(4) In the United States of America the highest degree of educational development has been subsequent to the Civil War. The study of Latin begins in the “high schools,” the average age of admission being fifteen and the normal United States. course extending over four years. Among classical teachers an increasing number would prefer a longer course extending over six years for Latin, and at least three for Greek, and some of these would assign to the elementary school the first two of the proposed six years of Latin study. Others are content with the late learning of Latin and prefer that it should be preceded by a thorough study of modern languages (see Prof. B.I. Wheeler, in Baumeister’s Handbuch, 1897, ii. 2, pp. 584-586).
It was mainly owing to a pamphlet issued in 1871 by Prof. G.M. Lane, of Harvard, that a reformed pronunciation of Latin was adopted in all the colleges and schools of the United States. Some misgivings on this reform found Latin pronunciation. expression in a work on the Teaching of Latin, published by Prof. C.E. Bennett of Cornell in 1901, a year in which it was estimated that this pronunciation was in use by more than 96% of the Latin pupils in the secondary schools.
Some important statistics as to the number studying Latin and Greek in the secondary schools were collected in 1900 by a committee of twelve educational experts representing all parts of the Union, with a view to a uniform course of instruction being pursued in all classical schools. They had the advantage of the co-operation of Dr W.T. Harris, the U.S. commissioner of education, and they were able to report that, in all the five groups into which they had divided the states, the number of pupils pursuing the study of Latin and Greek showed a remarkable advance, especially in the most progressive states of the middle west. The number learning Latin had increased from 100,144 in 1890 to 314,856 in 1899-1900, and those learning Greek from 12,869 to 24,869. Thus the number learning Latin at the later date was three times, and the number learning Greek twice, as many as those learning Latin or Greek ten years previously. But the total number in 1000 was 630,048; so that, notwithstanding this proof of progress, the number learning Greek in 1900 was only about one twenty-fifth of the total number, while the number learning Latin was as high as half.
The position of Greek as an “elective” or “optional” subject (notably at Harvard), an arrangement regarded with approval by some eminent educational authorities and with regret by others, probably has some effect on the high schools in the small number of those who learn Greek, and in their lower rate of increase, as compared with those who learn Latin. Some evidence as to the quality of the study of those languages in the schools is supplied by English commissioners in the Reports of the Mosely Commission. Thus Mr Papillon considered that, while the teaching of English literature was admirable, the average standard of Latin and Greek teaching and attainment in the upper classes was “below that of an English public school”; he felt, however, that the secondary schools of the United States had a “greater variety of the curriculum to suit the practical needs of life,” and that they existed, not “for the select few,” but “for the whole people” (pp. 250 f.).
For full information see the “Two volumes of Monographs prepared for the United States Educational Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900,” edited by Dr N. Murray Butler; the Annual Reports of the U.S. commissioner of education (Washington); and the Reports of the Mosely Commission to the United States of America (London, 1904). Cf. statistics quoted in G.G. Ramsay’s “Address on Efficiency in Education” (Glasgow, 1902, 17-20), from the Transactions of the Amer. Philol. Association, xxx. (1899), pp. lxxvii-cxxii; also Bennett and Bristol, The Teaching of Latin and Greek in the Secondary School (New York, 1901).
(J. E. S.*)
[1] The above derivation is in accordance with English usage. In the New English Dictionary the earliest example of the word “classical” is the phrase “classical and canonical,” found in the Europae Speculum of Sir Edwin Sandys (1599), and, as applied to a writer, it is explained as meaning “of the first rank or authority.” This exactly corresponds with the meaning of classicus in the above passage of Gellius. On the other hand, the French word classique (in Littré’s view) primarily means “used in class.”
[2] See also the article [Schools].