Traditional course?

[balindsey]

In Wheelock's preface, he says:

... with a knowledge of supplementary syntax given in the Appendix, a student can skip the traditional second-year course in Caesar and proceed directly to the third-year course in Cicero and other authors.

What is the traditional course? How many years? Which authors (other than Caesar and Cicero) and what readings?

I tried googling for this and haven't really come up with anything solid.

[adrianus]

Salve balindsey

1. Rudiments of the language. // Rectè loquendi ars. Rudimenta linguae.
2. Prose. // Orationem solutam seu prosam rectè scribendi ars.
3. Elucidating the poets. // Enarratio poetarum.

Throughout the nineteenth century, and until 1924, the grammar/translation method held sway. In this method the grammar was laid out in orderly charts for the student to memorize. Only after endings and forms were memorized and usage had been thoroughly explained was the new material to be applied to practice sentences and, finally, to translation from the Latin. This method traditionally exposed the student to all the basic grammar in Latin in one year. The second year was traditionally given over to reading Caesar, the third to Cicero, and the fourth to Virgil. In these courses the emphasis was on accurate translation and meticulous grammatical explication of the text. Under this methodology, it was found that in the mid-1920s only about 30 percent of students continued beyond the second year, and only 15 percent beyond the third. In 1924 the American Classical League commissioned a study of the teaching of Latin. The so-called Advisory Committee published its Classical Investigation, in which it recommended some forward-thinking reforms for Latin teaching, such as adding cultural materials to be read in English, a change from the traditional grammar/translation paradigm (and a move to have students read Latin more naturally as Latin), and the inclusion of other authors in the curriculum. The report was farsighted, but largely ignored. As Judith Sebesta has shown, textbooks remained essentially unchanged until well after the sharp decline in enrollments of the 1960s and 1970s. Several of these grammar/translation texts are still in use in the early twenty-first century (e.g., Wheelock, Jenney) and other, newer texts, still follow their essential format (e.g., Goldman and Nyenhuis, Johnson).