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

[Martha Pavao]

The cancelling of the AP Latin Literature cancels half of my AP program. I have been rotating the two curricula for 14 years so that students can take four or five years of Latin at my school. With only the Vergil exam, I will only be able to offer a four year sequence. Each year I have several students who take AP Vergil their junior year and AP Catullus/Cicero their senior year. It is a great disappointment to me to lose this fifth year - and most especially a chance to read Cicero with them.

Martha Pavao
The Stony Brook School
Stony Brook, NY

[Thomas Miller]

Reading Catullus and Horace in high school radically changed my life - for better or for worse, I'm not yet sure - and it's incredibly tragic to me that students in the future might not have that same opportunity. I hope that this decision is reconsidered.

[Zee Ann Poerio]

I am disappointed that the College Board chose to cancel the AP Latin Literature exam. This decision affects Latin instruction at the college level, secondary level, and ELEMENTARY school level.

Zee Ann Poerio
Chair, Excellence Through Classics (ETC) for Elementary/Middle Levels
a standing committee of the American Classical League
Third Grade Teacher, St. Louise de Marillac School, Pittsburgh, PA

[shawn ryan scharlemann]

HIgh school students need challenging upper level Latin courses in order to maintain the continued growth and interest in Latin later in college and as a career. Taking away the selection of choices for advanced reading will only further impede the "come-back" Latin has made in the secondary school system in the past decades. Students don't want to just read Vergil--they need choices of authors (Latin Lit!!).
This change will hurt the smaller programs, such as the one where I was. I began the AP program my third year of teaching at my school to help enrollment numbers and discovered that many students were taking the class to be challenged and not just for getting the possible college credit. My enrollment was kept going based on the fact that we yearly alternated the AP curriculum in a combined 3-4 Latin class! It was difficult to have a combined class, but the students enjoyed the change in AP curriculum (many preferred Latin Lit). Two of my students from this time period are/have majored/minored in Classics and countless others took further Latin courses in university.
I believe this decision to cut Latin Lit will have far greater grave consequences for the future of Latin than the College Board cares to acknowledge or understand.

[Marny Menkes Lemmel]

There is little more to say other than that I want to be counted in.
Marny Menkes Lemmel
The Pontifical College Josephinum

[Matthew Paul-Frank Duran]

Matthew Duran

[Donna Essex]

When I took my current position there were 22 students taking Latin at my large suburban high school. This year I am teaching six classes in five levels. For the first time in my high school, 9 students will be taking the AP exam. They will be taking the literature exam. Next years plan was to offer AP Vergil, and then back to Literature the following year.
The cancellation of the AP Literature exam will have a serious impact on my numbers after next year if I have to offer Vergil every year. If CB cannot offer two exams each year, my program could be saved by having each exam offered in alternating years. Thank you.

[Marilyn]

Marilyn Evans
Graduate Student
UC Berkeley

[violetevelyn]

I agree!
Violet Slowey
Reicher Catholic High School
Waco, TX

[Linda Gillison]

Collegae cari,

Our lives have been filled with varied emotions and communications since we all received notification of the changes which the Board of Trustees of the College Board has in mind for AP Latin. We haven’t heard from anyone who is pleased about this—well, there is one colleague who found the silver lining by noting that he can now teach Horace without the satire!—and the disgruntlement has numerous foundations. People are concerned about the continuation of their programs, about the limited scope of the “new” course and exam, about the syllabus audit, about the investment of time and energy in preparation of syllabi for courses which will be taught possibly only one more time. Some of us are lamenting the loss of Cicero—the only prose author in the entire AP Latin program. It has been, in any case, very exciting to hear from so many members of the Latin community from all over the country!

Because we on the Development Committee work with AP teachers a lot (and some of us are AP teachers) and know of many of your concerns, this decision was particularly hard for us to hear. We have always tried to craft excellent exams with rich input from DC members who are high school teachers as well as many of you who have offered comments in one forum or another. We know that this decision feels like a kick in the stomach and not much thanks for all of your work and dedication to your students.

Nonetheless, the reality is that this decision has been made by a board which has the right to decide, and they have reported to us various concerns which they hope to address by making this change. Clearly, many of us do not agree with their approach, but, in the end, they are the decision-makers on this one.

The Board’s first concern is for teacher support. Probably many of you can remember how daunting was the challenge of preparing to teach an AP Latin course for the first time, particularly since it needed to fit into a very busy and hard-working schedule of other class preps. Certainly, some teachers decide against teaching AP Latin because they just feel it is too hard, and they don’t know where to start. We hear requests quite commonly for more support materials and professional development opportunities from those of you who currently teach AP Latin, and we certainly do not want to forget about teachers who are coming newly into the teaching ranks within the next few years and will need all of the help we can give them. According to reports to the Board, 39% of AP teachers will be retiring within the next five years. CB proposes to increase the AP Latin budget by 50% and to dedicate a considerable amount of the new funds to teacher support—on-line and otherwise. We think this will be a very good thing.

