Epiphanies, wakenings, and other revelatory experiences are good grist for the mental mill. But there is other grist to be ground. The topic today: Grammar and Latin.
In workshops I've given at NYSAIS (New York State Association of Independent Schools), in sessions I've taken part in at CAAS (Classical Association of the Atlantic States) and CAES (Classical Association of the Empire State), the discussion invariably moves to the most basic problem that students have in learning Latin:
Students today, at least in the United States, have no idea how their own language works. English and its grammar are a mystery to them.
How did this happen? And what can and should we do about it?
The notion that grammar is boring, and is therefore an impediment to the learning of English, made its insidious way into the minds of those who teach English and subjects of a similar ilk. Teachers of ancient and modern languages were not immune to this seductive yet foundationally debilitating assessment. They could, the thinking went, spend more time on "what really matters."
The unstated belief: grammar does not facilitate students' learning; it obstructs it.
In addition, students of modern languages are (and rightly so) held accountable for their speaking as well as their reading and writing. The difficulty with such an approach is that the emphasis tends to become the speaking of the language.
That is fine and good for people who have an excellent ear and who can speak a language very well. Yet jettisoned, or at least shunted to one side, is the understanding of what they are saying and how they are saying it. The understanding is implicitly there, else intelligible conversations wouldn't (and couldn't) occur. But the deliberate, active comprehension, the scientific approach to language, seems to fall by the wayside when speaking comes into the fore.
Meanwhile, a shift in the focus of Latin from the close reading of the language to the studying of its culture and history aided and abetted this trend to underestimate the value of a strong understanding of grammar. Classical Studies, its culture, its history, could be learned apart from the language.
Yet the fallacy of this thinking is the tacit premise that culture and history, on the one hand, and language, on the other, are mutually exclusive. Ironically, all this cultural and historical information comes from a close reading of Latin texts.
The linguistic manner in which the information is framed is also cultural. In other words, culture and history cannot be spliced away from the language which supplied the venue for, and the meaning of, their existence. The three are inseparable, symbiotic, linked.
Students nowadays have an excellent knowledge base of Roman culture and history. Yet they cannot read effectively. Their understanding of their own language, English, is virtually nil.
How could they possible hope to learn another language when they have such little active understanding of their own? This is the question that Latinists ask the most. Yet the "grammar problem" gets in the way.
There are so many other things that Latinists could be teaching. Why waste it on grammar? English grammar, to boot?
Answer: without it, students will not be able to read those Latin texts which provide all the cultural and historical information in the first place. They will have to rely on somebody else's translation.
The problem: every translation is an interpretation. Students will have no way to analyze this interpretation if they cannot read the text upon which it is based. To read effectively, students must understand language. To understand language, students must learn grammar. Grammar is the science of language. It gives students a framework to understand how the constuent parts of language fit together to engender meaning. It is essential to the learning of Latin.
That is the conclusion that colleagues of mine always come up with. Their complaints all have their origin in students' lack of understanding of grammar. This is why I say: Grammar Is Good. English grammar. Latin grammar. Greek grammar. Any language grammar.
It is grammar that allows students the ability to broaden and deepen their understanding of classical civilization, of classical history, of classical culture.
How? Students who know grammar are critical readers and thinkers. That is the key.
It's nice that students know history and culture. As Latinists/Hellenists/Classicists, it is incumbent upon us to create an environment wherein our students read critically, think critically, write critically.
The key: a deep awareness of language and all that comes with it.