Alma Mater

Most mornings during the school year, after the breakfast dishes have been put away, the books come out on the kitchen table, and another day at the Williams homeschool begins.

People often ask why I homeschool, and why I choose to do so in the midst of the very busy schedules that my husband and I keep. My stock response is: many people feel that their upbringing or life experiences have traumatized them so much that they need therapy. I homeschool because I do not want to outsource the screwing up of my children. Instead (as I say in jest) I would like to be the main reason they will need therapy.

In those future conversations with his therapist, one possible topic that my 12-year-old may bring up is learning Latin at home from his professional Classicist mom. Actually, I think the odds are much higher that he’ll need extra time with the therapist to discuss his experience with learning to play the piano from me, but that is a story for another time. I grew up with a Russian Jewish pianist mother (think Yiddish insults and plenty of guilt trips), so piano instruction is obviously required for my children, although virtuosity is optional. But let us get back to Latin.

It would be easy to assume that my husband and I have the unique skill set to teach our children Latin at home. After all, I have a Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University, and my husband, who has a Ph.D. in American History from Brown University, has a B.A. in Classics himself, and had originally entered graduate school with the intent of studying Late Antiquity. But the national statistics show that the popularity of Latin among homeschoolers has been on the rise for the past decade. So, as it turns out, our family is part of a trend, rather than an exception to it. Funnily enough, it was my son’s participation in the National Latin Exam that made me arrive at that realization.

In existence now for three decades, the NLE, administered every spring, provides opportunities for students at all levels to gain encouragement and get a sense of how they compare to other Latin students at their level nationwide. The exam also allows high school seniors to compete for a scholarship opportunity. All seniors who achieve a gold medal on the exam at Latin III level or higher are eligible to apply for the NLE college scholarships.

As someone who was not yet a US permanent resident when in high school, I personally benefited from winning that scholarship. Non-residents are not eligible for federal financial aid, but merit-based scholarships are fair game for all.

Because students at all levels and in all kinds of schooling situations attempt the exam, the NLE provides a way to put a finger on the pulse of the study of Latin among American middle-school and high-school students. While it is difficult to track the precise numbers of homeschoolers in America who are studying Latin, the NLE’s statistics allow for at least some estimates about the grass-roots revolution that is currently happening in the study of Latin in America. The study of Latin in public schools has faced some challenges. According to one recent report, only 2% of American K-12 students who are taking a foreign language are enrolled in Latin. By contrast, the study of Latin among homeschoolers has been on the upswing now for over a decade.

In 2016, the number of homeschooled students taking the NLE increased so much that for the first time, the NLE released a separate report on the exam and homeschooling students as part of its annual results newsletter (see page 9). And according to the latest report, from NLE’s spring 2017 newsletter, last year “4,446 homeschooled students took the exam in 835 home schools. This number remains the fastest growing population of participants.” Who are these people? And whoa, doesn’t this math say that these are families averaging 5.32 kids?

As the mother of one of those 4,446 homeschoolers who took the NLE last spring, and a member of a homeschooling co-op that contributed a total of 12 students to this statistic (spoiler alert: homeschooling co-op groups are the reason for the surprising student to homeschool ratio), I would like to give you a perspective from inside this “fastest growing population” of Latin students. In the process, I will consider some implications and complications stemming from the growing popularity of Latin for homeschoolers for the bigger picture of the study of the Classics in America today. Put simply, I believe that this grassroots revolution is redefining both the teaching and the learning of Latin, and challenging the assumption of traditional educational models that only trained professionals (however you would like to define the term) can teach Latin, and do it well.

There is an important caveat to keep in mind before proceeding. While I believe that homeschooling is absolutely the right choice for my family, choosing any particular approach to education is a deeply personal decision. The point of this article is not, therefore, to say that if you are not homeschooling, you are failing your children. Unlike the homeschooling mom protagonist of “Moms’ Night Out,” I do not have a bumper sticker on my car bragging that “My homeschooler is smarter than your honors student.” In fact, I am pretty certain that my homeschooler is not smarter than your honors student. But I am equally certain that he is getting a customized education that is optimal for him at this stage in his educational experience, although I suspect that at least sometimes he most relates to the Roman student who scratched this graffito.

