Also for the legal profession.
That was the logical conclusion I also arrived at. 
I took a logic course during college. I cannot begin to tell you how significant this one course taken at a community college while in the middle of a four year univesity program was for me personally.* You mean I might not have been thinking or writing logically?* We need logic at the high school level. In public schools, there could be AP Logic classes.
I also agree with the basics, the “3 Rs”. But if I could humbly make a contribution it would be the ABCs, Algebra, Biology, Chemistry. At least, the phrase would have a ring to it like the 3 Rs.
So is learning to churn butter, or learning to solder electronics, or learning to use a hand plane. Suck it up, buster. Everybody else does.
All useful skills that have been deemed for various reasons not as important as the stuff you only get 12 measly years to drum into stubborn stupid kid brains. You get one chance, and you better make it count, and there is a LOT more to know these days than there was in my grandfather’s day. Even intelligent people aren’t going to pick up stuff after mandantory education that isn’t required for a job or in their interest groups - my mom didn’t know until it came up in conversation several weeks ago that there’s more than two kingdoms to classify living things into these days. She reads a lot but she doesn’t read science.
*‘I hate by-roads in education. Education is as well known, and has long been as well known, as ever it can be. Endeavouring to make children prematurely wise is useless labour. Suppose they have more knowledge at five or six years old than other children, what use can be made of it? It will be lost before it is wanted, and the waste of so much time and labour of the teacher can never be repaid. Too much is expected from precocity, and too little performed.’ * Life of Johnson.
IMNSHO, it’s not the reading of Tacitus or Caesar or Cicero that’s important; it’s the learning of Latin, in and of itself, that is important. Latin plays such a large role in the foundation of the English that I think it is critical to learn it. I had two years of Latin when I was in high school and my English improved drastically as a result.
The same argument can be made for German, since it is a root language of English.
I am always angry when I hear ancient times praised at the expence of modern times. There is now a great deal more learning in the world than there was formerly; for it is universally diffused. You have, perhaps, no man who knows as much Greek and Latin as Bentley; no man who knows as much mathematicks as Newton: but you have many more men who know Greek and Latin, and who know mathematicks. -Id.
You could just as well say English is a root language of German. The two modern languages share a recent common ancestor, but neither is antecedent to the other.
Why, just a few generations ago, every schoolchild was familiar with the wise words of Samuel Johnson, but the good-for-nothing kids these days…
Yes the increase is greater for general intelligence but presumably this is relevant in understanding and manipulating abstract concepts which is after all a major part of education.
Here is a list of National Bee winners since 1925; note how ridiculously simple some of the early winning words (e.g. knack, initials) are compared to recent winners. I know it’s a specialized contest which is why I said it was just a data point. However the story that it tells of competition pushing students to do more and more over time is quite common. I bet something similar has happened in the Intel/Westinghouse Science contest over the decades
Nope. You just happen to have lucked into the golden age in which the study of Latin has never been more available. I see you have access to a computer with an internet connection. Ta-da! You’re set.
Google Books has loads of Latin textbooks available – a collection that previous generations of precocious youths could never dream of having at their fingertips.
When I was hanging out with the Society for Ancient Languages years ago, I had a lot of friends who dreamed of owning copies of Lewis & Short, a grand, essential and very expensive Latin reference. Now the entire thing is searchable online, thanks to The Perseus Project.
One challenge in confronting a piece of Latin text is that it can be difficult to determine what the dictionary look-up form is of a given word from an inflected form. Thank God for Whitaker’s Words, which can not only identify the word, but pinpoint its grammatical inflection. You can access it online or download the standalone program. There are even helper programs to make even that easier to use for collections of words in a project, or even for entire chunks of text (with optional cross-reference to the archives at Perseus).
Electronic learning aids for Latin flourish on the internet. Years ago, WinLatin helped get me through memorizing my paradigms, but there are many more options available now, including web-based flash cards.
Not long ago, there were very few opportunities to hear Latin spoken. What recordings were available were very expensive, and you were lucky if your local university library would spring for them. They were certainly out of reach of your average student. Now, YouTube is packed with the stuff. There’s a podcast designed as a companion to one of the Latin textbooks you can download for free from Google Books. The site for Wheelock’s Latin reads out the sounds of the letters and the vocabulary from each chapter, so you don’t have to guess about the pronunciation from the plain text. The classic beginning reader Fabulae Faciles is now available from many places on line, including some with recorded readings.
