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But in the past half a dozen years, the old tongue has been given new life, in part because of a back-to-basics reform in school curriculums, and in part by the fresh teaching methods that have transformed Latin study from a lock-step marathon into a lively challenge that students enjoy. Today's approach, according to Joseph Desmond, head of the 19-member faculty of ancient languages at prestigious Boston Latin School, is to let the students absorb Latin "the way all language is naturally learned, by reading and speaking it first." Says Betsy Frank, a teacher in suburban Atlanta's Walton High: "Now we're putting in history, mythology and a host of other things to keep it interesting. The students are fascinated with the daily life of the gladiators." Susan Belmonte, 14, in her first year of Latin at Walton, confirms the enthusiasm: "The Romans were neat," she bubbles. "You get to learn about a whole different culture."
In response, high school enrollments in Latin are up by 20,000 nationwide, and climbing. Texas alone has shown a 42% increase, to 12,438 in the past two school years. Philadelphia's phalanx of elementary students has grown from an experimental group of 429. Virginia boasts 15,311 Latin students, including some of the most devoted in the U.S. Last month 2,000 of them traveled on their own time to Norfolk for a weekend convention of the Virginia Junior Classical League, featuring a Roman banquet, Latin recitations and competitions. "It's weird, isn't it," said Conventioneer Jim Willems, 17, "kids showing up on a Friday night to take tests."
Weird and, to Latin teachers, wonderfully satisfying. For along with such enthusiasms have come ancillary effects. Last year students taking the Latin Achievement Test outscored the national mean in the verbal SATs 591 to 425, and in math 591 to 468. Though some educators claim the reason may be that students pursuing the classics are bright to begin with, the teachers believe otherwise. "Latin helps students become more disciplined," says Rita Ryan of Omaha's Central High School. "It's a good means of training the memory."
More significantly, at the elementary school level the imaginative, fast-paced lessons provide a boost toward mastering basic English, particularly for disadvantaged youngsters with poor reading and writing skills. As they discover the Latin roots of such common English words as flame, and pick up an understanding of grammar and structure from the ordered shape of Latin words and sentences, they build everyday linguistic capabilities. In verbal tests, Philadelphia's fifth-grade Latin pupils perform up to a full year ahead of peers who have not taken the subject. So do youngsters in similar programs in Indianapolis and Brooklyn. The same is true for sixth-graders in Los Angeles, where Spanish-speaking students find Latin to be the most relevant part of their school lives—90% of the vocabulary of their native tongue comes directly from it. "Now something is happening in the classroom they can relate to," says one California scholar. "It sounds Like their own language."