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

[Claudia Hochstein]

As a student who is currently preparing for the AP Latin Literature exam, I am thoroughly outraged and disgusted by this abrupt decision. I have found Catullus far more challenging than Vergil, yet at the same time more intriguing and more clever. While reading Vergil was a good experience, I think it is a shame to rob students of the opportunity to test their knowledge and skill with the AP Latin Lit exam.

Further, since teachers hardly ever have a gauge of how they are doing compared to other schools, each AP exam is a valuable tool for them to judge their own performance. Taking this away makes it harder for teachers to modify their teaching style for the benefit of students, whether they are at AP level or not.
I hope that the College Board would reconsider this idea.

Claudia Hochstein
Barrington High School
Barrington, IL

[cmural]

I am thoroughly disappointed with the decision by the college board and the negative impact it will have on my students educational experience, their exposure to amazing works of literature, and to the wanton waste of time, money and work on all of our parts and our districts.

[Tom Yang]

I didn't take AP Latin Lit myself (because it wasn't offered at my high school), but I think that having only the AP Vergil test not only will discourage many Latin students who want to study more than one author, as well as aggravate the problem of high school Latin students not really knowing much about Latin literature beyond Vergil or Catullus.

[Mary Ellen Stebbins]

I think this is a dirty shame. Apparently the College Board is completely blind to the tremendous benefit that the Latin Literature course has been to countless numbers of students. Being able to enter college with a broad spectrum of literature under one's belt is an immeasurable boon to any college student's background and in my opinion is critical to preparing them to engage with the classics at a college level. We can only hope that the College Board will reconsider.

[Daniel Cruse]

I only had the opportunity to take two years of High School Latin, and yet it enriched my educational experience in myriad describable and indescribable ways. The loss of any language education in schools is a travesty, and the classics, for their scarcity (at least in public schools) deserve all the more of a fight. Good luck with your petition!

Daniel Cruse
Yale College
New Haven, CT

tool Latin at Grant High School
Portland, OR

[Kate]

I hope there is a way to petition against this decision--one in which that may yield positive results. My love of the Latin language, which stayed strong for four years of high school, played a tremendous role in the college I chose, and also the major I declared. Latin AP courses were incredibly crucial to my high school experience as a classicist, because they brought together the most passionate Latin students within the most academically-intense environment. Latin AP courses additionally prepared me for the college courses in Latin and Greek that I would be taking months later. I strongly support any decision made to keep the program alive.

[Marian Makins]

Another veteran of AP Latin Lit. (it was Catullus and Horace for me), pleased to join the ranks.

Marian Makins
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

[Donna BNrookman]

Sorry to see the Latin upper level curriculum being so significantly limited by the lack of literature choices on the AP exam. The Aeneid is certainly not the be all and end all of Latin lit.

[Anne Mahoney]

It is unfortunate that the College Board proposes to limit the AP exam to only the Virgil syllabus. I expect this will harm enrollments in high-school Latin and will therefore affect our enrollments in college as well as the backgrounds of students who do continue. I teach classics in a university with a selective undergraduate program; many of our best students have taken both AP Latin exams. If students can no longer do this, they will come to college Latin with considerably less knowledge -- they may never have read Catullus or Cicero.

--Anne Mahoney
lecturer, classics
Tufts University
Medford, MA

[Connie]

I took the AP course for Latin Literature in my sixth and final year of Latin in high school, and it was an invaluable part of my Latin experience. With the College Board dictating so much of what U.S. children learn in high school and pursue in college, I think it is unacceptable to have Latin thus marginalized. It is in many ways some of the best things that someone could learn, and gives insight to a variety of subjects, touching on philosophy, political science, history, linguistics, and even the natural sciences. In addition, the cancellation of an AP course in Latin will resound very loudly with a small but thriving amount of enthusiasts, as I am sure that if any other AP course has such energized support, it would be AP Vergil. The College Board will hopefully show more discretion and prudence in the way they conduct business with educators, parents and students, and take its responsibility of setting the bar for America's elite high school students more seriously and considerately. It is my strong hope that the AP Latin Literature course will be reinstated and continue to be taught in honor of one of the greatest and most valuable languages in the world.

Yucong Ma
Class of 2006
Boston Latin School, Boston, MA
Class of 2010
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

[Dunstan Lowe]

The Latin Literature AP program creates Classics majors. Such assets need to be improved, not removed.

Dr Dunstan Lowe, Classics Dept, University of Reading

[Yolande Steger]

I am a teacher at Palm Desert High, a public school in California, a state not famous for teaching Latin in public high schools. I built the program from nothing to 180 students and AP, and have tried the Vergil, but it is tough to do when you have III and IV in the same room. I have done Catullus more often, and he really appeals to High Schoolers. It is also easier in the sense that variety is important and less grueling.
In addition, the school has invested funds for certain books. Next year, for the first time, I will have a class of about 20 AP students, on their own, without the need for Latin III to be with them--yet it will be the last year I can offer them a course which I know will grip their interest.

If the AP exams in Latin must be reduced to just one, please let it be a Latin Lit exam that provides the best work of several writers. That would be far more interesting than just plodding through Vergil--who is brilliant, don't get me wrong; but not always of high interest at the high school level. A much broader exam would be better than Vergil alone. This will perhaps take some work over more than one year, so in the meantime, why not continue both exams while Latin teachers discuss what they would like to see put into a sole AP?

Yolande Steger
Palm Desert High School Latin teacher
Palm Desert, CA 92260
Desert Sands Unified H.S. Teacher of the Year 07-08