Enrollments in secondary schools confirm a now structural trend: courses with Latin are decreasing, those without are growing. It is not just a question of numbers, but of cultural imagination and the idea of training
At the close of enrollment in higher education institutions, the numbers confirm a trend that can no longer be considered episodic. Classical high schools continue to lose ground and stand at around 5.3 percent of national enrollments, consolidating a decline that has become structural in recent years. Even the traditional scientific high school, the most chosen among the high schools, is approached by the applied sciences option, perceived as more oriented towards technical-scientific disciplines and lightened by the presence of Latin. Enrollments in the human sciences high school are increasing, with a special mention for the social economic high school (LES), a branch in which Latin is not expected. The data, read against the light, is evident: where Latin disappears, registrations grow, where it remains compulsory they decline or retreat. It is not just a question of percentages, but a cultural signal: for many families and for many students, Latin seems to represent a threshold, an element of fear, perhaps the symbol of a school perceived as distant from the urgencies of the present, in a time that favors immediately usable skills and paths considered more functional to the world of work. In this scenario, the Latin language appears increasingly marginal in the most popular high school courses. Is it really like that? And if so, why?
We talk about it with Roberto Mori, teacher of classical languages and Italian at the “E. Majorana” high school in Desio (MB), president of the cultural association Latin Europe and adjunct professor at the University of Milan.
Reading the registration data transparently, Latin seems to be an element of fear. Is it really like that? And, if it is, is it the fear of difficulty, the effort required by the study of grammar and translation, or a repulsion towards what appears far from the horizon of today’s boys and girls?
Latin does not require more effort than any other discipline that you want to tackle seriously: each subject has difficult topics and simpler ones, and in each there are parts where memorizing data is essential and others where it is sufficient to have understood the underlying reasoning. The fear is therefore unfounded. Proof of this is the fact that university students who take a Latin exam coming from schools where this subject is not present obtain more than decent results. The key to all learning is motivation: it is up to teachers and family to support it in moments when it may falter.
What is the value of Latin for a high school student in the third millennium? What does it offer today that cannot be found elsewhere in the educational panorama?
Latin cannot be used to explain Italian grammar nor be treated as a mathematical problem that stimulates logic, because any subject, if really studied, helps one learn to reason rigorously. Latin texts present situations and tell stories that, beyond the external circumstances, are often very current. The peculiarity of Latin, in my opinion, lies in its duality: on the one hand it is a language other than ours and, as such, the bearer of different cultural systems (Cicero’s Latin represents a world that is not that of Petrarch nor that of Galileo or Newton); on the other hand, the civilization that has expressed itself in Latin over the centuries constitutes part of the cultural identity of us Europeans. The challenge lies here: to make students and families understand that we grow as people only through comparison with others. So why not dedicate yourself to a modern language instead? Because for the lucky ones who study Latin language and culture, these othernesses – which can be criticized by students and subjected to the scrutiny of their lenses – are accompanied by affinities derived from the fact that we are also descendants (not only, but also) of that history: the study of Latin culture allows us to experience the understanding of what is different and at the same time to intimately understand part of what we are now. Two results with a single effort.
How do you see the future of classical high school? Is it destined to increasingly become a reserve for the motivated few or does it risk further erosion to the point of almost symbolic marginality?
I wouldn’t worry first of all about the drop in enrollments in classical high school (it’s the school where I teach and it’s obvious that I care about it!), but above all about the model of society that we imagine for our future. If we want our children to be good performers as adults, not to ask too many questions, to obey their manager in the workplace without batting an eye whatever the request, classical high school is not the choice for us. If, on the contrary, we want them to learn to question the great themes that make us men thanks to the encounter with Greek, Latin and Italian philosophy, art and literature; that they are able to support their opinion through a solid argument and convince others (even their boss!) of the goodness of their ideas; that they ultimately learn to live, classical high school is still an excellent choice.
Finally, is the issue Latin itself or the way we teach and describe it? Is it a question of method, of language, of educational alliance with families, of overall rethinking of the training offer?
I think part of the problem depends on the way Latin is told. Those who teach Latin in the 21st century do not do it in the way in which they were taught: there are many successful experiences that make the teaching of Latin much more dynamic than a certain popular belief would lead you to believe. In the hours of Latin language and civilization you don’t breathe stale air, but you learn by resorting to varied methodologies and working on texts and stories in which students may be interested: if anyone believes that Latin study is still equivalent to the mere translation of a decontextualized passage, they are wrong. To understand that you are off track, just take a look at the second tests of the Maturity exam, with questions that invite comment and even personal reflection; to the various Latin certifications proposed by the Regional School Offices, with exercises identical to those of the modern language certifications; to experiences that integrate artificial intelligence into daily teaching and much more.
Because perhaps the question does not just concern the fate of a discipline, but the very idea of education (humanistic, but not only) that we want to deliver to the future.
