AP Latin Literature Cancelled -- Please Add Your Name

[Andrew Reinhard]

Salve,

As many of you know, AP Latin Literature is being cancelled, although AP Vergil will remain in place for the immediate future. Please read the letter from the AP in the news section on the right and the letter from Ronnie Ancona in the Blog, and if you feel strongly about keeping the AP Latin Literature program alive and active in the United States, please add a comment to this post with your name and school affiliation attached. I will collect these in preparation for what is sure to be a counter-offensive by some of the leading lights in US Classics education. Thanks for adding your names to the list.

Andrew Reinhard
Director of eLearning
Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers

[david meadows]

Here's a thought ... given that the APA (and CAC) are associations of Classics professors who are perpetually creating committees for purposes of questionable import to the wider survival of Classics in general, why can't such organizations actually take over the exam itself? Is there really a need for the College Board to do this?

[Jameela Lares]

I am among those I hope reply from the Milton-L listserv, where Prof. Sara van den Berg has posted the news about the AP cancellation. I join my dismayed protest to the ill-considered wiping out of one more path to Latinity in this country. Me hercule, what next? The barbarians are truly at the gates.

Jameela Lares
Associate Professor of English
The University of Southern Mississippi

[Christy Tucker]

My colleagues have already more than adequately expressed my disappointment and concerns about this move by the College Board, and I agree whole-heartedly with their assertions.

Christy Tucker
Butler High School
Matthews, NC

[Alexander Ralston]

I don't know how I would have gotten through Highschool if it weren't for Mr. Higgens and his Latin class...

-Alexander Ralston
University of Toronto
Previously of Los Altos High School, Los Altos, CA

[Angie]

I am very troubled by the decision to discontinue the AP Latin Literature exam, especially on such short notice. Many schools alternate between the APs offered from year to year, and this affects students who have already made their academic plans for the next several years. Many Latin programs thrive because of this duality and will suffer when one, especially the favorite of many of the students, is cancelled.
Granted, we language teachers do not produce the numbers that other subjects do. However, our students must usually take 3 or more years of our subject in order to enroll in an AP course and the ability to produce the same numbers is impossible.
If the CollegeBoard really stands behind their commitment "to the principles of excellence and equity, and that commitment is embodied in all of its programs, services, activities, and concerns" (www.collegeboard.com), I hope that they will reconsider this action and give us some viable alternatives.

Angela Bohon
Latin teacher
Fredericksburg, VA

[Virginia Kehoe]

Having two AP courses has enabled my program to grow and has introduced my students to the wonderful world of Latin Literature. Several of my students have continued Latin in college. I can think of 12 different colleges and universities at which 16 of my students have continued their studies, all within the last 10 years. Several have minored and a few have majored in Latin. I have 14 signed up for next year's Catullus/Ovid course. All of this will change if one of the AP exams is dropped. Currently my juniors and seniors enroll in the same AP course, alternating between Vergil and Catullus. With only one AP course I will not have a course to offer my seniors. (There are not enough class periods in the school day for me to teach seven classes!) This saddens me, as I have some excellent students who are developing a passion for Latin and for the Classics. I hope the College Board will reconsider.

Virginia Kehoe
Wichita Collegiate School
Wichita, Kansas

[Rachael Clark]

I too, am very sorry that the College Board has decided to be so selfish, and has decided that their own needs outweigh the needs of many students across the nation. I certainly agree with all the various adjectives everyone else has posted and I doubt there are any new ones for me to come up with.

My program now has a different problem than most of you who alternate Vergil with Latin Lit. Not only did we go through the audit process and buy (literally) thousands of dollars worth of texts to make sure we had everything we needed to properly teach the Latin LIt. test, but we are also an IB school and HAD to offer the Latin Lit. because IB does not have enough Vergil in its selections for it to work well with AP Vergil. Many of the textbooks I asked my school to buy last year will be obsolete after next year, and I have no idea how I could possibly offer AP Latin at all if it can't be paired with the IB selections to some extent. My program is also growing--quickly. Latin was just added at Garland High School in 2004, so this is our first year to take either AP or IB exams. Our numbers at the lower levels are huge (we may even justify a second teacher next year!), and in the coming years we had the potential to have many students taking the Latin Lit. exam. I have no idea at this point what to do or if AP Latin in any form will be able to continue at my school. I continue to toss different ideas around in my own head all day. Not only that, but now I have to go back and tell my school that I may have to buy more textbooks if we want to keep AP? That certainly won't sit well. If anyone has any suggestions on how I might fit an extra 1800 lines or so of text into my year--I'm listening.

