Why Students of Color Don’t Take Latin
Dispatches From The Front Lines
I am a Latin teacher. I have spent the last several years of my life teaching Latin to 7th and 8th graders, with the occasional high school class sprinkled in. When students ask me why they should sign up for Latin, I tell them that it is a beautiful language that unlocks a world of wonder. From the ancient Romans to the modern day, Latin has been an international language of art, music, science, math, law, government, medicine and everything in between. Whatever the student’s passion is, Latin will definitely help. In addition, having Latin on your transcript will make colleges and universities drool.
Given all of the benefits of learning Latin, why don’t more students of color sign up for Latin in middle or high school? It’s pretty obvious to me what the answer is — but then again, I’m black. Because I am one of few people on the planet who can call themselves both black and a Latin teacher, I have some unique insights into this problem as well as some practical solutions.
Latin has a reputation for being a language for the “smart” kids. A place where the best and brightest go to further set themselves apart from the pack. Since Latin classes, in most instances, are not mandatory, the people signing up tend to be a self-selected group of elite students. Except for the occasional outliers, the overwhelming majority of these students are going to be the most advantaged students in the district. Who else is going to self-identify as one of the “smart” kids?
So why does Latin continue to maintain this exclusionary and elitist reputation? Shouldn’t these broad stereotypes be quickly debunked by actual experiences? Unfortunately, far too many Latin programs have embraced exclusivity rather than seeking to counteract it. Often this takes the form of making pedagogical choices that advantage a select few students and disadvantage the rest. I am not saying that all, or even most, of these teachers are trying to create homogenous classes. I am saying that certain practices have and will continue to create exclusive programs, regardless of intent.
For centuries now, the default approach to teaching Latin has been the grammar-translation approach. This approach generally consists of learning grammar rules, learning grammar terminology, memorizing paradigms, and translating Latin into English primarily to demonstrate grammatical accuracy. When you boil it down, the emphasis is on memorization and application of abstract grammatical formulae. This approach takes a language that was once spoken comfortably by people of all backgrounds, social classes, ages, etc. throughout the world and renders it into a complex linguistic jigsaw puzzle that requires an elite mathematical mind to decipher.
The challenge that the grammar-translation approach poses to inclusivity is that it takes language, something universally accessible to all, and creates a series of unnecessary and onerous roadblocks that render it accessible to only the few. For example, using a comprehension-based approach, with no direct grammar instruction, all of my 7th grade students were able to read novice-level chapter books in Latin by the end of the year. With a grammar-based approach, those same results would be considered totally invalid unless accompanied by the ability to decline mixed-declension adjective-noun pairings, or to identify the difference between ablative of means and an ablative of manner.
As of right now, there is absolutely no evidence that intensive grammar study leads to language acquisition. It is profoundly difficult for most people and also completely unnecessary. As a result, only a few elite students survive the grammar gauntlet, while the rest struggle and eventually drop out. This is largely why the ethnic and racial composition of most Latin classrooms don’t differ wildly from honors level math classes.
Grammar-translation and its demands have served as something akin to voter I.D. laws in the United States. While asking voters to provide identification before voting might sound benign, it always results in the mass disenfranchisement of voters of color in the name of solving a problem that does not exist. Insisting that Latin students have a solid understanding of Latin grammar also seems harmless, but it can result in limiting access to students of color in the name of providing skills that are not necessary. Fortunately, Latin does not need to be taught this way. In fact, if an approach leads to a shocking lack of diversity, then that approach should not be used in the classroom at all.
Along with how we teach, we must also reexamine what we teach in our classes. It is easy for even the most well-intentioned Latin teacher to inadvertently alienate students of color — for example, by centering a course around a textbook that speaks glowingly about how much Roman occupation improved the lives of their subjects and also contains no images of people of color. Another example would be staging a mock slave auction as a cultural project or publicity event. How could one expect African-American students in particular to feel comfortable in a class where this sort of practice is the norm?
