Periti/ae Utriusque Modi:
Two Methods, One Profession

There are two principal theories of teaching Latin practiced today in our schools and colleges. On the one hand is the traditional method based on learning grammar and syntax through paradigms, whose forms are then analyzed in individual sentences leading to paragraphs of connected Latin, often adapted from ancient texts. The exemplar of this method is Wheelock. On the other is the inductive method, in which students are led by extensive reading of long passages in Latin toward an understanding of grammar and syntax either as, or sometimes before, the actual paradigms and explanations are provided. Here, the exemplar is the Cambridge Latin Course.

This panel is not an attempt to revisit the debate on the merits of the two methods. It is rather intended to explore an unexpected problem that arises from the existence of the two methods. Schools emphatically tend to favor the inductive method texts, as do many liberal arts colleges. Wheelock, however, remains the text of choice for universities, especially those with Ph.D. programs. Schools more and more are compelled to hire new Latin teachers whose training has been at the university, and these teachers must make an abrupt transition from grammar-based learning to reading-based teaching. The issue the panelists will address, therefore, concerns ways of easing the transition that teachers must make from one method to the other. We hope to help nurture a dialogue within the profession that encourages this transition, over an oppositional “choosing sides”, an opposition which hurts the teacher, the students, and the profession.

Our first speaker addresses the fears and anxieties which arise in those unfamiliar with the reading-based method when they open such a text for the first time. Articulating these concerns sympathetically, yet keeping a positive approach to the reading method, is a way of integrating the new teacher’s experience of one method into the demands of the other method. The second panelist speaks from the view of one who has initiated many new teachers into these methods, and suggests ways that those who supervise teachers can help them make the transition.

Any dialogue that encourages transition between the two methods must define practical advantages to making the transition. Our third speaker discusses the problems of teaching multiple class levels in the same classroom, and the ways in which the reading-based method specifically allows a teacher to deal with these problems. Our last speaker takes this one step further and analyses ways to identify active and passive learning in each method, in order to benefit from the strengths in both methods.

The respondent, who is director of a university Latin program which emphasizes the preparation of graduate students for teaching, will reflect on these presentations, and (we hope) bring them together to make some suggestions that will help both students and their supervisors to become periti/ae utriusque modi, experienced in each method.