×

The Brain Is More Like a Muscle Than a Shoebox (Or, Why It’s Good for Kids to Learn Latin)

Doug Wilson:

If a football coach were making his player run wind sprints in a particularly hard practice, no one would upbraid him for making his players run from the thirty-yard line to the forty-yard line and then, mindlessly, pointlessly, back again. If he were confronted, he would point out that the issue was discipline and not the particular piece of ground the players were covering. In fact the ground covered in the subsequent game is not important in itself either but is related to a higher end.

We tend to think of our students’ minds as finite shoeboxes, and we then think we must take special care not to put anything in there if we do not want it to remain there for life. But the brain is more like a muscle. A student who learns one language, such as Latin, is not stuck with his shoebox three-quarters full, with no room for Spanish. Rather the student has a mind that has been stretched and exercised in such a way that subsequent learning is much easier, not much harder.

Now of course this kind of mental discipline could be acquired by requiring of the students the intellectual equivalent of running back and forth. While a football coach might be able to get away with this, because everyone understands the point, we should not attempt it in the classroom—although mental wind sprints that had no point in themselves would still be better than simple laziness. The reason this approach would not work in the classroom is that the human mind is inescapably teleological; it wants to know why it is learning something. Latin has the advantage of providing the grist for the mill of the mind, while also providing great practical advantages. To return to our metaphor of football, the study of Latin is therefore simultaneously an exercise to prepare for the game and part of the game.”

—Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 140-141.

Update: A comment from reader Ben Wheaton:

I disagree. Any language will have the same mental benefits as Latin.  So why learn, as a primary part of the curriculum, a dead language, when living languages like Spanish and French not only have the same effects, but also are useful in the modern world to communicate with others?

By all means, learn more than one language; by all means, even, learn Latin–but don’t start with it. And don’t elevate it above modern languages as somehow superior.  It isn’t.

I am currently engaged in completing a graduate degree in Medieval History.  During the course of my research, I had to read a number of articles in Italian.  I never learned Italian formally, but I can manage pretty well because I know French and Latin.  But you know what?  French was immeasurably more useful than Latin in understanding Italian, because French and Italian are much more similar to each other than Latin is to either of them.  Neither are inflected; Latin is.  Both depend on word order for meaning; Latin generally doesn’t. Do you want to learn Spanish? Learn Spanish. Then, if you’re up for it, learn French (Spanish is a wonderful base for learning French). Then, if you’re up for an ancient language, why not Greek? Or Hebrew? Or, for something exotic, Malay?

Of course, for most people, learning just one other language is plenty; even then, most English-speakers forget their foreign language training. Why? Because English is the international language.

I’ll close this little rant with a wonderful quote from (who else?) Winston Churchill:

[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell—a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great—was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing—namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.

LOAD MORE
Loading