The Rogue Classicist blogged a NY Times article on a public middle school in New York that is teaching very average students Latin (At a Bronx School, Latin Is the Root of All Learning ).
“When I think about Latin,” said Mr. Goldin, 23, “I certainly think of an environment where kids are reading at grade level and have a grade-level vocabulary, have study habits, get their homework done. That’s not the experience the majority of our students have had by sixth grade.”Mr. Goldin, who teaches at the middle school, continues
Latin works well with children who are not strong academically, he said. “It’s very organized, very transparent,” he said. “There’s a rule for everything.”As an aside, when my own son was trying to learn to read, but was having trouble understanding the correspondence between the alphabet and sounds in written words, I turned to Latin to show him how to read English. It was one of those "ah! ha!" light bulb-going off moments for him.
There are skeptics who say there is no reliable information on whether the teachers are improving learning, although attendance in similarly small schools is up and violence down.
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