Not Dead Yet

Latin & Greek are Still Practical

By Amy Barr, dir. Latin at The Lukeion Project

I spend a lot of time at home school conferences talking about the benefits of Latin and Greek during the high school years. People always want to know why they should bother with “dead” languages when live ones seem more exciting or at least more…modern. All things being equal, Spanish, French, or Italian seem pretty interesting and the restaurant field trips can be downright tasty.

Just a few decades ago people seemed to intuit the value of Classical languages.  Then a good education, as had been the case for hundreds of years, depended on a firm foundation in Greek and Latin to ensure a literate and logical mind. At the turn of the last century, for example, even an average high school graduate could handle Cicero, Vergil or Caesar with enough finesse to make a professor proud. Today, even the most ambitious high school student will rarely feel motivated to study these languages for more than two years. Have Latin and Greek fallen out of style?

Let’s look at why Latin and Greek have been foundational since Alexander the Great was just average. When a student first tackles these languages at an advanced level (say, age 13 and older), he will have to experience transformative intellectual changes before he can successfully decode the foreign sentences in front of him. This is a fancy way of saying that Greek and Latin students must jump into the deep end grammatically. There shouldn’t be much time learning how to order food in Latin or driving directions in Classical Greek. Since these languages are primarily learned for the purposes of reading (wherein lies the most benefit), students jump in at a relatively more complex level and advance quickly as they learn decoding skills. Though there are “natural” spoken-Latin programs out there, before moving to Golden Latin authors, a student must master Latin grammar no matter what.

In only chapter 3 of Wheelock, for example, students learn Seneca’s wise observation that nulla copia pecunia avarum virum satiat, “No amount of money satisfies a greedy man,” and therefore modum tenere debemus, “We ought to maintain moderation.”1 Are these lifechanging ancient ideas? Not necessarily but they are also not quick and easy exchanges of basic ideas as is common with learning modern spoken languages.

A Classical language student must always read everything syllable by syllable. This means her analytical skills will increase a thousand-fold as she practices her powers of deduction to decode the ever-changing language puzzles at hand. Progressing more quickly than she would in any spoken language, she rapidly learns to apply language mechanics and analysis to everything from math to music, English to exegesis, and calculus to composition. Learning Latin and Greek will make a student analytical and logical by necessity. She becomes a person who reasons.

Look at how Cicero explains why we humans are different from animals: “But man—because he is endowed with reason, he understands the chain of consequences, observes the causes of things, comprehends the relation of cause to effect and of effect to cause, draws analogies, and, connecting and associating the present and the future, he easily surveys the course of his whole life and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct” (de officiis, 1.11).

Becoming logical, analytical and well-reasoned is just one beneficial side effect. These subjects certainly have an impact on the quality of writing and composition skills, vocabulary, speech, and comprehension. Estimates of how many words have entered English from Latin and Greek start with a conservative 60%. Those who are legal, medical or scientific professionals might say it is closer to 80%. The study of Classical language used to be the primary lens through which we could better understand the mechanics and vocabulary of English. This is why previous generations were so much better at our own language.

Studies conducted by the Educational Testing Service show that Greek and Latin students consistently outperform all other students on the verbal portion of the SAT based on data from the past decade.2 These same studies show that Classics majors tend to have a higher GPA at the college level and have accelerated performance in nearly all other subjects such as math, music and history. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, students who major in Classics have a better success rate getting into medical school than do students who concentrate solely on science.3 Classics majors also have the highest success rates of any majors in law school.

Latin is now on the decline in all public schools and most private schools. Good luck finding more than a couple of years in most programs. Classical Greek is nearly extinct except at The Lukeion Project. Since 2020, even the small offerings of these topics have stretched so thin that students rarely accomplish more than the basics even as schools extend the period of those basics from two years to three. The Lukeion Project has maintained the traditional high school pace that was the norm 20 years ago.

Consider the results: reasoning, logical, independent learners, thinkers, auto-didacts. Such nonconformists are poorly valued by a world that prefers cookie-cutter educations followed by lack-luster jobs. Home educators and some subsets of conventional students not only grasp the value of these skills but make every effort to achieve them.

