Latin teaches much more, benefits students

Latin is taught is only two schools in Iowa? Pity.

Once, teachers wrote lesson plans with both primary and secondary goals. For Latin, the primary goal would be to learn the language itself. The secondary goal would be to learn the extensive English vocabulary based on Latin roots. Latin is the root for 60 percent of English.

A specialized language arts teacher, no longer with the Iowa City school district, was adamant that Latin offered only a technical vocabulary used by few people in specialized fields. Are the words “animate,” “animation,” “donate,” “parable” and “saturate” some of these technical words?

Latin also shows the movement and history of peoples. For example, Gaul, the country that Julius Caesar conquered, became France. Romanians speak a Romance language, not primarily a Slavic language. English teachers taught that splitting an infinitive is wrong and that is true for the Romance languages of French and Spanish but not for the Germanic languages, including English. Also, Latin is helpful in learning German, Russian, Polish and aspects of the Semitic languages.

The Iowa City foreign language teachers many years ago were opposed to putting in Latin at the junior high school level because, as one teacher vehemently explained, those students trained in Latin would outperform others and that was a reason to keep it out.

All of these goals for a Latin program are for everyone, not just students in Catholic schools.

Vida Brenner

Iowa City