In case you are visualizing a sea of denim jumpers a la Duggar family, it is important to note just how diverse homeschooling in America has become in recent years.

There are in general three main reasons why people choose to homeschool, and these can certainly overlap — indeed, all three apply to my family. First, there are those who homeschool for faith reasons, and these include Christians of every type, but also Jews, Muslims, and even Wiccans. Next, there are those who choose to homeschool because of children’s special needs, broadly defined. Several families I know chose to homeschool children with varying degrees of dyslexia, in some cases after experiencing a variety of conflicts and issues with the public schools. Another family decided to homeschool a child adopted internationally, with the encouragement of the local public-school system, whose staff felt inadequately prepared to assist.

Finally, there are those who choose to homeschool because of concerns about the quality of education available in their area, or because of philosophical disagreements with the public schools. It is a clear reminder of the separation of church and state that both religious minorities (e.g., Muslims) and religious majorities (e.g., Christians) have turned to homeschooling because of discomfort over the values taught in public schools. More sobering, considering that this month marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of MLK Jr., is the concern of black parents, who find the public school system filled with racial stereotyping and “covert institutional racism.” As a result, homeschooling rates among black families are rising, and they now form 10% of the homeschooling population.

And in response to those who worry about homeschoolers being poorly socialized, I would gently respond that public schools are not exactly the ideal here either. One family we know pulled a son out of an award-winning pre-K program and decided to homeschool after their then five-year-old was repeatedly bullied on the school playground. At a meeting with the concerned parents, the teacher simply said that this was good life experience for their son, who needed to be toughened up. The parents decided that age five was perhaps too early to start toughening up their sensitive child with daily playground beatings.

Regardless of the particular catalyst that drove them to this decision, what all homeschooling parents hold in common is the belief in a personalized education for their children, at least for a season. That said, homeschooling has its own access barriers — after all, a parent or other trusted relative has to take charge of the children’s education, which means potentially sacrificing one income. Another concern and potential access barrier is many parents’ fear of the inadequacy of their own abilities to teach their children at least some subjects.

Thankfully, numerous homeschooling co-ops now exist, which allow parents to pool resources and improve the overall quality of education while (in the case of each co-op) bringing together parents with the same philosophical bend. Especially popular now are co-ops with a Classical education approach. In my semi-rural region of Georgia alone, I know of three homeschool resource centers that provide a Classical education. In addition, there are several chapters in the area of Classical Conversations, a national homeschooling co-op that hit the 115,000 student mark last fall. And lest you think that Classical education is entirely a Christian homeschooling phenomenon, Wiccans are able to claim it as their own thanks to Martianus Capella, the Late Antique pagan writer who first proposed the idea of the Seven Liberal Arts.

While the model of Classical education means much more than just including the study of Latin in the curriculum, Latin is an integral part of the movement, which emphasizes the study of Latin grammar as a key to further successful language study in the future. There is an obvious complication, however: most homeschooling parents have never studied Latin themselves during their schooling. So how can they teach their own children now? The answer, again, is not to go the journey alone. Co-ops, such as Classical Conversations, facilitate the pooling of resources with other parents, and many parents are teaching themselves Latin so they can teach their kids.

This model flips the traditional concept of education by professionals on its ear, although I find it intriguing that so many homeschooling moms I know are former teachers. The goal of this model is not to make the expert seem indispensable, but to equip others, sharing and spreading the love of Latin grammar. And I have seen the experiment bear fruit for students. A talented high-school junior in my local co-op has been my assistant in teaching Latin to a younger level this semester. The tentative plan is for her to teach a class on her own next academic year, and as she contemplates college applications, she is considering a career in education. But like everything about homeschooling, this model of instruction requires significant time and effort from the parents.

