BMCR 2009.08.07: Balbo on Lister, Meeting the Challenge: International Perspectives on the Teaching of Latin

Bob Lister (ed.), Meeting the Challenge: International Perspectives on
the Teaching of Latin.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Pp. viii, 168 (pb).  ISBN 9780521690430.

Reviewed by Andrea Balbo, Universita\ del Piemonte Orientale
([email protected])
Word count:  963 words
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In July 2005 an international conference on teaching and learning Latin
was held in Cambridge. The title was Meeting the Challenge: European
perspectives on the teaching and learning of Latin. An international
panel of teachers and researchers gave papers about various and
different subjects, from Latin with Information Communication and
Technologies (ICT) to Classical Heritage and Modern Western
Culture.[[1]] Some years later, Bob Lister, one of the organisers of
the meeting,   collected some of those papers and the above interesting
volume. The book aims to be a summary of the most interesting research
perspectives on Latin didactics and gives some useful and important
assessments about Latin teaching situation in the world. The eleven
papers examine four important themes: a) the place of Latin in the
modern curriculum; b) methods of learning the Latin language for
beginners; c) the exploitation of ICT in Latin teaching domain; d) ways
to promote Latin language and civilization in the future.

The book begins with an impressive introduction by Bob Lister, who
summarizes the main topics and gives an evaluation of all the inserted
papers. The subjects can be divided into the following four groups.

Group A contains the first three papers: D. Taylor, "Inspection and
introspection: classics teaching in England over four decades" (pp.
9-20); P. Seranis, "Poor relation or necessary evil? The place of Latin
in the Greek curriculum" (pp. 21-30); L. Crump, "A contemporary subject
for contemporary Europe: the much-disputed role and relevance of Latin
at Dutch gymnasia" (pp. 31-43). The history of teaching of Classics in
England from the Sixties until today, the difficult place of Latin in
the Greek school curriculum and the reflection about the role of
classical gymnasia in Netherlands offer a panorama of different
experiences that show some common elements: 1) the difficulty of
justifying the existence of Latin in the curriculum; 2) the risk that
teachers may "wish to accentuate the more obviously exciting features
of the classical world" instead of worrying themselves "with
grammatical eccentricities that characterised some traditional
approaches, making Latin seem like a impossibly fiendish sudoku";[[2]]
3) the risk of a progressive and never-ending reduction of the
importance of Classics in modern society. Against this idea Laurien
Crump stresses that Latin can be a useful "key to contemporary
society", and so its role is still surely great. The same problems and
difficulties may be found in other countries, and the problems
described  above and the solutions adopted for them are similar in all
Europe.[[3]]

Group B contains two papers. The first, by Deborah Ross, "Latin
pedagogy at the University of Michigan, USA: linear reading using a
linguistic perpective" (pp. 44-53), describes a learning and teaching
model offered by the University of Michigan  that consists of a
metaphrasing system based upon the generative grammar of Noam Chomsky
and modified by Knudsvig, Seligson and Craig; this method underlines
the idea of the expectation of the reader, who asks himself the
different possible meaning of the words and of the syntax features of
the sentence during the reading phase; every word can raise questions
and comprehension of the text comes from the answers to single ones.
Another reading method for Latin beginners is suggested by Toon Van
Houdt, "The strategic reading of Latin (and Greek) texts: a
research-based approach" (pp. 54-70), that aims to build real readers
of Latin and Greek texts by stimulating metacognition of personal
strategies and continual self-assessment and evaluation of progress in
learning. These papers underline the weaknesses of the traditional
system of teaching, suggesting the replacement of the common
substantialist perspective in grammar teaching (subject, object,
predicates and so on) with a more linguistic-oriented method  that can
also satisfy the questions of sense and legitimacy of Latin teaching
asked by a lot of students.

Group C includes four articles: Will Griffiths, "Increasing access to
Latin in schools" (pp. 71-90); Irene Burch, Simone Hiltscher, Rudolf
Wachter, "Did you catch that word? Latinum electronicum: an interactive
online Latin course for university beginners" (pp. 91-106); Steve Hunt,
"Information and communication technology and the teaching of Latin
literature" (pp. 107-120); Licia Landi, "Technology is culture: a new
opportunity for teaching and learning Latin" (pp. 121-134). The four
papers describe different school experiences in the fields of language
and literature teaching, starting from CSCP (The Cambridge School
Classical Project) to Latinum Electronicum, an interesting and useful
tool for beginners developed by some researchers of Basle and hosted by
the Swiss Virtual Campus. I want to underline especially the contents
of the articles of Landi and Hunt. Licia Landi's work on the
interaction among ICT and Classics develops strong links between Latin
language, Ciceronian thought and humanitas. Steve Hunt's essay focuses
on the advantages of using ICT in the classroom, the value of the
available resources and a sample  lesson about Horace Ode III, 30; it
is particularly useful  because it leaves the pure theoretical level to
engage in the real practice of everyday didactics.

Group D includes the other two papers: Rudolf Wachter "Latin and
European language history" (pp. 135-149) and Kenneth Kitchell Jr.
"Promotion of the classics in the United States: new initiatives for a
new millennium" (pp. 150-164). These present a general picture of the
meaning of Latin studies in Europe and the situation in the USA,
stressing the necessity of joint effort among the teachers of modern
and ancient languages and the need to maintain Classical studies,
mainly for cultural reasons.

This book is clearly addressed to English and American readers and is
very close to Anglo-Saxon Latin teaching problems. Nevertheless, it can
be useful even for teachers of other European countries. It would be
important to think also of other similar outputs in order to widen the
perspective to the countries of Southern Europe, where Latin teaching
is not yet seen as a malum necessarium.


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Notes:


1.   A  second conference (http://www.iperlatino.it)  was held in
Venice in 2008.

2.   D. Taylor, p.15.

3.   For instance, in Italy, where Latin is compulsory and not optional
in most  secondary schools, there is also a strong opposition to Latin
teaching, considered out of fashion and far from the needs of modern
society: see my book Insegnare latino. Sentieri di ricerca per una
didattica ragionevole (Novara 2007), pp. 25-35 and the recent Latino
perche/, Latino per chi, an inquiry about Latin teaching in Europe
issued by the cultural association Treellle of Genoa, that is freely
downloadable in pdf format (http://www.treellle.org/materiale/QA1.pdf)
.