Places

Glories of Teaching Classics in the Inner City

In the spring of 2014, my friend Lovina invited me to spend six weeks in
Queens, NY, teaching inner city kids in her program, called the Math and
Latin Academy. I would leave my home in Maine during its most beautiful
time, July and August, to teach Latin, mythology, grammar, phonics and
penmanship (writing cursive). Her article and conclusions about this
experiment are here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/giving_up_on_black_america_.
html

Lovina's offer to teach came as a gift to me. Like her, I live in a place I
love, near the Atlantic. Unlike her, I don't have to watch my step, and I
find it easy to love my neighbors, most of whom look and sound a good deal
like me. Before my fiancé drove me, in our old Subaru, from Maine to
Queens, I knew a lot about Latin, and (I thought) about teaching it, but
very little about Classical Christian Education. I had no experience
teaching in the inner city. But as with every other teaching job I've
taken, I plowed ahead with a good will, trusting that my love for my
subject and, inevitably, for my students, would see me through, as they
always have.

Like Lovina, I believe strongly in the value of teaching and learning
Latin. I know from long experience that learning Latin makes students
smarter; it conveys a deep understanding of how language works, and it
involves working with one's whole brain, both in small details (is that a
long vowel or a short one? And what does that tell you?) and in the big
picture (who's talking, and to whom, and about what?). With the kids in
Queens, I spent most of my teaching time with the youngest group, 7- and 8-
year-olds, so we started with stories and sentences, and learning basic
grammar terms like noun, verb, subject. We worked that over a lot, using
many simple sentences that would also introduce the story of Odysseus.
"Underline the subject, circle the verb." Most of them were kind of
clueless about this concept at the beginning, but they got better and
better at it. When it came to beginning the actual teaching of Latin,
Lovina had to give me something of a leash correction, to persuade me that
these students could be taught some simple vocabulary, but if I persisted
in trying to get them to conjugate verbs, I would lose them, and I was not
to do it. But, I thought, it's just chanting, to them. How is "amo, amas,
amat" all that different from "one potato, two potato, three potato, four"
to a seven-year-old? Children in this age range chant all the time, happily
and spontaneously, as I realized from reading Dorothy Sayers. But Lovina
was right, and she was right for a very good reason. If your teaching
method is based on the Trivium, then learning the building blocks (what is
a noun, or how do you say "road"), which is Grammar, has to be solidly in
place before you introduce Logic, which is "Now what can we do with these
pieces? Let's take this verb and conjugate it!" I was working out of
sequence, trying to introduce Logic tasks too early. By the last week, the
best and brightest 7-year-olds were conjugating verbs almost all on their
own.

That was a revelation to me as a teacher. It was not my only one. I gained
a great, hands-on respect for the pedagogy built on the Trivium. In less
than two months, these kids learned a great deal, and had a wonderful time,
as did I. The fact that I was usually the only white person in the
building, and sometimes on the bus or even, it seemed, the block, was a
matter of a little curiosity, the curiosity about an unfamiliar place, new
people – but there was no moment when I felt unwelcome, much less
threatened. The chance to teach students, who were generally eager and well-
behaved, energized and motivated me through six weeks of long days.

Lovina and I enjoyed many conversations. As she says, we have come from
very different starting points and arrived at very different positions. One
of the most positive lessons for me in the whole experience was that, in
spite of the profound political divisions in America of recent decades, I
can still, or once again, engage in long, deep, back-and-forth dialogue
with someone whose perspective is so far from my own. I had come to think
that such conversations had been lost with childhood, or with the onset of
political radio shock-talkers.

There were differences we would never resolve. I got the message that the
Trivium is a powerful pedagogical method, and I absolutely agree that all
students, at least all American students, need to learn the deep heritage
of western civilization, from Homer to Abraham Lincoln. The poetry of
Virgil, the prose of Cicero, the political insight of the founding fathers
of this country, and all the riches in between -- this is a rich and worthy
heritage, and one we can learn and treasure and share, without condoning or
overlooking the atrocities of any of the colonial ambitions and powers down
through history. All peoples have shameful chapters in their histories.
Americans (and our cultural ancestors of western Europe) are no exception.
But we owe it to ourselves to know, and to our children to teach, the
profound strength and glory that has always drawn people to this nation.
Lovina believes that the black community overall rejects this heritage, and
actively refuses to learn it, because of its undeniable flaws. It pains me
to think of a child being denied knowledge of Homer, or Virgil, or
Shakespeare, because of the horrors of the conquistadors, or the brutality
of the crusades. By that logic, I should never admire a great cathedral or
a beautiful hymn because of the bloody Spanish Inquisition. It cuts me off
from the history of how this country was founded, of its deepest, richest
roots, on the grounds that the country has faults. I have two responses to
that.

First, find me a nation that isn't flawed, and show me its history. Find me
a people who have better souls, a people who have never trespassed against
their neighbors. I don't believe you can.

Second, if anyone believes that their own heritage is somehow richer or
more virtuous than the one we share as Americans, then I would challenge
them to go find it out. Learn it. Write it down. Be the Homer, or even more
important, be the modern equivalent of that nameless unknown hero who first
wrote down the songs of Homer. If you want to reject this culture, then
show me an alternative. And if the alternative is just modern rap, or a
story about whether Beyonce and JayZ are fighting this week, then I reject
that, and I feel no slightest trace of respect for that alternative. None.
If modern TV, videogames, Facebook, Twitter, Hollywood and Hulu are your
culture, then you've lost this argument. You've given up the riches of
centuries for the shallow, greed-based entertainment of a few minutes.

The point where Lovina and I still diverge is about the Christianity of
Classical Christian Education. I think this approach to teaching, using the
Trivium, would work with any students. Lovina and I have very different
faith lives. That hasn't prevented us from sharing prayer – but my faith is
not as denominational as Lovina's. I have family members who are orthodox
Jews, and others who are atheists. My faith is deep but inarticulate,
inchoate, not verbal, and not easily named. I believe that all faiths are
flawed human efforts to describe the indescribable. I believe that the
enormous gift and power of Christianity, as a world faith and as an
historical juggernaut, comes from Jesus' commandment that we love one
another, love our neighbor as ourselves, first, last, foremost – a severe
reorientation of human consciousness if there ever was one. Not that we are
able to obey that commandment, any of us – but at least we are commanded to
try, and that effort makes us better people.




For me, because of my own skill set, loving my neighbor would include
teaching Latin to all comers, to anyone who wants to learn it, regardless
of his or her religion. Having taught in a large public school, I have
taught Latin to students who happened to be Muslims or Jews, or atheists,
or devout Christians who were also Mormons. My experience with Lovina
means I would teach them a little differently now, but not that I would
make any new inquiry into their faith.