One dedicated mom I know spent the past several years immersing herself in the study of Latin and has become an invaluable resource in a couple of different co-ops in the area. Another mom friend was getting up at 5 am most mornings for a while in order to work on her Latin (utmost respect here — nothing and no one, including my toddler, can get me out of bed at that hour).

There is something beautiful that I see in my homeschooling mom friends’ approach to acquiring knowledge. Lifelong learning is a core value for homeschooling families, and so is the model of mutual equipping and edification. Donna Zuckerberg recently observed that contrary to what Classicists too often believe, there is nothing special about the field of Classics. Most classical homeschoolers I know would disagree, as they clearly find something special about the study of Latin. Rather, they would say that there is nothing overly special about trained classicists.

So what is so special about Latin itself? Why are parents of my generation and younger deciding to include Latin in their children’s education, despite never having studied it before themselves? The flippant answer would be that it is the cool “in” thing in certain circles now, but while true, such an answer obviously does not get to the heart of the issue. Rather, the top answer seems to be a newfound regard for the old-school study of Latin grammar as a key to the understanding of other languages, including English. Indeed, part and parcel of Classical Education is also emphasis on sentence diagramming for late elementary students.

This functional justification for the study of Latin accounts for the top four of the top ten reasons to study Latin from Christopher Perrin, CEO of Classical Academic Press. But it is telling of the homeschooling educational mentality that two of the other reasons on this list are “Educational Virtue” and “Pleasure.” Yes, pleasure.

I remember one of my undergraduate professors joking that the study of Greek and Latin “builds character,” and I have used this joke on my son and his homeschooled friends many a time when covering a complicated Latin concept (giggles and eye-rolls generally follow). And yet, educational virtue — the training of students to become self-sufficient learners — is a wonderful goal. After all, taking ownership of one’s own learning is a building block of successful adulting!

But how well does this possibly disorganized hodge-podge model of mutual edification work anyway? This question brings us back to the National Latin Exam. The NLE has only been separating out the results of homeschoolers for the past two years, and they still form a very small percentage of the students taking the exam, but the findings are interesting. As it turns out, homeschoolers tend to score slightly below other students on the Introduction to Latin and Latin I exams. At each subsequent level, however, homeschoolers out-scored other students, and at some levels, did so by a significant margin (see page 9). While, again, the sample size is quite small, the little data that there is suggests that this model of education is working well for the admittedly self-selective group of students who pursue it.

So what are the implications of this complication to the study of Latin in America that homeschoolers introduce? First, one obviously exciting takeaway is that more people (both students and their parents) are studying Latin, and are really enjoying it. Their numbers are not captured by any surveys, and certainly complicate the earlier statistic I mentioned, that only 2% of K-12 students taking a foreign language are studying Latin. Second, this is an untapped pool from which colleges and universities could draw Latin and Greek students, if they could find a way to appeal to them.

The study of foreign languages in American colleges and universities has been on the decline since 2013. Since Latin and Greek are a part of that trend, this seems to be part of the story about the overall decline in Humanities majors. But one discouraging result is a shortage of certified Latin teachers, which only compounds the problem of decline in the study of Latin in American public schools.

Homeschoolers tend to be more focused and goal-driven students, who go into college with clear ideas in mind for a future career. Could the trick to appealing to them be the solution to both the problem of the decline in Classics majors and the issue of the shortage of Latin teachings for K-12? No solution is ever this easy and perfect, but I wonder if Classics programs could indeed recruit homeschoolers more effectively if they advertised the degree as a ticket to teaching Latin at the K-12 level. Of course, there would also be extreme irony present in the idea of a Latin teacher who had never set foot in a school before beginning to teach in one. But that teacher would know what it is like to live out and impart to others the farewell blessing at the end of Chapter 40 of Wheelock’s Latin: “May your love of Latin be aere perennius.”

Nadejda Williams is a military historian of the Greco-Roman world and a homeschooling mom. She finds joy in seeing her work and domestic spheres collide, and dreams of someday reading Peter Rabbit in Latin — a dream that Amazon.com offers to make come true.

This article is part of “Dispatches From the Front Lines,” a series about pre-collegiate Latin and Greek instruction