Speak of the dead: Animam Latinae novam inspirant

Certainly not at Roosevelt High School, which sponsored the region's 54th annual Junior Classical League convention this weekend. More than 300 high school students from Washington and British Columbia gathered for the event at the University of Washington and Roosevelt campuses, reveling in their mastery of the language.

Eton School students, from left, Darshi Banon, 11, Nathan Johnson, 12, Raina Chauhan, 11, Abbi Riedinger, 11, and Keith Rogers, 12, make some last-minute changes before taking the stage for a skit yesterday
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With more than a few garbed in togas and laurel wreaths, they delivered oratories and conjugated verbs. They translated poetry and mapped out Roman geography. They performed skits spoofing ancient myths and lined up in cheering teams for Jeopardy-style Latin quizzes, racing to answer questions such as "name the second-person singular imperfect active indicative form of the verb 'supero' (overcome)."

They even acted out a little gladiator-style combat.

In short, they came, they saw, and they conquered any impression that Latin has to be dry and out of date.

"It is far from being an obsolete language," said Roosevelt student Doug Wynkoop, adding that he's learned more English grammar in his two years of Latin than in all his years of school.

Roosevelt High has had a strong Latin program for years, with roughly 100 students taking the language at any given time and earning top-scale marks on the National Latin Exam.

Out of 72 students who took the test last year, 70 earned medals or merit certificates.

Students joke about the course's value to college entrance exams, helping them tease out vocabulary words from Latin roots. For example, they easily derived the words loquacious, eloquence and elocution from the verb "loquor," which means speak, in one recent class.

The classes are filled with art and politics, philosophy and history -- comparing, say, Cicero's speeches to those of past U.S. presidents, or comparing the Roman Senate to the setup in Washington, D.C. The class is also filled with the sparks that come when teachers and at least some students share a genuine love for their subject.

Latin is a challenge, several students said, but they're still surprised that it's offered by so few public schools in Washington state.

"They think it's a dead language!" said Roosevelt senior Lauren Graf, president of the region's Junior Classical League and one of the chief organizers of the weekend conference.

Linguists say a national resurgence in Latin's popularity hasn't made much of a showing in Washington state.

"Latin is just not around," said Marianne Harvey, an Everett High School German teacher and past president of the Washington Association of Language Teachers. "On the East Coast it's different.... But out here, it's very, very rare."

The most popular language offered in the state, she said, is Spanish. Spanish also takes the lead nationwide, with one study saying it's offered by 93 percent of all U.S. secondary schools that teach foreign languages.

Roosevelt had the largest number of delegates at the weekend convention (61). Other Washington public schools involved included: Garfield High (35 delegates); Mount Vernon High (10); Olympia and Capitol High in Olympia (2); and Snohomish High (14). Other participants were private schools or home-schooled students.

Lakeside School Latin conventioneers, from left, Jenny Estill, Lilly Nickerson and Nikolai Myers horse around
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It was a strong showing for the annual convention, but a far cry from the days when Roosevelt teacher Nora MacDonald attended school, taking Latin as a required language at Eckstein Middle School and continuing on at Roosevelt High. (She replaced her own former Roosevelt teacher when she joined the faculty in 1977).

"If you were on a fast track to academics, you took Latin. That was it," she said.

Now, the Seattle district says that none of its middle schools teach Latin and that only Roosevelt and Garfield offer it at the high school level.

Nationally, enrollment in Latin classes dropped about 80 percent in the public schools between 1962 and 1976, said Richard LaFleur, head of the classics department at the University of Georgia, who has written extensively on Latin teaching trends.

Factors in the decline included the Catholic Church's de-emphasis on the language; colleges dropping foreign-language admission requirements; a feeling that French and Spanish and even Russian were more important than Latin; and student discontent with traditional ways of teaching that focused on grammar and memorization.

Enrollments began to pick up with back-to-basics education movements in the late 1970s and 1980s, he said, and steadily inched up over the last 25 years, although Latin enrollments are still nowhere near their glory days.

Teaching it "needed some updating," including a realization that Latin is an amalgam of fascinating topics -- and serves as a valuable basis of English and other Romance languages, LaFleur said.

"Everyone on the street is using Latin. They just don't know it yet," said Snohomish High School teacher Dan Dole.

Except, that is, at the Latin conference, an academic and social highlight for dedicated Latin students.

"The convention includes everything else you could possibly be interested in in Latin -- sports, history, art, entertainment, music," said Roosevelt junior Rachel Carlson.

"It's really fun," said a breathless Sorina Radu, a fifth-grader at the Eton School in Bellevue, which sent a contingent of 26 students. Sorina had just earned congratulations from the judges for her Latin oratory, in which she recited a dramatic speech on the myth of Demeter and Persephone, giving it enough inflections, hand movements and flair to show she knew the meaning of every word.

Mythology also figured large for Roosevelt student Nikki Rude, who created a Cupid and Psyche outfit with Wynkoop for the costume contest. Illuminated manuscripts, sculpted Coliseums, a penciled Hercules and a pastel Pandora helped fill the art exhibit tables.

And students from the Lakeside School said their competitive spirits were fired up by quiz shows. Eighth-grader Patrick Leahy helped the school win a round with rapid-fire answers to questions on grammar, translations and geography.

In other events, students signed up for written tests on topics ranging from vocabulary to Roman law, and participated in gladiatorial combat and Olympic-style races. Faculty members from the University of Washington classics department gave talks on Julius Caesar in film and on food and society in ancient Rome.

At Roosevelt, students and parents said MacDonald's passion for Latin is a big part of what keeps the program thriving and the enrollment up.

Graf hopes that hosting the conference primarily at UW this year -- a first -- will add to its prestige.

But it's still a battle for teachers like Snohomish High's Dole, whose school didn't offer beginning Latin last year because of a budget crisis and may not offer it next year either.

His contingent this year was from his remaining advanced classes.

"I'm just hoping this isn't my last convention," said Dole, who hosted one at Snohomish in 1992.

Several of the Roosevelt students say that it's been one of their most valuable classes, and that they'll take its lessons with them to college, whether in fields as direct as studying classics or as a base line for law, political science or other languages.

There will be life beyond the Junior Classical League.

"Well," said Roosevelt senior Jonathan Silliman, "there is the Senior Classical League."

P-I reporter Rebekah Denn can be reached at 206-448-8190 or rebekahdenn@seattle-pi.com