Written by Laura Berquist, Founder of MODG

All of our students should be learning Latin. Most importantly, Latin improves one's ability to think. It significantly strengthens higher order thinking skills. As a practical result, students who learn Latin do significantly better on high stakes tests like the SAT and the ACT. This is important for college acceptance and academic scholarships. Additionally, Latin improves all one's English language skills, and this is true not only for gifted children, but for all children, even those who struggle academically. Honestly, for those of us who are interested in excellent academic performance for our children, it appears that the easiest road to achieving that goal is to make sure our children learn Latin.

Further, one of the primary advantages, and primary marks, of a classical program is the opportunity to do Latin. As all of our children are in a classical program, all of our children should be learning Latin. Let me explain in more detail why this is true.

First of all, for more than a hundred years studies have consistently shown that Latin students have more mastery of English than non-Latin students. Studies from the early 1900's show this fact. In 1914, researchers evaluating the study of Latin showed that in spelling, use of words in sentences, definitions and parts of speech, meaning of words, excellence in vocabulary, and, in fact, in all their studies, the Latin students scored higher on tests by 29% than did the non-Latin students.

Evaluators in another early study found that high school students studying Latin for two years generally achieved higher scores on tests of native language skill than students taking a modern language. Further study in 1915 found that this advantage continued in college, as college freshmen who had four years of Latin in high school consistently scored higher on spelling and vocabulary tests with words of Latin roots and origin than students who had not studied Latin. In addition, in 1917, more research revealed that students who had taken Latin scored higher than modern language students on most measures, particularly in the area of grammar.

Thus, one can see that in the early part of the last century Latin was generally recognized as essential to an excellent education, certainly in terms of mastery of English language arts, though the first and last studies cited above both indicated that all areas of the curriculum profited by the study of Latin. We will come back to that later.

The excellence of Latin study was so generally recognized in our country that in 1962 Latin enrollment in the United States had reached a peak of 702,000 in the public high schools.

Around this time, however, the emphasis in schools turned to science and math. Latin courses stopped being offered in many US schools. In fact, public school Latin enrollments fell 79% between 1962 and 1976, going from 702,000 in 1962 to 150,000 in 1976.

Interestingly, in roughly the same time period, from about 1957 to 1973, there was a gradual drop of thirty-three points in the average verbal score on the national Scholastic Aptitude Test and, at the same time, a sharp increase in college remedial English courses.

After these results were made public and it was, additionally, pointed out that students who studied Latin had better communication skills, which resulted in better social and economic opportunities and, correspondingly improved self esteem because of the success students experienced in these various areas, Latin was once again, though gradually, embraced.

The results were pretty remarkable. In the late 1970s, some Washington DC area schools introduced Latin again. A study of the students who took Latin in the initial eight month program showed they had significantly higher reading and reading comprehension skills than those who took no foreign language or another foreign language.

In 1987, Los Angeles fifth grade students taking the California Test of Basic Skills after only three months of Latin improved three months in reading skills, which is a significant increase for a large group, while sixth graders improved twice normal expectations. In another implementation study at the same time, New York students studying Latin in fifth and sixth grades showed reading improvement of 3.6 months over those without Latin.

Not surprisingly, students who take Latin improve in vocabulary as well as reading comprehension. Many studies in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Indiana during the 1970s showed significant test improvement in vocabulary for elementary students who studied Latin. Some of these students studied for only 20 minutes a day, yet, in one of these studies, 70 percent of the experimental group studying Latin advanced to a mastery level in vocabulary of more than 80 percent, while only 2 percent of the control group who did not study Latin advanced to that level.

Note that the area of the country doesn't affect the results. It's clearly not 'a' program or a teacher that makes this kind of difference.

It is also well documented that students who studied Latin do better than those who do not on SAT/ACT tests.

In 1980 the SAT Verbal average for those taking the Latin Achievement Test in addition to the SAT I was 144 points higher than the national average for all students. Very significantly, while national SAT Math averages dropped slightly in 1980, students who took the Latin Achievement Test as well as the SAT I scored 122 points higher on the Math portion of the SAT I than the national average. Note that this study confirmed what the very first studies I mentioned suggested: Latin helps students in all areas of study.

