I had to take classes in Latin as part of my “Letters” major at the University of Oklahoma, and I really enjoyed it. While it’s no longer a requirement for a man to know Latin to get ahead in life, it’s still a great subject to study. Around the same time, the Catholic Church revised its liturgy and permitted priests to lead Mass in vernacular languages instead of Latin, thus eliminating one of the public’s last ties to the ancient language. To quell student protests, universities began to slowly phase out the Latin requirement, and because colleges stopped requiring Latin, many high schools in America stopped offering Latin classes, too. Among their suggested changes was eliminating Latin as a required course for all students. Beginning in the 1960s, college students demanded that the curriculum be more open, inclusive, and less Euro-centric.

While Latin had been dying a slow death for hundreds of years, it still had a strong presence in schools until the middle of the 20 th century. An emphasis on the liberal arts slowly gave way to what was considered a more practical education in reading, writing, and arithmetic. This trend for English-language learning accelerated in the 19 th century schools shifted from turning out future clergymen to graduating businessmen who would take their place in an industrializing economy. But beginning in the 14 th century, writers started to use the vernacular in their works, which slowly chipped away at Latin’s central importance in education. Grammar schools in Europe and especially England during this time were Latin schools, and the first secondary school established in America by the Puritans was a Latin school as well. To immerse oneself in classical and humanistic studies, Latin was a must. From Latin, all scholarship flowed and it was truly the gateway to the life of the mind, as the bulk of scientific, religious, legal, and philosophical literature was written in the language until about the 16 th century. Along with logic and rhetoric, grammar (as Latin was then known) was included as part of the Trivium – the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. What do great men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt all have in common?įrom the Middle Ages until about the middle of the 20th century, Latin was a central part of a man’s schooling in the West.

Ad infinitum ad nauseam ad mortem