Latin and Greek are still fundamental and Cicero was right about anybody who can think analytically: “he who is endowed with reason understands the chain of consequences, observes the causes of things,…easily surveys the course of his whole life and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct.” Golden Latin and Classical Greek aren’t dead. They are still bringing to life the brilliant intellects that we desperately need to frame our future world.    

1 Wheelock, Frederick M., and Richard A. La Fleur. Wheelock's Latin. New York: Harper Collins, 2011. 29. Print.

2 Annual reports from College-Bound Seniors — A Profile of SAT Program Test Takers from years 1999-2005, 2007 available at http://www.bolchazy.com/al/latadv.htm#sat

3 http://www.princetonreview.com/Majors.aspx?page=1&cip=161200

Classical, Trivium, Quadrivium, or Just College Prep

What’s the Difference Between Classical and classical?

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

At TheLukeion Project we say we offer “Classical education expertly taught live online.” Our course topics typically relate to subjects stemming from the Classical world of ancient Greece and Rome or related fields. This includes Classical languages, literature, history, rhetoric, logic, and subjects that were dear to the hearts of people like Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. For good measure we toss in Classical archaeology and some classical literature (thanks, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and others). You’ll notice I employed a capital letter C with Classical. This was, at least until recently, the standard way of designating what we meant by the word. Classical with a "C" means, “of or relating to the ancient Greeks and Romans, especially their art, architecture, and literature; conforming to the artistic and literary models of ancient Greece and Rome; versed in the Classics.” We've been told it is now naughty of us to use a capital C but it does help us remain clear about what we mean by the word.

The other day I was discussing course options with a parent who was interested in a classical education for her child whose school program offered no Latin whatsoever. When you see lower case “c” classical (or today, any use of the word classical), what does it mean? Why do we talk about classical music and classical literature that has nothing to do with ancient Greece and Rome, or little to do with Latin or Greek?

If you are new to the world of home education, I invite you to visit any of the many bustling home school conferences available, at least in the U.S., throughout the spring and early summer months. You can’t make it through a vendor-packed isle without somebody touting classical education. In fact, we often attend these conferences as vendors and see that their speakers’ line-up features a “classical track.” We are never invited. We are Classical rather than classical, so we aren’t in the popular kids’ club. What’s the difference?

Lower-case-c-classical education can (not always) refers to an educational approach that was, at least at one point, inspired by the form of Classical education that worked beautifully for both the Greeks and Romans: the Trivium. 

Trivium comes from the same root as the English word trivial because both refer to three (tri) roads (via). Trivia is the sort of information one often gathers at intersections, water coolers, and crossroads where one might get the latest gossip. Trivium is a modern approach to education in which main subjects are graded and geared toward the three main stages of academic development: grammar, logic, and rhetoric.These levels correspond neatly to our traditional elementary, middle, and high school divisions in most U.S. systems. 

School/home education programs that call themselves classical often just refer to how their topics are taught and reviewed differently at the three different academic levels with, presumably, sufficient strength that their students are prepared for college. When classical is used in this fashion (I find it is the most common way you’ll see the term used at conferences), there’s no real relationship to the original tenets of ancient Classicism nor even the medieval concept of a classical education. It has become the modern alternative description for “prep school” which now sounds too stuffy for a good bottom line.

The concept of the classical Trivium, when applied to formal education, first appears in the Middle Ages, and was then further defined in the Renaissance in a work by Martianus Capella referring to Plato’s explanations about how grammar, logic, and rhetoric were essentials in a good early education. Plato would have preferred the world had remembered to include the Quadrivium which added arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Together the Trivium and then the Quadrivium formed the combined “Seven Liberal Arts.”

Today there are hundreds of programs, schools, and groups that maintain they are classical. Some of them truly sustain strong connections to the Trivium and might even toss in parts of the Quadrivium in upper levels. Throwing shade at classical, I can confirm that some schools and programs use the title classical for no reason besides how it spices up the top of a transcript. The term has also come to refer to the normal procession of subjects that were common 30 or 40 years ago in a public education with no connection to anything Classical whatsoever. Rhetoric gets a few hours in English classes while logic is rolled into a variety of math classes. Formal grammar is diminished to workbooks.

Most programs with classical in their title offer either a little Latin or none at all. You’ll not likely find Classical Greek anywhere but The Lukeion Project where we often have Classics majors in college come to take our history and literature courses because their college program stopped offering those types of things years ago.

