The Academic Case Against Latinhttps://www.garynorth.com/public/14405.cfmUp until the early 20th century, entrance into higher education in the Ivy League was Latin-based. By requiring Latin to get into these colleges, the elite screened out common people from access into the elite. This had been going on ever since Harvard was founded in 1636.Most college-educated men could not speak Latin in 1900 -- or 1800 -- nor were they expected to. But they were forced to have a reading knowledge it at age 18 if they wanted to enter into the elite. This had been true ever since the late Middle Ages.It was snobbery. It was also a form of occupational licensure.The charade ended before World War I. Other entrance requirements were substituted for Latin.Yet today, Christian homeschool mothers have sided with the long-abandoned charade. They are trying to keep the old flame alive: a dictionary-based, slow reading knowledge of Latin at age 18, never to be used again. They have adopted a hybrid called the classical Christian curriculum.What is the obvious sign of this surrender today? The futile attempt to revive Latin. Why force a child to master Latin rather than New Testament Greek? Greek will enable him to read the New Testament in the original -- an obvious benefit. But what is the benefit of Latin? Except for an historian of the ancient or medieval eras -- for whom there will be no paying employment -- Latin is peripheral. Yet it is seen as the mark of true learning.
>>23626756Latin was the universal language of the Western Church, i.e., Roman Catholicism and early Protestantism. But that learning was deeply compromised with Renaissance humanism. At best, Latin will enable a tiny handful of highly skilled, highly motivated, and poorly paid Christian scholars to read fragments of the Latin Church fathers.Parents should abandon the futile boast: "My child is receiving a classical education, just like the good old days." The good old days produced the bad new days, step by step. The assumption of intellectual neutrality is the Church's great enemy. Latin education was the primary agency used to spread this lie.I see home school mothers who cannot read Latin, who have no intention of reading Latin, who are utterly uninterested in anything written only in Latin, buying Latin grammars to inflict on their hapless children. Why? Because somebody they trusted told them that "Latin is basic to a well-rounded education." To which I reply: "Latin was basic to the initiation process of pagan and/or deeply compromised academics to gain control over the training of each generation of Christian leaders in England and America."Latin was a wedge used to separate Christian children from their parents. In the same way that the sex education fanatics today devise ways to keep parents from finding out what teachers are really teaching the children, so was Latin for six or seven centuries. To open the doors of ecclesiastical office and government patronage to their children, Christian parents had to surrender him to the Latin-based curriculum, a curriculum that rested squarely on the autonomy of man. The child was initiated into classical humanism by way of Latin.What is nothing short of astounding is that there are dedicated Christians today who insist on doing this to their children. They insist on reviving the tool of their ancient enemies in the name of traditional education. But traditional education was Satan's own tool for capturing the souls of Christians as well as their inheritance. Satan's agents abandoned that tool only late in the nineteenth century, when it became clear that mass education was going to make the traditional Latin school obsolete as an initiation process for the elite. At that point, the humanists substituted the modern curriculum, based on Darwin, in which Latin plays no role. Latin has become a lost tool of learning. Let's keep it that way!Is there a role for Latin? Only historical. If there were a self-conscious effort on the part of dozens of Christian schools to create a cooperative program for translating the 217 volumes of J. P. Migne's collection of the Latin Church Fathers, I would approve. Until schools adopt this project, it is foolish to indulge in the waste of time that a Latin curriculum involves.
