di Rossano Salini
Se e quanto valga la pena still teaching the classical languages \u200b\u200bin our schools is a matter of which is being debated for decades. But that discussion rarely confronts the only thing that should be the basis for all: the kids who are really studying classical learning Latin and greek? Or not there is a way to teach classical languages \u200b\u200bso that students can have direct access to the original texts of Greek and Latin? Yes, the method is: is the "natural method", so the easiest, Latin and greek are taught a little 'how to teach English. That is, as a living language. Luigi Miraglia is the president of the Vivarium Novum, which deals with the diffusion in Italy and abroad, of this method of teaching. That is not only representative of an effective education and responsible, but it is also perhaps the way you are saving the classical languages \u200b\u200bon a continuous and inexorable decline.
Professor Miraglia, one gets the impression that today the teaching of classical languages \u200b\u200bin Italy to be dragged like a thing of the past. She considers how the whole teaching of Latin and greek in the country?
The question of classical languages \u200b\u200bin Italy, and to some extent in other European countries, has deep historical roots, dating back at least to the late eighteenth century. Were already people like Friedrich August Wolf and Wilhelm von Humboldt theorized that the study of Latin as the "best means to exercise certain powers of the soul." In Italy this approach, which begat the grammar-translation method for the study of classical languages, came later, and for some time resisted the humanistic educational system. But after 1860, even for ideological reasons, the "scientific method" was introduced by force, and the results were disastrous from the outset. As early as 1894, Minister of Marine was forced to convene a committee to verify the results of the new method: the chairman of that committee, Giovanni Pascoli, gave a very heavy trial, but nevertheless ideology prevailed and continued to teach that way. Throughout the last century the situation has continued to the point where it has come to talk about the new method as the "traditional method".
What are the negative effects of this method of teaching?
Children learn to hate an implacable hatred of the grammar, the versions laboriously deciphered, gl'incomprensibili classics they had no fruit to memorize a translation notes picked up in the sea of \u200b\u200bbloated and indigestible. The study of literature, in this situation, is often reduced to repetition of the views of others on style, use of language, rhetorical effects, because the poor student, that the text does not include anything, and often does not read (or rather, not "decode") a few lines, it has nothing to a thoughtful and, How long as possible, self-criticism. The serious risk is that you create a kind of selection in reverse: a deductive method is liable to give everything and put at the top that kind of student that is running passively orders, while the boy is penalized independent and free trial, lover reality of present and alive. Not that they are not to be praised of tremendous efforts, the ability to rule themselves, the exercise of rational faculties; but it seems paradoxical that, in the study of classical languages, to be almost to dishonor, as if they were at fault and not a virtue, intellectual brilliance and the desire to unite verba and res, concepts, ideas and action.
We come to the pars construens: Accademia Vivarium Novum, which she chaired, Italy spread the teaching of Latin and greek through the "natural method" of the Danish Hans Ørberg: what is summarized the basic principle of this method of teaching?
The "natural method" as applied to Latin dall'Ørberg and m'è as possible, myself to the greek, it is not a recent invention: it is actually the direct or inductive method that was very largely used in schools and postumanistiche humanities, at least until the late eighteenth century throughout Europe. It starts from meaningful contexts, beginning constructed ad hoc, after the original, showing neatly arranged lexicon, morphology and syntax to learn, with numerous examples of embedded in a continuous and compelling story, which functions as a mnemonic support and an element of motivation for learning: the first volume of Latin almost a "novel", with the vicissitudes of a Roman family of the second century of the Christian era. The texts are presented itself: not more then the 'conundrum of translation ", but pages from time to time appropriate to the level of skills that the student has acquired, so that he can understand it immediately, without necessarily bring in their own language. The student comes out as little as possible from the language studies, and brings to consciousness, with detailed explanations and order, as found in the texts, only after seeing the practical operation in a text or examples that are understandable. In this way in a very short time s'assimilano morphology, syntax and vocabulary, and recognize that we learn to master without hesitation in the works of the authors. The vox maiorum it comes to the ears of the boys of our age, which interact with Cicero, Seneca, Sallust and Virgil, not more indigestible unworthily reduced to exercises in logic or puzzle.