If you are looking for a true Classical approach, The Lukeion Project is as close as you’ll find but, like many successful Lukeion families, you'll need to add your own strengths to our course offerings. Plato would assure us that we need to augment our program with music, math, and astronomy but we’ve made good starts in that direction. So many of our parents provide such robust alternatives in those subjects that the old philosopher would be proud! For the rest of the classical programs you find out there, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.  

100

The Lukeion Project in Retrospect

By Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

This is our 100^th Sassy Peripatetic Blog! Sassy Peri began September 21, 2018, after a full decade (likely more) of people pestering us about starting a blog. Of course, we knew we should start a blog, but for the first five years of The Lukeion Project, we hadn’t worked out how to get a full night’s sleep much less how to add anything new to our workload. It took us another 5 years to catch up. Many of you may not know our story, so gather around. This is the abbreviated version.

The idea of The Lukeion Project was hatched toward the end of 2005 by two Classical archaeologists, namely me and Regan Barr, as we painted our daughter’s bedroom (pink and purple, if you must know). We had settled into very mundane lives after over a decade in the archaeological field, digging at places like ancient Troy. A financial crisis forced us to get creative about our future. As crises almost always do, we were given the chance to return to our roots, namely our passion for dead languages, Classical history, archaeology, and Classical literature. We wanted to teach they way we wish we had been taught. We wanted to take our students seriously.

When we began our small venture, we had to pick a name. We had no intention of becoming a full school or academy offering a comprehensive curriculum to all ages. We were well skilled in Latin, Greek, and related fields but had no intention of adding things like art, sports, and science nor did we have the patience of saints necessary to teach all ages.

As everyone should, we turned to Aristotle for answers. His philosophical hangout in Athens was known in Latin as The Lyceum. In Greek – as Aristotle would have used—it was called Λύκειον (Lukeion). Aristotle established his school in Athens in part of the temple to Apollo in 335 BC (he worked with what was available). He lectured there, led his students on walk-abouts (thus their name Peripatetics), and established the first European library in history. He had always been a book collector and then his student, Alexander the Great, helped by sending him crates of scrolls and copies of important works as gifts to his former tutor.

The word Project in our name was chosen because we didn’t want people thinking we were a full school nor an academy since our courses were meant to supplement the curriculum of our primary audience, home educated students working at the high school level.

When we first began classes in the spring of 2006 there was only one other online program out there. Most of their classes were still conducted by correspondence but a few had gotten high tech like our classes. This meant we were the first of our kind. Every big flashy online program that we see at conferences today first talked to us way back then about what we were doing and said, “hey, that’s a good idea.”

When we first went to homeschool conventions to spread the word about our classes, we spent half our time explaining what an online class was. Terms like webinar were not commonly understood. Words like blog, vlog, and podcast were still in the formative stages. The wizardry of having students synchronously join us online, hearing, and seeing material as we taught was also virtually unknown at the start. Our first online learning platform was for business meetings. It often had as much as a 7-second delay making online discussions a bit tricky. Such technology has now become so mundane that even 10-year-olds get irritable if our internet gets crackly or because we don’t let them play with the video filters in class.

In 2012 we successfully cajoled our archaeological colleague Dr. Sue Fisher to join us as she expanded our Latin program and then expanded our Classical literature offerings with her Muse series. Since then, we’ve added Prof. Baty (literature including AP/writing/rhetoric), and then Dr. Johnson (logic and more) who stepped in right after the sudden tragic passing of Dr. Haggard (logic/philosophy). Prof. Powell came on board last year to expand our Latin program further. Regan Barr (beloved teacher of Witty Wordsmith/Barbarian Diagrammarian) also directs our 8 years of Classical Greek plus Greek history, and Philosophy. I (Amy Barr) direct the large Latin program (also 8 years and expanding) plus Roman History.

The Lukeion Project has offered semester classes since 2006. As we now begin our 17^th year, we have had over 3000 (close to 4000) students, 100 blogs, hundreds of semester courses, and at least a thousand workshops. We’ll never win awards for fame nor size, neither breadth of influence nor endowments. We’ve labored to keep standards high (despite direst pressure to drop them low) and to keep tuitions low (despite direst need to increase them). We work without the safety net of government support nor impressive private capital. Our few faculty and staff are dedicated, humble, and talented beyond measure. there will never be enough thanks nor money to truly pay them.