Finally, we desperately need more Latin teachers of color. I routinely attend national Latin teacher conferences and participate in several online communities. I have yet to encounter another black guy. This may be a symptom of the lack of diversity among Classics students, or it may be the result of discriminatory hiring practices, or both. Regardless of the cause, the current situation is unacceptable. Students of color in particular benefit tremendously from having teachers who look like them. Students of color who have at least one teacher of their own ethnicity are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. As a person of color, I can attest to the unique feeling of comfort and acceptance when I would walk into a classroom and see a black teacher. I knew that this one teacher would be able to see me as a true individual unhindered by stereotype. If we want to open our doors to these students, we have to take this problem seriously.
So what now? What can we as Latin teachers do to create classrooms that reflect the full diversity of our schools? Fortunately there are readily available solutions that can start to turn this problem around. Some will require small adjustments, others will require more significant changes. I urge anyone reading this to keep in mind that the status quo is no longer an option if we are serious about creating more inclusive programs.
First, we need to change our approach to teaching Latin. The largest and most diverse public school Latin programs in the country have already come to this realization. These same programs credit a shift away from grammar-translation to teaching with comprehensible input, a term coined by second language acquisition researcher Stephen Krashen, with their increase in size and diversity. Having made this shift myself I have not only seen big increases in overall Latin enrollment, but also in the number of students of color and those receiving special services. These same students are also finding a tremendous amount of success in these programs. Students who would have never dared sign up for Latin in the past are able to read short novels after only a few short months.
Along with changing our approach, we also need to change our goals. In an era of “tougher standards” and “higher expectations,” we need to push for healthy goals and appropriate expectations.
The good news, is that this can be done in any world language department without any real work! The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) has already done the work of creating standards and expectations that apply to all kinds of language learners. These goals are based on proficiency rather than perfection, on Second Language Acquisition research rather than tradition. We must resist the temptation to use standardized test scores, such as the Latin AP exam, as a mark of program quality. In fact, praising the high AP scores of a program only encourages teachers to weed out students from certain demographic groups, who tend to perform worse on standardized tests in general. With more sensible goals we can increase enrollment and retention of students of color, and all other types of students, without much effort.
Second, we need to actively seek out new content. No textbook, old or new, is going to do this work for us. A lot of time and effort has gone into whitewashing the Classical world, our job now is to restore the color. Almost every Latin course involves learning about Hannibal, Dido, Carthage and Egypt, yet how many of us use textbooks or images that depict all of these people as white? We can start simply by acknowledging the people of color who have been right in front of us this whole time. The next step is to revisit our beloved Classical authors and find new material to start introducing to our classrooms. Our students need to see themselves in the content we choose, in order to feel included.
Third, we need to train and hire more teachers of color. Department chairs and their Latin teachers can start by reaching out to local colleges and universities inquiring about Classics majors of color who might be interested in becoming Latin teachers. Make it known that your school is actively looking to increase diversity and views this as a real priority. Also, if you are fortunate enough to have a qualified applicant of color for a Latin position at your school, hire them! If you are not the one doing the hiring, make sure that your admins know that you have a strong interest in adding a teacher of color to your team. Ultimately, we won’t make significant progress in this area unless we start attracting and retaining students of color in secondary and post-secondary programs.
As teachers and Classicists, we can’t continue to simply teach how we were taught and what we were taught and expect to attract and engage students of color. Regardless of whether or not my recommendations ring true to you, we can all agree that what we are currently doing is not working. If we fail to take any action, Latin classrooms will remain exclusive bastions of white privilege.
John Bracey is a middle school Latin teacher who occasionally dabbles in high school. He spends his days fighting the good fight and trying to make Latin classes more inclusive to everyone. He has a blog where he talks about teaching Latin with Comprehensible Input and is a contributor to the blog The Inclusive Latin Classroom.
