A Call for Greek in School:
Recovery of a Renaissance Tradition*
by Richard Evans, St. Agnes Academy
revans@st-agnes.org
This presentation will address first, the present-day
absence of Classical Greek programs from American schools, particularly
schools in Texas, and then a strategy for revivifying Greek in conjunction
with Latin instruction.
In 1917, James Allen in the preface to his textbook,
The First Year of Greek, reporting on the decline of Classical Greek as a
subject in American schools wrote: "However regrettable it may seem,
during the past decade or so Greek has come to be in this country largely
a college subject" (Preface v). Indeed, the situation remains so
today. Try to find a school with a full Greek program or examine the
number of students participating in the National Greek Examination, less
than 900 in 1997, according the latest data available on the NGE internet
site. The decline of Greek programs and numbers of Classics majors at the
university level, appropriately lamented by Victor Hanson and John Heath
in Who Killed Homer? is truly outdone by the long-standing, virtual
extinction of Ancient Greek in American schools (1-5).
Both empirical and anecdotal evidence confirm that
Homer truly is dead and has been for some time at the secondary level. In
"Greek 2000--Crisis, Challenge, Deadline," Professor Phinney
reported that in reference to the National Greek Examination for 1994, he
sent out 61 questionnaires to institutions that ordered the examination
with a return rate of 50 high schools:
I do not wish to claim that the National Greek
Examination is taken by all high-school students of Greek, but I think I
am correct in saying that the majority take it. Of the 50 schools, 36 (72%)
were private, 14 (28%) were public. In the 50 schools, there are 59
teachers of Greek. The overall enrollment in Classical Greek, levels 1-4,
is 929 students. (407-408)
These numbers hardly indicate robust health for
Greek at the secondary level, and even if we can add in those schools
unreported in "Greek 2000," possibly another 40 as an upper-end
estimate, we are still left with only a hypothetical 100 schools around
the U.S., offering free-standing Greek programs.
Even fully alive Greek programs at elite private
schools struggle to keep up enrollments and maintain good health. Dr. Lee
T. Pearcy, whose Classics department at Episcopal Academy (Merion, PA)
offers three years of Greek, recently reported in an e-mail exchange:
"As you know, Greek hangs on by a thread in most schools where it’s
offered. At Episcopal this year we have 14 students in Greek 1, 5 in Greek
2 and 6 in Greek 3. That’s about normal for us--when we set Greek up as a
separate course, we thought we might have about 20 students in the three
levels." The target of 20 students per level has yet to be achieved
at Episcopal, it seems.
Yet in distinction to the limited study of Classical
Greek in schools, Latin is strong, even growing as noted by Richard
LaFleur in his 1997 article in The Classical Outlook, "Latina
Resurgens: Classical Language Enrollments in American Schools and
Colleges" (Vol.74.4, Summer 1997). Notably, Latin is robust in the
South where almost no high-school Greek is to be found: "As a whole,
the South and West are not areas where Greek is available at the
high-school level. Neither is the West strong in Latin, but the South is
very strong in Latin" ("Greek 2000" 410). Immediately the
question arises concerning how Latin can be so strong in the South with
little or no reference to the original Hellenic background out of which
Latin literature and intellectual culture evolved. Where is Greek in
Southern schools? Or as "Greek 2000" presents the issue:
"It would seem that interest in Greek could be more widely cultivated
among students in the South, particularly in those states where Latin is
strong like Tennessee, Texas, and Florida" (410).
One obvious reason why Greek is not being cultivated
lies in the practical difficulties that arise in founding a new curricular
program. From my personal experience, I can remark that my own approach to
Greek, until recently, has been to think in terms of the ideal,
free-standing, Greek program. Following the model of a vigorous program,
such as the one at Fordham Prep (fours years of honors Greek with a total
of 80 students), I had advocated a two-to-four-year course sequence with a
full complement of eager participants (e-mail from Christopher Lauber).
Clearly, the full-program approach works well in schools with a strong
Classical Tradition or the resources to support smaller class sizes. In
other less supportive circumstances, Greek faces true obstacles. For
example, I had set up a small Greek program with a two-year sequence, at a
school on the East coast where I was teaching, only to have it closed by
the school’s head because of tutorial-size enrollments, a typical
administrative response. I discovered that building a full Greek program
ab ovo requires either a strong student base or the financial commitment
to support small groups. Moreover, there are the issues of field politics
to consider: Whose course may lose enrollments when students go over to
Greek, or will Greek cut into advanced Latin enrollments? In short,
pushing a new, Greek program may lead into two of the thorniest areas in
education, finances and turf. In order to sidestep such potential
problems, more recently I have tried the non-credit, lunch-meeting tactic,
with student attendance unhappily dropping in proportion to other
established, extra-curricular options. Of course, this extra-curricular
route can be successful where students are motivated to stick to Greek
without course credit, but this direction proved unworkable in my present
teaching situation since students typically take seven credit-carrying
classes and have little desire for another challenging academic
opportunity, particularly with no credit on offer.
Despite setbacks, however, I was left with the
strongest determination that Latin students should have the opportunity to
discover at least some of the intellectual power of Greek and its
influence on Roman literature. Yet as most teachers of Latin, I have held
to a self-limiting vision of Latin as pedagogically distinct from Greek.