I recently googled "correlation of Latin study to SAT results", and pulled up a document showing that from 2000 to 2007, every single year, students who self reported taking 2 or more years of Latin scored higher on the SAT Verbal Test than students taking French, German, Spanish, and even Hebrew.

Latin Improves Verbal SAT Scores

If for no other reason, our students should take and persist in taking Latin because it will improve their college entrance test scores, which will help them get into the colleges of their choice, and help them with getting scholarships in those colleges.

Now, I was telling one of my friends about all of this information, which I think makes a strong case that learning Latin is important for academic success. She said, "Well, Laura, that is all well and good, but you know that the students in these studies are probably the really bright students who would have done well anyway, Latin or no Latin."

But that is not the case!

Remember those students I mentioned in the Washington DC Area? The study from 1970s? The students taking Latin during that eight month implementation program were low-level reading students. They climbed from the lowest level of reading ability to the highest level for their grade, equaling the achievements of pupils who had studied French or Spanish for thirty-eight months! I think that is amazing.

Similarly, in 1987 in Worcester, MA, another group of low-level reading students participated in a Latin school program at seventh-grade level. They showed an increase in reading comprehension of nineteen month in a nine month school year.

In some ways most surprisingly, a study at Gallaudet College in 1985 demonstrated that non-native English speaking students taking Latin could make sudden and extraordinary jumps in vocabulary and verbal skills. These students advanced, on average, a full year above those not taking Latin. The students who participated in the study were hearing impaired and had as their native language American Sign Language, not English. So, in effect, the students were learning Latin as a first foreign language and English as a second foreign language.

Clearly our 'struggling students' should be taking Latin in some form, and students who are learning English as a second language should also be taking Latin.

Further, as has already been suggested, Latin not only effects language improvement; as indicated in the 1980 SAT results, and those early 1900 studies, other studies confirm that students who take Latin do better in most areas of their standardized tests, including the mathematics portions of the tests, both those that deal with concepts and those that deal with computation. This is not really surprising because learning a language like Latin requires students to learn and implement a system, much as algebra does.

For example, in 1978 students in Indianapolis increased scores in all areas, including math computation, concepts, and problem solving. In 1982 another study in Erie, Pennsylvania, confirmed that conclusion. This is because higher order thinking skills are improved through Latin study. There has been more research into why that is. In 1991 two researchers, Carroll and Pimsleur, listed four important language variables that are needed in order to learn any foreign language: phonetic coding, grammatical sensitivity, inductive language learning ability, and rote learning ability. Those are all good things, right? One might think, then, that any foreign language should have the same effect on academic success. Modern languages, however, focus on the four proficiencies of reading, writing, speaking and understanding the language. On the other hand, the study of Latin requires that students use the higher order thinking skills, like analysis, synthesis and evaluation while translating at greater levels of difficulty. In this way it is, like mathematics; a cumulatively organized subject area.

This is why Latin doesn't just help with Language Arts, but in other areas as well, such as mathematics. Latin requires memorization, and decoding, but it also requires discrimination, analysis, synthesis, and inference, all of which are higher order thinking skills.

This might be put another way: learning Latin actually helps one learn how to think. That is why it belongs in a classical program. The skills of phonetic coding and decoding, grammatical sensitivity, inductive language learning ability, (which relies on inference) and rote learning ability (or memorization), are all good, and are used in every language study. But Latin, because of the way it is organized, requires more and more consistent use of higher order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, as well as discrimination. These are the operations you use when you think critically.

What all of this makes me think is that Latin is truly central to what we are trying to accomplish. It is a foundation upon which our students should build. It has qualities that fit with each stage of formation. The memorization, sequencing, and observation of the early years is necessary for Latin, and in our Beginning Latin program is employed consistently. In the analytic stage, inference, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, as well as discrimination, are all appropriate methodologically, and they are very much present in our Fundamentals program, and in Fr. Henle's texts. Then in the rhetorical stage the advanced student is able to read true rhetorical masters in the language in which they wrote, namely Latin.

We should have our children take, and persist in taking, Latin. Like homeschooling itself, this seems harder initially, but is actually an easier way to achieve the academic excellence we want for our children.