Via Facilis

A number of different folks from completely different walks of life have said to me in the last three weeks that I need to bring what we do with CAGSE to the US.

This is a move I always planned to do.
I just hadn't intended on doing it so soon.
Especially in this fabulous economy of ours.

But maybe just because of this economy of ours, CAGSE's work is more pertinent than ever.

What happened there?
People did not do their due diligence.
People assumed that things were happening.
And they weren't.

So here we are.
But how does CAGSE's Latin program help?
Well, what we do is we require our students to master language.
To understand precisely what is going on.
To fathom the underpinnings of language, you must explore, observe, and understand everything you see.

CAGSE's Literacy and Latin program leaves nothing to doubt or speculation.
We ask our students to leave no stone unturned.
We ask our students to take responsibility for their own work.
We show them how to do that, but for them to truly succeed in this program,
they have to invest themselves.
To the hilt.
With all their mind.
Can you imagine such a financial crisis occurring if folks around the globe had, from the beginning, left no stone unturned?
Had understood precisely what was going on?
Had not left it to others to do their work for them?
Had done the analysis required from the very beginning?

This is what we do.

We're the next wave in education.

We're dynamite.
We ain't no gimmick.

We are the real deal.

And so, CAGSE is coming to America.

drg

Let's get one thing straight right now.

The idea that a study of Latin would help literacy
has been well established for a very long time,
long before any implementation of any program took place.
No recent program could seriously take credit for that.

Our program is different from anything out there.
Completely.
Let me reiterate, in case people decide not to pay attention to what I just said:
Our program is its own animal.
In other words, Completely Different From The Rest.
We fundamentally focus on grammar.
Everything we do in Latin, we do in English first.

Other programs may speak of students mastering "Subject, Verb, Object".
That's nice, but it isn't enough.
Why?
Because when you say "object", there isn't just one possibility;
there are three.
An object is either direct, indirect, or preceded and "governed" by a preposition.

When you say verb, you need to be able to identify its components: person, number, tense, mood, voice.

When you say subject, you must be able to identify its person and number.

Subject and Verb together require subject/verb agreement discussions.

The type of verb is itself another issue.
If it is transitive, it takes a direct object.
If it is intransitive, it does not.

Can students in years 5 and 6 (fourth and fifth grade) understand those distinctions?
Can they master them?
Apply them?
Absolutely.

If you explain it, they will get it.

So we don't dumb it down.
We make it accessible.

And when it comes to students and learning Latin, we speak of "capability" not "ability".
The use of the term "ability" necessitates a judgement regarding young people that is invariably premature, and always academically damaging.

drg