So we can not recommend what he mistakenly called the traditional method and would recommend this method of teaching?
Given that I believe strongly in freedom and autonomy of choice of teaching methods that can not be imposed on any teacher, I would, based on my own experience and that of many teachers of all Italy and other parts of the world, to recommend this educational system. If the other method has retained or not its promises of "training the mind" and "development logic" the other judge. Latin is the key to the whole European culture: literary, legal, philosophical, historical, theological, scientific, anthropological, knowledge of self and of other civilizations, but can open up all the treasures may it remain well kept in chests and safes; works handed them to us, if you do not have the language to the point that they can not read entire books, by authors such as Erasmus, Copernicus, Spinoza. The grammar-translation method, by its very setting, this will not allow it ever. The inductive method, however, not only has allowed generations of students for centuries, but wherever it is applied with rigor and professionalism, gives results very comforting today.
The shift from deductive to the inductive (not just for classical languages) may be a general response to the problem of the return of our boys?
The inductive method is certainly more engaging and can be a stimulus to overcome the greatest difficulties in young people and interest in science and mathematics. I would not, however, the confusion with a certain laziness and a pedagogical vacuum that is infecting the school for several years Italian, with the rhetoric of 'doing', the 'operation ", the" manual ". The real purpose that any trainer should ask themselves gradually lead students to develop their capacity for abstraction to enable him to free himself from the facts in order to obtain individual reasoning, concepts, arguments, even laws that apply more generally, and are not related the special case: this is the only way to avoid being subject to the unstoppable flow of fashion, the kaleidoscopic change of minds.
What do you think of the proposal, advanced by many, to make increasingly optional teaching of classical languages? It would be an incentive to study them better, or would be a step towards the total neglect of Latin and greek?
I believe that making optional Latin and greek would be a grave mistake, and this for several reasons, some of the theoretical, others practical aspect. Proponents of this road except of course the idea that the classical languages \u200b\u200bare part of a specialized knowledge, reserved for those who want to dedicate themselves to a reconstruction of laboratory and "scientific" world of greek and roman. The Latin instead allow access to our secular heritage, and allows us to not only read Cicero or Seneca, but Aelred and Abelard, Bartholomew de Las Casas Newton, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, and Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus and Galileo. I think there can be no historical awareness of the profession is exercised and that the matter that is studied only through access quell'integros fontes, who alone can make it there. For me the issue is only in the methods, because it is obvious that if a study five years for four or five hours a week, language, and even then can not read the Gospels, then there is no reason why this sperpetuo is dragged forward. But if it is proved that in just two years the boys may be allowed to read and enjoy most of the ancient Latin American production, I think we should agree that the acquisition of an instrument of such cultural significance worthwhile to employ a reasonable time in the school curriculum .
And what are the motives of a practical nature which did not recommend options to make only the classical languages?
From practical point of view, I think that option would make a disaster: I could well examine the situation of French schools and, in part, to the English ones, where, long ago, Latin is optional and the greek has almost disappeared. Now, aside from the disastrous effect on society (as we all stand in the suburbs is still full of cheap editions of the classics in Paris and even the Oxford editions of works in Latin and Greek have become the stuff of Carbonari), the fact is that in France, for example, the Latin teacher can not expect too much from his students, which, if it becomes more demanding, abandon its course and move away, leaving him without the "customers" and often without work. This kind of tyranny a very negative impact on the quality of teaching, which for this reason is very low. The option to make Latin, in short, would result in the effective and definitive disappearance from Italian schools.
(source: http://www.vatican.va/news_services/or/or_quo/interviste/2009/096q04b1.html) 
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