2008 Woodie Awards
Point-Counterpoint: Language Requirement
Dulce et decorum est
Nicholas Wheeler
Issue date: 4/16/03 Section: Commentary
“Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English; and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat.”
— Winston Churchill
When still a young lad studying at Harrow, the future Prime Minister was most ignobly relegated to the ranks of the English Only class: he was considered too poor a student for a successful study of the Classics. For the treasures of Latin and Greek were reserved for the “clever ones” as an “honor” and “treat,” thus inspiring Churchill later on in life to praise such honors and treats as honors and treats.
Admission to Georgetown (I think we can all agree) requires a certain level of cleverness, a certain level of intellectual alertness and achievement. It is certainly an honor, perhaps an even greater one to teach here. And many find their years on the Hilltop to be a treat; just the other day, I heard one professor, a former student himself, characterize Georgetown as “empirically, qualitatively, objectively, the best place in the country to spend one’s undergraduate years.”
Why is this so?
A part of the answer (and it is only a part, admittedly) may be the unique, traditional place occupied here by the study of language. There was a time when no one could graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree without first having attained proficiency in either Latin or Greek. The B.A. was an honor, most assuredly, and the rigorous and moral character to an education in the Classics was considered an essential component of that honor.
This world in which all liberal arts students bustled about with well-thumbed Greek grammars and translations of Ovid (filled with copious scribbling) tucked under their arms, may have been a conservative academic’s paradise, the translation of which into a modern context is the careful study of foreign languages and literatures which takes place in the FLL and SFS. We are a Jesuit institution, conceived of as a bastion of Classical scholarship; still a Jesuit institution, we have dedicated ourselves in large degree to foreign service, to the linguistic and cultural training associated with it, and even to volunteering to help immigrant children in the District learn to speak, write, and read better English.
— Winston Churchill
When still a young lad studying at Harrow, the future Prime Minister was most ignobly relegated to the ranks of the English Only class: he was considered too poor a student for a successful study of the Classics. For the treasures of Latin and Greek were reserved for the “clever ones” as an “honor” and “treat,” thus inspiring Churchill later on in life to praise such honors and treats as honors and treats.
Admission to Georgetown (I think we can all agree) requires a certain level of cleverness, a certain level of intellectual alertness and achievement. It is certainly an honor, perhaps an even greater one to teach here. And many find their years on the Hilltop to be a treat; just the other day, I heard one professor, a former student himself, characterize Georgetown as “empirically, qualitatively, objectively, the best place in the country to spend one’s undergraduate years.”
Why is this so?
A part of the answer (and it is only a part, admittedly) may be the unique, traditional place occupied here by the study of language. There was a time when no one could graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree without first having attained proficiency in either Latin or Greek. The B.A. was an honor, most assuredly, and the rigorous and moral character to an education in the Classics was considered an essential component of that honor.
This world in which all liberal arts students bustled about with well-thumbed Greek grammars and translations of Ovid (filled with copious scribbling) tucked under their arms, may have been a conservative academic’s paradise, the translation of which into a modern context is the careful study of foreign languages and literatures which takes place in the FLL and SFS. We are a Jesuit institution, conceived of as a bastion of Classical scholarship; still a Jesuit institution, we have dedicated ourselves in large degree to foreign service, to the linguistic and cultural training associated with it, and even to volunteering to help immigrant children in the District learn to speak, write, and read better English.