Dan O'Shea's Page

I just completed the AP Latin survey. While the obvious move to revision of the AP Vergil course to more of a "survey course" seems certain, I don't think what seems likely to emerge from AP's efforts will address some concerns that really should be adddressed. For what it's worth, I'd like to suggest a change in the structure of the AP Latin exam that, I think, will address these concerns.

There are a number of concerns with what AP has done and is doing. But they all come down to this: many, many schools have elaborated curricula, hired staff, acquired materials, and adopted standards to facilitate a program that has culminated in the two AP Latin courses. The decision to cancel the AP Latin Lit course has made the practical value of significant parts of this investment uncertain. The likely new course will not include all that has been in the two AP Latin courses. It cannot. There's simply too much content. But there may be a way to salvage more than we have thought we could.

The exam for the new capstone AP Latin course will likely be of the same two parts as the present exam: a Multiple Choice section and a Free Response section. The Multiple Choice section, a "Sight Reading" section, has used selections of authors of varied repute from a broad historical span, including authors that many of us have never seen or, in some cases, heard of. The object of this section has been to test the students "raw" Latin language comptence, without the limitation of that author's having been included in a canon of "must read" or most-important authors. The Free Response section has used a syllabus of specified text from specified authors, Its object has been to test the "developed" Latin languae competence of the student with respect to those authors and that text.

I would like to suggest that this change. Let AP, in concert with the college and elhi Latin community, produce a new author list, an "A" list. Let's say that list ends up as Vegil, Catullus, and Cicero, or Vergil, Catullus,Cicero and Ovd, or even Virgil, Catullus, Cicero, Ovid, and Horace. The Free Response section could test these authors and their shortened lists of specified texts much as they have done.

But how about doing the Multiple Choice section differently? Instead of using authors/selections that are on no list of readings and that if is highly likely the students have not seen, no matter how ambitious their program and course have been, why not work from a further fuller list of Latin authors and texts, a "B" list, that the Sight Readings can be drawn from. The list would be extenseive enough so that it is still likely that the student will not have seen all or most of the readings. But the list would include authors and tests from the Latin Literature sequences and so restore practical significance to much of what we have been doing in our courses leading up to the AP Latin courses. For those who want to revise and renew AP Latin even more aggressively, it would be very easy to add authors and texts to this list, including Livy and Caesar and perhaps others such as Martial or Petronius or Sallust or Lucretius.

I offer this because I do think we need to work to minimize any significant damage that the change in AP Latin may bring.

Dan O'Shea
Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Texas