Sincerely,

Rachael Clark
Garland High School
Latin I-IV (AP/IB)/Greek I

[Frederick Bee]

My situation is identical. I teach in a school which, just three years ago, became an IB school. Yet my very best Latin students don't want to do IB. They want AP. Only the second rank Latin students want to take IB. My department head, however, had encouraged me to teach AP to the cream of my students; and I had persuaded a few of my current sophomores to take AP Latin Literature.

It would have worked with AP Latin Lit: I could have worked with any IB combination of Catullus/Horace/Cicero alongside an equivalent AP program. Now it is much more difficult, since Vergil is only one option in IB -- and actually not the one my present students chose, as my current year selected Catullus/Horace and Cicero.

I suppose I have to stick to IB and give up on my best students.

[Carmela McIntire]

I am indeed sorry to see AP Latin (and the other language exams) removed by the College Board. I hope that a strong protest will be enough to make the College Board reconsider. Please add my name to the list of those who want to keep AP Latin Literature alive.

Carmela McIntire
Associate Professor, English
Florida International University
Miami, FL

[Ruth Sameth]

Ruth Sameth
Latin teacher
Monacan HS
Richmond, VA

[Andy Montgomery]

The College Board's announcement asserts its support of World Languages as among its "highest priorities" even to the extent bearing "considerable financial loss." To demonstrate this commitment it unveils enhancements to the program (termed "investment"). While the enhancements themselves seem worthwhile, they are certainly not worth the cost of the loss of the Latin Literature curriculum. Doubtless it is the cost of developing and implementing these "investments" that has led to the decision to cut the Latin Lit curriculum. The "support" it hopes to provide is actually a significant lessening of value, not an enhancement. The Latin community itself has in recent years expended much thought, effort and expense to implement the real types of enhancements we need to the AP program. Witness the many publications in support of the program.

We are unwilling to lose these. If we must choose between the downloadable curriculum modules and online score reports they propose and the loss of Latin Literature as a curriculum option, we've made our choice: keep AP Latin Literature!

And, by the way, the CB need not convene college professors in an effort to raise our awareness of the value of your product. Latin teachers and professors have been instrumental in the design of these programs and are well aware of their benefits. So much so that we are in an uproar over these plans to lessen the quality available to students and teachers.

Andy Montgomery
Assistant Professor, Classics
Samford University
Birmingham, Alabama

[EJ]

The AP Latin Literature course was my first taste of real Latin after learning it through textbooks. I took both years of AP Latin and was able to go directly into advanced Latin in college. Without both years, I would not have had the necessary experience to make such a jump possible. Not a day passes when I do not recall things from my Catullus or Ovid when studying other authors. Now, with four years of college level Latin and two years of AP, I am in a better position to pursue a professional career in classics.

The Literature course is an important part of any Latin student's education, even if he or she does not continue in college. Exposure to the works of Catullus, Ovid and Horace familiarizes students with mythology, different meters of poetry, and political history. A student who has read these works is better able to understand later works that derive from them-- Ovid's Metamorphoses have been a constant source of inspiration and emulation throughout the middle ages even to the present day.

I agree with other posters that frankly what the US curriculum needs is not less Latin, but more. Students who begin Latin in middle school now find themselves running out of Latin after taking both AP courses by their junior year. With Latin on the rise in secondary schools as an important part of preparation for other languages, general English grammar and writing, and standardized test preparation, now is not at all the time to be cutting Latin opportunities.

Eleanor Jefferson
soon-to-be graduate student in Classics
currently Smith College, class of 2008