Yesterday my sister asked me to look at an essay by a Classical Languages educator, Dr. Anne Phillips. My sister suspected I would disagree with it. Indeed, I have the opposite perspective to Dr. Phillips, and so I am going to write an opposite kind of essay. (Her essay here: Why Latin and Greek? – Anne Phillips)
It seems to me as if Dr. Phillips has come across a large pile of rubble outside a crumbling city, and decided that this heap is largely valueless except to a couple of nerdy geologists, despite the fact that local people have a reverence for the place and the pile. This pile is the result of a catastrophic collapse and crushing of a once massive, glorious city wall. It doesn’t look like much now, but the people living there have some memory of its strength and majesty. The wall once defined their beloved city, and defended it, and fostered the lives and works of the generations that lived behind it, for centuries.
No wonder there is a great reverence, even among those people who barely remember seeing it. No wonder they wish to pick up the stones and rebuild such a wall with them, if possible. Dr. Phillips seems to see Latin and Greek as merely quaint relics of a now-defunct “super-culture,” but I believe that the onus is upon her to prove that quaint relics is all that they are; after all, 2,000 years of educational praxis and intellectual tradition witness to Latin (and also Greek) as the bulwark and defense of the good that has spread out of Europe to the world in the last two millennia.
In my opinion, Dr. Phillips couldn’t have argued better for the exclusion of Latin and Greek from schools by writing this piece. It is her presentation of why Latin and Greek are not necessary to Western students or to Christians. Halfway through the essay, the author offers the suggestion that I, the reader, might be offended by it. You bet—”with ‘friends’ like these…” as the saying goes.
From her piece, I am led to believe that Dr. Phillips has had many unpleasant experiences in her years of teaching Latin and Greek. Characterizing the impulse to educate today’s students in the Classical Language tradition as both an “idol” and “fixation,” Dr. Phillips further imputes to the movement in general, as well as to its students, an ignorant arrogance. And that is what truly offends me. For one, I was once a beginning Latin student and teenage Great Books reader: and all because elders of countless generations led me to believe that studying Classical Languages could make me more and better. I had no reason not to believe them, as Dr. Phillips for some reason seems to have. And I have since taught Latin for several years, to many ages of students, and I have worked for a three-year stint in a Classical private school (where others taught the Latin). I have seen these students reaching for the stars with their Latin studies, pursuing them with hope, excitement and–humility.
Were these students that I have known taking to traditional training in the Classical Languages and “exalting those traits beyond their due,” as Dr. Phillips suggests? Following that idea, the essayist then proceeds to scorn the belief that “ ‘knowing Latin’ is some magic bullet for greatness.” Well, can grappling with the Classical Languages make students into better thinkers, writers, and especially better humans? I have recently re-read two wonderful books which say “yes.”
First of all, there is the wonderful Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin by Tracy Lee Simmons (2002). The author states in his Introduction, “I wish to defend, by witness and running commentary, this long path to the formed, cultivated mind even as I recount the long journey the classical languages have walked along the thoroughfares of Western history. Greek and Latin are still valuable even today—and perhaps especially today.” This is his thesis throughout 240-some pages that beautifully and thoroughly elucidate the many reasons that the West’s educators have long privileged the Classical languages for human development. (How long? Indeed, from the Roman era up until the World Wars.) Mr. Simmons quotes T.S. Eliot, Aulus Gellius, Irving Babbit, Leonardo Bruni D’Arezzo, Erasmus, and many, many others throughout. Our generation may well ask with all the others: what is the purpose of education? This book shows how the traditional purpose of Classical Languages education was beyond anything like mere utilitarian knowledge input. It “also sought to polish and refine” the student’s mental faculties as well as his aesthetic appreciation, or “taste.” Classical Language education cultivated each person studying these languages, and also preserved collective memories for the entire culture. Many–if not all–of the objections Dr. Phillips raises against cultural currents for increased education in the Classical Languages are countered in this book. It was born out of a personal devotion to the Classics from a journalist proficient in both Latin and Greek (Masters Degree in Classics from Oxford). I devoutly hope Dr. Phillips will read this book soon. It is beautifully argued, and the author’s subtle brilliance and evident literary cultivation are further arguments for the training in simplicity, nobility, and elegance of expression that Classical Language studies can give.
I have found a vastly shorter but just as powerful argument for teaching the Latin language to as many students as possible in the first three brief chapters of Gwynne’s Latin by N.M. Gwynne (2014). (A lovely discussion of Mr. Gwynne’s points and insights can be found here: The Latin vote | The New Criterion) He, also, defends and develops the thesis that a strong Latin education provides an exceptional development of mind and character, going so far as to state that it is superior to education in any other subject. Mr. Gwynne has had a long and successful career in business, far from the Ivory Tower, yet he is particularly devoted to teaching and defending traditional Latin education (such as he had in his youth) in these his retirement years. One of my favorite quotes from this book is “…Latin is an intrinsic part of us. It is to some extent even at the very heart of us.” That being the case, it provides an imperative for anyone who can to study it to do so.
Both of these books have indelibly reaffirmed my youthful belief that Classical Languages have the power to make more out of students: and I myself have truly discovered a way of thinking and a way of life I would not have otherwise known.
Dr. Phillips’ essay wraps up with this admonishment for studying Latin and Greek: “Do it for love and for no other reason.” I think we actually are. As a movement, and as a culture, I mean–we are reigniting study of the Classical Languages for love. We are promoting Latin and Greek for our love for the wisdom of our ancestors. And for the love of Christian Tradition, which shines forth in these languages. And for the love of a bright future foreseen for our descendants, which only by providing an excellent education do we have the chance to help them forge. And also, for the love of God—if we seek to become better educated for His glory. Yes, we love the rubble that is left to us, and we will join together in its rebuilding for love and for no other reason.
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