That typical pedagogical separation of Latin from Greek is amply confirmed
by deliberate wording in the recent Standards for Classical Language
Learning where literally dozens of references are made to the collocation,
"Greek or Latin" and only a few to the phrase, "Latin and
Greek" (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 38, 40,
41, 42). The framers of the Standards obviously expect that teachers will
teach Latin as a discipline separate from Greek and that students will
learn just one or the other. A further pressure, promoting pedagogical
segregation of Greek from Latin, may arise when Latin teachers find
themselves situated in Foreign Language departments whose pragmatic aims
and functional practices tend to diverge sharply from the more literary
and historical perspective of traditional, Greco-Roman Classics. Our
colleagues in modern languages most naturally connect Latin with its
living descendants, not its Hellenic predecessor, and often they wish
Latin teachers to privilege the relationship of Latin to these modern
languages.
It is evident, then, that teachers of Latin need to see
themselves more fully as classicists, rooted in an historic, Greek and
Latin philological tradition, if they are to reclaim, for the future, a
portion of the historical role of Greek in Roman education, reintroduced
into the West in the Renaissance. By focusing on their own bilingual
Renaissance heritage, Latin teachers can lead the recovery of a fuller
classical program in schools. A Greek sub-curriculum, well planned and
tightly integrated with Latin, can offer the student an introduction to
Greek without sacrificing the momentum of the Latin curriculum. (In fact,
I have found the offering simple Greek as an extra-credit option in Latin
class has improved the pace of Latin by giving weaker students a chance at
a higher grade: Their effort in Latin improves as they feel success with
easy Greek.)
My first move toward integrating Greek with Latin began
as a pact with myself to push Greek forward as a central feature in my
work and thinking. Since I recognize the tendency for teachers to think
and talk most about the subject that they teach daily, I needed to be more
involved with Greek as a focus for conversation and to be perceived by
students and colleagues as energetically involved with Greek language and
literature. Thus, I determined to read Greek daily, to affiliate and go to
conferences where Greek is discussed, to publish in areas of Hellenic
studies, to explore digging at a Greek site and to talk about these
interests at school. Finally, I resolved to incorporate more Greek into my
Latin curriculum as enrichment. The Greek alphabet was already a standard
extra-credit feature in my Latin 1 and 2 classes, and I needed no
administrative authorization (avoiding those pitfalls of introducing Greek
as a free-standing course) to augment the Latin curriculum, where
appropriate, with reference to parallel Greek linguistic points or
literary background. To suggest to my students and colleagues that
something new was afoot, I put a pile of Greek books on my desk and filled
up a board with pithy quotations from such notable sources as Aristotle,
Democritus, Antisthenes, the New Testament and the Delphic Oracle. Also, I
published in my syllabus that Classical Latin would be taught "with
special attention to the Greek background," and I announced this goal
to parents with an general explanation of the significance of Hellenic
cultural influence on Rome.
My aims are modest and at this point experimental. (For
a more ambitious model of combining Greek with Latin, see "High
School Greek," Athenaze Newsletter, Fall 1995): My students will not
be reading Pindar, Plutarch or Demosthenes, but at least Latin 1’s will
know their alphabet, be able to recognize names of mythological figures
and see some basic Greek words which come into English. They can use the
etymological section of the Oxford English Dictionary when Greek is
involved, an accomplishment beyond many university-educated adults. Latin
2’s will appreciate the article, declensions, something of the verb and
be able to read short, easy sentences on their own and follow easy
passages from the New Testament with coaching from the teacher. Latin 3’s
and 4’s will be able to follow collocations in Greek literary texts or
commentaries which bear on the Latin works that they are reading. For all
these students, Greek will not be a mysterious script but a real language
that they realize stimulated Roman thought and can be studied in its own
right at university. I hope that a seed of interest, planted in school,
will grow to strengthen the Greek side of Classics at the college level.
I want to do more with Greek in my Latin classes, and I
hope all of you will consider working with Greek in your Latin classes, as
well. Perhaps together we can make Homer live again as we reawaken a small
bit of the Renaissance in the 21st century when Greek returns to school.
Works Cited
Allen, James. The First Year of Greek. Rev. ed. The
MacMillian Co., 1931.
Hanson, Victor and John Heath. Who Killed Homer? The
Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. New York: The Free
Press, 1998.
Kitchell, Kenneth, Edward Phinney, Susan Shelmerdine
and Marilyn Skinner. "Greek 2000--Crisis, Challenge, Deadline." The Classical
Journal, 91.4, (1996): 393-420.
LaFleur, Richard. "Latina Resurgens: Classical
Language Enrollments in American Schools and Colleges." The Classical
Outlook, Vol.
74.4 (1997): 125-130.
Lauber, Christopher. Department address. 20 Sept. 1999. clauber@fordhamprep.com
Pearcy, Lee T. Department address. 17 Sept. 1999. http://lpearcy@ea.pvt.k12.pa.us
Standards for Classical Language Learning. American
Classical League, 1997.
The National Greek Examination. 28 Oct. 1999. http://ase.rhodes.edu/~nle/nge.htm
Towle, John D., "High School Greek." Athenaze
Newsletter,
Fall, 1995: 1-2.
______________
* I wish to thank the
following individuals for their help and advice during my preparation of
this paper. Because of the nature of the topic, much of the research has
not been through conventional, formal publications but has relied on
personal knowledge of individuals uniquely connected to teaching of Greek
in schools. Particular thanks are due to Ginny Lindzey, editor of Texas
Classics in Action; Professor Gilbert Lawall of the University of
Massachusetts; Dr. Lee Pearcy, Chairman of the Department of Classics,
Episcopal Academy, Merion, Pennsylvania; Mr. Christopher Lauber, Registrar
and Greek instructor at Fordham Preparatory School in New York City; Mr.
Charles Novo, Chairman of the Department of English at St. Agnes Academy,
Houston, Texas. A previous version of this paper was presented orally at
the TCA annual meeting, October 30, 1999.
return to menu
|
Also, see the
numerous articles at
