GREEK AND LATIN
Classics for children Alisa Kunitz Dick on teaching Greek and Latin
L
ast September, I began offering lessons to young Catholic children in Latin and Greek. More specifically, we have been learning ecclesiastical Latin and Koine and Byzantine Greek. My eldest daughter, who is home-educated, was just beginning Reception, and I was eager that she would learn these languages, which I had studied as an undergraduate and then used in my PhD research in medieval philosophy at Cambridge. I had also observed that the majority of Catholics, from those who attend the Extraordinary Form to those who regularly attend the English novus ordo do not know enough Latin to understand a large part of the missal and have no Greek. In addition, after investigating Catholic curricula in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I had noticed that the standard approach to teaching these languages was through the writings of classical authors, for instance Virgil’s Aeneid, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, or selections from Cicero for Latin, or, Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey, or Plato’s Apology for Greek. This classical approach continues today in the GCSE and A-level curricula. This is the means by which these languages are taught in Catholic schools today, if at all. Now it is obviously beneficial and useful to read these and other classical authors, and I do not want to suggest otherwise, or to suggest that they should be discarded. What Catholic schoolchildren, however, are not being taught, and perhaps have not ever been taught in recent history, as far as I can tell, is the Catholic tradition: the Scriptures, the liturgy, Church Fathers, and the medieval writers. These include the Septuagint and the New Testament, the writings of St Ignatius of Antioch, St Augustine, St Jerome, St Athanasius, St John Damascene, and St Thomas Aquinas, to take just a few. (I think Hebrew should also have a fundamental role, but that is a topic for another time.) In fact, the ability to read these authors in their original languages is taught only to graduate students, or to a very few undergraduates.
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These are not, however, especially difficult subjects. It is reasonable to suppose that children can be taught how to read and translate Latin and Greek, just as easily as they can be taught how to read and translate another foreign language, such as Spanish or French, which are common subjects in schools. And as in the case with languages generally, the earlier one begins, the more intuitive it is and the more natural one becomes with the language.
‘…we were able to put on a shortened version of a Nativity play in the original Greek’ As it happened, the students who signed up for the classes are all quite young, between three and seven. In Greek, we have been working on learning the alphabet. We play games such as connecting the letters in order to form a picture, tracing sandpaper letters to become familiar with the shapes, and memory games. They also receive badges as they progress,
beginning with the alpha badge, and continuing until they reach the omega badge. Just before Christmas, we were able to put on a shortened version of a Nativity play in the original Greek. In Latin, the children are learning how to speak in short sentences, such as, ‘The daughter is in the kitchen,’ or ‘Where is the bear?’. I use a fox puppet, named Vulpis, who only knows how to speak in Latin, and the children practise speaking with him. They are also learning vocabulary from the Vulgate, such as farm animals and fruits, and they are learning basic prayers in Latin, such as the sign of the cross. A lot of the children have younger siblings who come along, and they sometimes pick up the Latin as well. As these children get older and more adept at reading, they will move on to reading selections from the Septuagint and the New Testament in Greek, then progress to the early Church Fathers; in Latin, they will progress to the order of the Mass, followed by the office, and then onto the Church Fathers and medieval writers, gradually becoming more advanced and proficient readers. If similar programs could be started elsewhere, I think it could promote better catechesis among Catholics and make texts accessible which are not considered to be so currently. It would be very lovely to hear a child, perhaps aged eleven or so, read and understand the following:
(…being incorporeal by nature and Logos from the beginning, according to the loving-kindness and goodness of his Father, he appeared to us in a human body for our salvation.) St Athanasius, On The Incarnation of the Word, PG Vol. 25, 97B-C.
WINTER 2017