Our rewards are less earthly and more eternal. Like Aristotle getting gifts from Alexander the Great, our former Lukeion students send back crates of greatness. Their lives have now spread into the stars at NASA, into the lights of Broadway or Carnegie Hall, into the classrooms of Ivy League schools, into excavations, laboratories, and libraries as doctors, lawyers, writers, scholars, linguists, dancers, artists, and (perhaps best) as moms and dads who delight in educating their own children whom we hope to teach—in turn—in the years to come.

The poet Horace (Odes 3.30) expressed our hope most fittingly in 23 BC:

exegi monumentum aere perennius

regalique situ pyramidum altius,

quod non imber edax, non Aquilo inpotens

possit diruere…

I have built a monument more lasting than bronze,

higher than the Pyramids’ regal structures,

that no consuming rain, nor wild north wind

 can destroy… 

Do You Need Latin Before Learning Greek?

By Regan Barr with The Lukeion Project

At a recent homeschool conference, we were approached by a mother whose daughter desperately wanted to take Classical Greek. Another exhibitor had told her that she shouldn’t take Greek until she’d had several years of Latin. The daughter was devastated! She wanted to read Greek literature, not Roman!

The cynical side of me believes that this poor advice came from someone trying to sell a Latin curriculum, but perhaps there are those who truly believe that all languages start with the study of Latin. It’s certainly true that the study of any romance language will profit from a healthy understanding of Latin grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and morphology, but Latin is in not a prerequisite for the study of Classical Greek. Here are some reasons why your student doesn’t need Latin to start Greek:

Chronologically, Greek is attested much earlier than Latin and is therefore not derived from it. The earliest written Greek, Mycenaean Linear B, dates to around 1450 BC. It used a combination of syllabic and pictorial characters rather than the Greek alphabet used from the Archaic period until the present. In 1952, Michael Ventris and John Chadwick deciphered this script and demonstrated conclusively that Linear B was truly Greek. In comparison, the earliest known Latin inscription, the Praeneste Fibula, is from about 650 BC, 800 years later. This inscription on a piece of jewelry simply records the name of the craftsman and the name of the owner. The Iliad and Odyssey were produced a century before this earliest known Latin inscription.

Greek uses a different alphabet than our own, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. If you or your student were the ones pouring over Tolkien appendices and learning to write in Dwarven runes, Greek could be right up your alley! Just as the strange alphabet can be intimidating to some, it can be intriguing to others. When Greece was plunged into its Dark Age at the end of the Mycenaean period, writing and the Linear B characters that went with it were forgotten, but the language continued to be spoken. Written Greek would reemerge in the Archaic period using phonetic characters borrowed from the Phoenician alphabet that are still used in Greek today. Homer and Hesiod wrote in this re-invented alphabet, and many students today enjoy the novelty of it.

Latin and Greek are both highly inflected languages: word forms change to reflect the role they play in a sentence. In this regard, however, Greek is no more confounding than Latin. In fact, Greek has fewer declensions and cases, and roughly the same number of tenses (discounting the rare future perfect in Greek). Studying either Classical language will connect new synapses in a student’s brain and force new logic into their thinking.

Never discount passion and motivation! A student who yearns to learn something should not be discouraged without good reason. Just as some students long to read Julius Caesar, Cicero, and Ovid in the original language, others yearn to read Euripides, Aristotle, and the New Testament. Passion and desire are half the battle in education; don’t throw that away! We’ve all been forced to sit in a classroom that held no interest to us; don’t force students out of a classroom they really want to be in.

Both Classical languages are equally respected on a high school transcript and each will help you in picking up the other. Once a student understands inflection, cases, morphology, etc., picking up the next language becomes a bit easier. We’re often asked if students should study both languages at the same time. Why not?? Our advice is for the student to begin with the one that intrigues them most, and after a year they can dive into the other one. Chances are good that they won’t need quite as much time to pick up the second one.

In short, if your student has a craving for ancient Greek, feed that craving! It will open a world of exciting and important literature to them, from history and drama to philosophy and faith.