The vast majority of children so initiated will learn only the equivalent of pigeon Latin. If a child cannot sight read a foreign language without a dictionary by age 14, then whatever benefits he has received from the exercise of learning that language are indirect, e.g., learning the rules of grammar. If someone is going to be forced to do this, then he should learn a language useful to Christians: Greek, first; Hebrew, second, and Latin only a distant third. But what do we see? Mostly Latin, with no Greek and no Hebrew. This is Renaissance pride in action.Classical education begins with a premise: the student must learn the classics. The classics are pagan: Greek and Roman literature and philosophy. They were based on the premise that man is the measure of all things, that man's reason is ultimate. The rational side of the Renaissance was based on the same premise. (Its irrational side was also a revival of Greek and Roman religion: occult, magical, and either chance-based or fatalistic.)Medieval Scholasticism was as committed to the classics as the Renaissance was, though without classical occultism and pornography. The Scholastics were committed academically far more to Aristotle than to the Bible, especially in their political philosophy. They worshiped at Aristotle's shrine. Prior to the eleventh century, medieval theologians had worshiped at Plato's shrine: neo-platonic mysticism. The Scholastics substituted Aristotle for Plato. There was some gain -- Aristotle at least was not a communist, as Plato was -- but not in the realm of men's presuppositions. For humanism, man is the measure, and man's mind is the sole valid instrument of measurement. The Bible denies this view.
Another retarded mutt Christcuck
ok, so?
>>23627000holy trips of truth, OP BTFO
>>23627016Btfos many of the so-called Christians here who worship Aristotle more than Jesus
>>23627000I think this thread is more anti-Catholic than anything.>You can't acknowledge Latin is a form of gatekeeping because..... YOU CAN'T, OKAY?!
>>23627026gatekeeping is good, but Catholicism is cringe, so I'm conflictedcan we meet at Church Slavonic?
>>23627028>gatekeeping is goodOnly for noble purposes.
Latin is cringe, scholasticism is cringe. Just teach kids math.
>>23626756Hylic Protestant dog can't understand the obvious benefit of having direct access to 90% of European scholarship, secular and religious, which was written from ~300 AD - ~1800 AD because it doesn't make you rich. I HATE AMERICANS
> It was snobbery. No, it was actually just having a standard, which we don’t have anymore. It’s hard for me to see all of the sentiments like this out there these days and not conclude that this whole Western civ project is just over. We’re basically a dumbed down idiocracy run by corporations and celebrities. If the Spenglerian imperium is ever going to come it’s going to be an imperium of charismatic retards and corporate overlords. Beyond black pilling.
>>23627038You can teach kids both Latin and math retard STEMdog
>>23627048He's a spiritual nigger Ameridog who probably thinks Shakespeare should be read in modern English translations too. TAD asap.
>>23627024Rabbi so weak even his nominally inherited followers don‘t care about his actual message
>>23626756>By requiring Latin to get into these colleges, the elite screened out common people from access into the elite.The requirements for Greek and Latin were not that crazy. I've seen past papers posted here before. I went to public school in Greece and knew most of the answers except those on Greek dual forms.Marxists usually claim that idealism is a cover for class war, but here class analysis is a just cover for Protestant kvetching.
>>23626756Protestant seething that not everything is in ameritard english
Seething about how complete strangers choose to educate their children isn't really /lit/ related.
>>23627064Seriously it was like "translate this paragraph of Xenophon where we gloss half of the vocabulary". It only kept out sub 90 IQ retards.
>>23627043>>23627048>>23627052Not. An. Argument.
Latin trannies mad. Good thread OP.
>>23626756>Left: Protestants learning Greek because of Sola Scriptura>Middle: Catholics learning Latin >Right: Orthodox learning Greek for scripture and Church Fathers
>>23627097>>23627086Based. Latintrannies go back to consooming Luke Ranieri and Minecraft comprehensible input and leave the adults in the room alone.
>>23626756>Greek will enable him to read the New Testament in the originalNot so fast
>>23627361R...ratinchads...I kneeru...
>>23626756>Up until the early 20th century, entrance into higher education in the Ivy League was Latin-based. By requiring Latin to get into these colleges, the elite screened out common people from access into the elite. This had been going on ever since Harvard was founded in 1636.Based?!
babble only relevant to christbugs, almost half surprised he didn't argue for hebrew first, then greekteach your kids Homeric Greek btw
>>23626762The scholastics had virtually no access to Aristotle for the first half of the scholastic period bud.Lots of worthwhile stuff is written in Latin.
