“Other Essays” Page Added to Web Site
March 28, 2009
I have added a new “Other Essays” Page (under “Publications”) with links so far to my essays on Milton’s Lycidas and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, King Lear, and Twelfth Night.
Doc Z Web Site Updated
March 24, 2009
Check out the newly refurbished list of my scholarly publications. In addition to links for the purchase of The First Latin Course and my anthologized essay on Homer, there are now direct links to all my other published essays.
Defense of the Study of Latin
March 16, 2009
Over the years, I have been asked by new Latin teachers what they should do to defend the study of the Latin language. In addition, in my last public school teaching post before I retired, the district head of foreign languages asked me to write a handout for students (and parents) wrestling with the decision of which language to study in secondary school that would justify the selection of Latin. In response, I wrote the “Why Study Latin” handout that can be downloaded from the Downloads Page of my web site. If you are thinking about taking Latin, or if your children are thinking about taking Latin—or if they are not and you want them to take it—please read that handout.
In addition, you might want to consult my op-ed column “Fiat Lux! We Need Latin.” It can be found at the following site:
http://www.sundaypaper.com/AboutUs/CurrentArticles/tabid/98/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/862/Fiat-lux-We-need-Latin.aspx
A New Latin Textbook: “The First Latin Course”
March 15, 2009
I have been asked repeatedly why I chose to distill my classroom Latin lessons into my recently published textbook, The First Latin Course: An Introductory Latin Grammar for Middle School, and College. Those who have asked this are prompted by the number and pervasiveness of Latin books like the Cambridge or Oxford Latin series, Ecce Romani, and Latin for Americans.
My response to these questioners is that I felt compelled to write a new Latin textbook because the most popular currently used Latin textbooks have some unfortunate weaknesses.
The presentation of the Latin grammar of these books is fragmented and atomistic in a way that makes it difficult for students to gain a comprehensive understanding of the language. For example, verbs are presented not in whole and integral tenses, but in pieces, with the third person given here and the first person there, the singular now, the plural then, and so forth. Alternately, nouns (and their modifiers and surrogates) are presented as a patchwork quilt, with the accusative case here, the nominative case there, the genitive case now, the ablative case then, and so forth. This material is scattered through chapters that are more or less widely separated from each other.
I believe—and have found in teaching practice—that a holistic approach is preferable. Therefore, I decided that a textbook was needed that had such an approach and that presented all tenses completely and all cases at once. This is the methodology that I have employed in my textbook.
The advantage of this methodology is that it puts the burden of memorizing up front and allows the student to understand through use what is already at his or her disposal. This has the further virtue of at least approximating a natural language experience. After all, when our children learn their native language, they do not learn it from adults who speak for three months only in the first person, then for three months only in the third person, and so forth.
In addition, most current Latin textbooks rely overmuch on made or invented Latin stories. This delays the student’s encounter with genuine Latin and gives the student a false sense of the nature of genuine Latin. Of course, no book can do without some made Latin, but I decided that the students who used my textbook would encounter genuine Latin sentences from the first chapter on alongside made Latin sentences.
Furthermore, there is blind adherence to accepted translations of Latin words, even though these translations may not be the best or most desirable renderings of those words. I have not felt bound by these traditions and have felt free to render many Latin words anew in a way that reflects their position in the Latin language more transparently. Moreover, many of these traditional translations are infected with a sexism that is inappropriate. In my textbook, all sexist language has been eschewed rigorously.
Finally, our students today do not learn English grammar in a systematic way. In short, our students are grammar-poor. Therefore, I have included in my textbook full and clear explanations of all the English grammar that students need to know.
For these and other reasons that I have elaborated in the prefatory material to the book, I felt that a new Latin textbook would be able to find a place in Latin curricula.
Southern Conference on Language Teaching
March 10, 2009
On Saturday (March 7), I gave a talk at the annual meeting of the Southern Conference on Language Teaching in Atlanta. The title of the talk was “Translation Strategies for Students of an Inflected Language,” and it was targeted primarily at teachers of Latin. The audience was good, filled largely with Georgia secondary school Latin teachers, although a few were from out of state.
The material that I presented, which was adapted from my The First Latin Course: An Introductory Latin Grammar for Middle School, High School, and College (xlibris, 2007), was well received, and I hope that my methods will gain a foothold and that my book will find its way into school systems as a result.
This is my first presentation of the material since the book’s publication, and I plan to present at other language conferences in the near future. The book is available from the publisher or from Amazon.com.
Crush Rush’s Mush
March 2, 2009
The Republic Party’s slide into irrelevance is going into overdrive. The totem of the acceleration of that slide is the full emergence of Rush Limbaugh as the de facto spokesperson of the slogan-blindered extreme right that has become the core of what was once a “grand old party,” but what is now a group of petty and puerile partisans.
Rush Limbaugh’s speech this past weekend at the CPAC had the whiff of the crushed limburger that his name evokes. His invocation of the U. S. Constitution could gain credence only among those whose ignorance of that document is as profound as his is.
When he claims that the Obama administration’s current policies, especially the economic ones, are crafted by individuals who have no proof that it works, he is saying no more than anyone could say about any attempt to navigate waters that previously had been uncharted. Of course, what he fails to say is that the solutions that he and his minions are offering have been revealed as solutions that do not work. So, given a choice between a daring policy whose success remains to be demonstrated and a timid policy whose failure has been demonstrated, only a fool or a demagogic panderer would extol the latter. Limbaugh qualifies as both.
Until a new generation of Eisenhower-inspired Republicans emerges, the current Republic Party, under the leadership of charlatans like Limbaugh, will remain moribund. If it persists in this current path, it will take a well-deserved step into extinction.
