View Content #23869

From https://eidolon.pub

In a thought-provoking essay, high school Latin teacher Erik Robinson writes, “The most promising of my former Latin students recently told me that she regretted that we did not spend more time discussing the social, cultural, and historical legacy of the ancient world. As with all good criticism, this cut deep because I acknowledged the justice of the reproach. She noted that, for all of the time that we spent reading Latin texts, the class had never really spent much time discussing in depth such issues as the brutality of war, the treatment of women, and the experience of slaves.

“…A much larger and far more diverse group of students take Latin in high school than study Classics in college. If we leave them with the impression that Classics consists of little more than reams of grammatical constructions learned through a series of comics which trivialize rape and slavery, ultimately culminating in the ability to read a callous account of self-aggrandizing genocide, then we have failed.”

Read the full essay at https://eidolon.pub/the-slaves-were-happy-high-school-latin-and-the-horrors-of-classical-studies-4e1123649916