If you want to get in touch with a greater Latin-learning community, there are sites out there that run the gamut from all-english chat about Latin to all-Latin social networking with live chat and even voicechat.
And that’s just a sampling of what’s available for free. But for less than the price of a video game, you can get a set of Latin textbooks that will keep you going for a very long time. My favorite is Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata – written entirely in Latin, even the explanations of Latin grammar. The book teaches you the Latin you need in order to be able to read it, though there is also an inexpensive student handbook to smooth out any rough spots you may run into. And, hell, this book has been around for fifty years – you may even be able to find a copy at a used book store in your town.
In using all these resources, you will get a better education in Latin that you were ever likely to get in high school. My brother took Latin in high school. He never got to third declension. Forget high school.
Not since the Visigoths fell upon Rome has it been so cheap, so easy and so open to everybody to study the language of Martial, Horace and Ovid. All it takes is for you to do the work. And it’s a lot of work.
Listen, the bench warmers on your high school softball team practice ten hours a week. You’ve heard the Nike motto: Just Do It. If somebody says, “Geez, I want to be a ball player, but…” a little sign on his sneakers tells him to Just Do It. That’s actually a very old sentiment. As the Romans used to say, “Modo fac.” Don’t bitch, don’t make excuses. Modo fac. Write it on your shoes if that will help.
I’d still be interested to hear which books in particular do this. I haven’t noticed any lately, with the exceptions of British-authored spy thrillers set on The Continent which sometimes have one character speaking in (very basic and usually ascertainable from the context) French for a couple of sentences.
Even my copy of H. Rider Haggard’s She (originally written in 1887), which has almost an entire chapter near the start of the book written in “Classical” or “Dead” languages - including Latin (Classical and Medieval), Ancient Greek, Old English translations of the Greek & Latin texts, as well as Middle English - still provides either a “Modernised English” (late Victorian) or “Olde Englishe” (still understandable) translation for the lay reader.
I just bookmarked this post. I never bookmark anything. Thank you.
I can think of some books published post-1950 that use an untranslated quote in the front matter. Sorry, I can’t come up with any titles on demand.
Doesn’t the Aubrey-Maturin series sometimes use untranslated foreign languages?
I can’t stop now that I’ve started, but at least I can establish this debate has been going on for awhile:
*The first Thing obvious to Children is what is sensible; and that we make no Part of their rudiments. We press their Memory too soon, and puzzle, strain, and load them with Words and Rules; to know Grammer and Rhetorick, and a strange Tongue or two, that it is ten to one may never be useful to them; Leaving their natural Genius to Mechanical and Physical, or natural Knowledge uncultivated and neglected; which would be of exceeding Use and Pleasure to them through the whole Course of their Life. To be sure, Languages are not to be despised or neglected. But Things are still to be preferred.
Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time. * --William Penn (1644–1718)
Thank you for your collection of links, I’ll look into them. 
Interesting links on Latin. Latin went out in the 50’s but both of my children learned it in private school rather then French in the 90’s. They came home each week with English spelling words and Latin ones. I thought well this will never get them anywhere studying a dead language! Was I ever wrong. My daughter is on full scholorship in dental school for 4 years of honors level Spanish. Latin is the base.
Nitpick: I have, as a lawyer, done some medical-related work and worked with a medical dictionary, and I’ve learned, most anatomical terms are in or derived from Latin; but most names of diseases, disorders, treatments, procedures, are in or derived from Greek. I don’t know why, it’s probably becasue of some interesting facts of medical history.
However, many of the terms, anatomical or pathological, are plain English.
You don’t need to know Latin grammar or sentence construction to practice law; you just need to know a few specific Latin terms and phrases and their technical legal meanings in Anglo-American legal parlance (which would likely be something entirely different from what an ancient Roman layperson – or, for that matter, an ancient Roman lawyer – would understand those terms to mean). It’s the same with Norman-French – many legal terms derive from Norman-French but you don’t need to know the language.
I beg to differ. I found the precision and structure invaluable knowledge to have when working with English. Much of English grammatical structure is derived from mostly Latin. I work as a professional editor today and thank my high school Latin teacher every single day of my life at work. Learning Latin gave me a deeper understanding of English grammar.
Latin would also be useful to anyone who goes to medical school or works in a biology field: lots of Latin names and words used everywhere. I think Latin should be required for law students; learning precise structure could make reading contracts and other documents written in legalese much more readable and understandable.
Much of English grammatical structure is derived from mostly Latin? Vocabulary, sure, but grammar? Only in the sense that they’re both Indo-European languages… English is not a Romance language.