latin has, like every language, a set of underlying principles that govern how sentences ought to be constructed. After students have memorized a plethora of vocabulary words and a multitude of suffixes, they then progress to manipulating the rules of that system to create coherent sentences. This process might closely resemble logic, but it really does not compare. Formal logic is concerned with the validity of certain statements; Latin only demands a coherent one. The rules of formal logic are inflexible; the rules of Latin were arbitrarily invented over a thousand years ago, and every language developed since has its own unique set of governing rules. If learning logic is the reason why you think people should study Latin, then you must admit that studying Latin is a cheap substitute for any math or philosophy course.
The fact is: Latin is taught as a foreign language, not as an introduction to logic. The goal of all language study is sentence construction. But unlike the other languages we teach in school, nobody (except Harvard’s valedictorian) actually uses Latin in their everyday lives. It may help you to identify the origin of certain legal or medical terms, but the suffixes you spent all that time memorizing sit deep in your memory banks, unused and ultimately forgotten. Learning a living language has more advantages than learning a dead one, because they allow us to communicate with actual, living human beings. Latin prepares you to read the words of dead people, but it cannot help you respond to them. Living languages can teach you about thriving cultures. Latin teaches you about a culture that was wiped out of existence over a thousand years ago. Living languages pave the way for international trade. There’s not a single transaction taking place anywhere on the face of the planet that’s being conducted in Latin.
I took two years of Latin in high school, followed by two years of German in college. German grammar shares many characteristics with Latin. Auf Deutsch, suffixes determine the context of nouns, and verbs are governed by word order. The goal was still forming a coherent sentence within a complex system of rules, but German has the added advantage that there are people speaking and writing it today. I honestly believe those of you who still believe Latin has a place in the average curriculum of high school students are sticking with tradition merely for the sake of sticking with tradition. Living languages offer all the benefits of a Latin education and then some. The world is changing; the languages people speak are changing with it. The real question is: Do you think it’s better to accept changing reality and change with it or reject change altogether?