D Latin Coming to its Own E. E. CATES, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. URING the three decades just past a ceaseless war has been waged by the unholy alliance of the modern languages, science, manual training, domestic science, and the vocational studies to drive Latin from the curriculum. Latin has been on the defensive for its very life; but the pendulum has reached the end of the arc and Latin is coming to its own. The modern languages have been "weighed in the balance and found wanting." The report of the classical conference held at Princeton University in June, 1917, says: "For the last twenty-five years the study of Latin in the secondary schools of the country, far from diminishing, has grown rapidly. Next after English, history, and algebra, Latin has had the highest enrollment of any secondary school subject. Latin is taken by a larger number of pupils than French, German and Spanish combined, and by upwards of 80 per cent more than physics and chemistry combined." In 1890 the percentage of pupils in the high schools studying Latin was 32; in 1910 it was 49. It is axiomatic among high school principals that among the studies that are objects of popular favor in the schools, Latin still holds the first place. A writer in the Educational Review (January, 1921) said: "Boys have seen visions and dreamed dreams of the wonderful opportunities to be grasped by those who know Spanish— opportunities to represent business houses in South America. where one needs only to know how to read, write, and speak Spanish to possess the open sesame to preferment and fortune. To read, write, and speak Spanish-there's the rub. If a boy has Spanish he cannot get the job, and if he gets the job he will not have the Spanish." The Spanish necessary to represent a business house cannot be acquired in a year or two of desultory study in a high school. In the reaction that has already begun Spanish will lose ground and Latin will be the gainer. Our scholarly United States Senator, Henry Cabot Lodge, in a paper defending the study of the classics, says: "I cannot but believe that to the average boy-mark, the 'average' boy— it is as profitable to have read Virgil and to have caught a glimpse of the battles on the Trojan plain and of the wanderings of Odysseus as to be instructed in the 'Hereditary Hair Lengths of the Guinea Pig' or in the 'Anatomy and Development of the Posterior Lymph Hearts of the Turtle.' The spirit of man is not lifted and strengthened by an automobile, a gas engine, or an incandescent lamp. But the thoughts of men-the philosophers, the moralists, the preachers, the artists, the dramatists, the poets-are the real forces that move the world. A college professor recently said: "It seems to me that the newer educational notions have supplanted the older at the schools which fit boys for college; for those boys when they get to college are flabbier and flabbier in mind." It does not stand to reason that algebra should develop the same faculties as freehand drawing, or Greek the same as blacksmithing. And yet the president of one of our great universities on the Pacific coast once said before a high school student-body: "We had rather have you come to us blacksmithing than with Greek, for we can teach you Greek but we cannot teach you how to shoe a horse." Analysis, generalization, and rational thinking are developed and trained above all things else by the study of Latin and Greek. How few realize that the moral philosophy of Cicero was the chief source of Christian ethics upon which our civilization now rests. It was the individuality of Cicero as revealed in his letters which led the men of the Middle Ages to break the shackles of the authority of the Church and the State, thus making possible the Renaissance. The ideas of the nations which fought the World War are reflected in their ideas toward Cicero, because he, the great popularis consul, the unceasing advocate of individual freedom checked by individual responsibility was condemned, despised, and ridiculed by Germany; but honored, loved, and idealized by Italy, France, England and the United States. If we love knowledge for its own sake, if we would have scholarship and cultivation and refined learning among us to give a savor and a perfume to life, we can hardly omit the classics from the curriculum of our schools. After all it was the return to the civilization and literature of Greece and of Rome which opened to us the treasure house of modern knowledge, and it is well to be grateful if nothing more. There is something here which should cause us ever to maintain the classics when we think of what they are and what they have done for us of the modern dispensation. Some one has well said that it is not a contest of strength that faces the world, but of morals; and what our youth need is not so much the lessons to be learned from an investigation of birds, flowers, and rocks, as the lessons to be learned from reading and studying good books. And not the least of these are Cicero, Virgil, and Horace who for 2000 years have nurtured the mind and spirit of man, and who speak to us of the dignity of toil, of the value of vicissitude for the upbuilding of character, of the responsibility of the individual, of the necessity of an ideal if we are to gain a broader view of Heaven's purposes and earth's needs-such an ideal as that of Rome in her greatness, the crowning of peace and law. Bishop J. L. Spalding, who is so epigrammatic in all his writings, has said in "Things of the Mind": "Sometimes when I read a line of Horace or of Virgil, a sense of pleasure, as from the fragrance of moist woodlands in spring, overcomes me, and memories of my college days start to life like the bursting of buds and the songs of birds." Many of us can say to this a hearty Amen. Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes frankly declared before the National Education Association at Boston that he did not think a satisfactory substitute had been found for the classical and mathematical training. Stars Who has not felt the enchantment of the night-time, Thus have they shone through centuries all unnumbered; Giving this message clear and ever constant- In the dense darkness of our mortal living, Are there not stars that cheer us on our way? Gloriously eternal the light of love and goodness, Gives forth the radiance of kindly thought and deed. Stars of the earth and stars of heavenly splendor, EDITH M. SHANK. Orientation by Reals Before Using Symbols W BLANCHE E. ATKINS, ST. CLOUD, MINNESOTA. HIMANIC TERRIER HEN Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were going across the United States from Hannibal, Missouri, in their air-ship you will recall how, after a few hours, one remarked, "We must be over Indiana by now." But the other, looking over the side, said, "No, we can't be because it is green down there and Indiana is pink." Maps, not earth pictures, constitute the bulk of geographical images given to most people in school. Indiana is pink, the Himalayas are a horizontal two-inch curve near the center of a vari-colored page, and the Pacific Ocean, even, is blue paper with some tiny spots on it. Paper money, though only a symbol, is easier to carry than silver or gold and so better, provided it has real money back of it. Names of places, maps and globes are geographical paper money and valuable to the same extent. That they be honest symbols, the real for which each stands must first exist in the pupil's mind. An examination of the mental images of children and student teachers leads one to realize that these symbols are not, usually, of more value than are the German paper marks of 1924. The reasons are the same. The German leaders have been in a hurry and have perhaps not known how to create real values. Paper money was easy to produce and so the people have been given merely those symbols. Geography teachers, too, have found it quicker and easier to use maps than to create mental images of realities. The results are disastrous in both cases. Thanks to the movies, the words "New York City" to most western people now bring a picture of its skyline or crowded traffic. "France" since the war is something real. It may be |