As we mentioned in our recent posting, the DC has not made any decisions about the “new” exam. You can be sure that we will be working on this and will be asking for your input. Meanwhile, we hope that we can start to move forward. Work with a large concern like College Board can be a challenge, as working with diverse interests often is. Can we try to consider the concerns of the CB and keep foremost in our minds the long-term welfare of the program and our students? This can be a chance for re-evaluation and improvement. When the decision has been made—as it has—our response to it and the way we present any decisions to our students can make a world of difference in the way they receive the news and in the benefits they continue to draw from AP Latin.

Again, there is no way that we can construe this as “good news.” To quote Pete Howard, who was quoting, well, whom?—forsan et haec. We look forward to further work with you in the challenging days ahead. Curate ut valeatis.

Linda W. Gillison
Chairperson, AP Latin Development Committee

Mary Pendergraft
Chief Reader, AP Latin

[Servius Valerius Corvinus]

Having posted once on this topic, I was not feeling the need to write again, but I have been moved to do so by Linda Gillison's very eloquent and thoughtful post. To begin with:

"there is one colleague who found the silver lining by noting that he can now teach Horace without the satire!"

As someone (one of the few, it seems) who preferred the old Pro Caelio readings in Cicero to the Pro Archia/De Amicitia syllabus, I can understand such a reaction, and I will admit to getting a chuckle at reading this part. On the other hand, I share the concern expressed by many in this thread that the lack of AP designation and the potential for college credit will reduce student interest in any type of (non-AP) "Latin Literature" course.

"Nonetheless, the reality is that this decision has been made by a board which has the right to decide.... Clearly, many of us do not agree with their approach, but, in the end, they are the decision-makers on this one."

Decisions have been made and changed before. I, for one, was glad that Prohibition is no longer in effect so that I could come home and have a glass of scotch after receiving the email from the College Board. And the decision might have been much better received had it at least come with more detailed explanation. Even more, I think that the reaction from teachers (and students) would have been a much more positive one if the change (or rather elimination) had been presented as a topic for discussion, or a proposal with the possibility for feedback, not as a done deal handed down from on high. At the very least, while the College Board may ultimately have the right to make such decisions, that does not change the fact that everyone who cares about Latin and its future in our educational system has the right to protest. As long and loud as we like.

"The Board’s first concern is for teacher support.... Certainly, some teachers decide against teaching AP Latin because they just feel it is too hard, and they don’t know where to start."

I commend the Board's concern with teacher support. I am glad to hear that they plan to invest additional money in supporting new (and continuing) AP teachers. The way that they presented the decision about AP Latin Literature, however, was anything but supportive - or so it certainly came across. And as to teachers who decide against teaching AP Latin (and I would be interested if there were any statistics available on the subject) - I can only speak from personal experience. The second Latin teacher at my school, just hired this year as our program expands, initially said that she would only be comfortable teaching the lower levels. She will, however, be teaching a section of Latin III next year, and attended an AP workshop over the summer that I think boosted her confidence considerably. Opportunities already exist to help teachers prepare themselves for the challenges of the AP syllabus. What has happened here is to reduce the syllabi they have the opportunity to teach. Other support networks also exist, such as the ACL and various state classical leagues. While a new teacher may not feel comfortable reaching out to them right away, I would hope that they could take it as an opportunity for growth, a challenge to be overcome, not one to shy away from.

"As we mentioned in our recent posting, the DC has not made any decisions about the “new” exam. You can be sure that we will be working on this and will be asking for your input."

Perhaps I missed a post in this thread (there have been so many, and I haven't read through all of them) - what will the "new" exam be? How can it be anything other than Vergil? And isn't asking for input on this a rather paltry gesture after the shock over AP Literature?

Apparently I am posting too long and it is being cut off... continued below....

[Servius Valerius Corvinus]

"Can we try to consider the concerns of the CB and keep foremost in our minds the long-term welfare of the program and our students? This can be a chance for re-evaluation and improvement. When the decision has been made—as it has—our response to it and the way we present any decisions to our students can make a world of difference in the way they receive the news and in the benefits they continue to draw from AP Latin."

This portion of the post, I will confess, was the most upsetting and disturbing to me. Are we to consider the concerns of the CB over those of the teachers who are out there "in the field," teaching their students day in and day out, working to enrich their lives and illuminate their minds? I don't think there is a single teacher here who does not have the welfare of our students first and foremost in our minds. This is certainly a time for re-evaluation - we all have to re-evaluate how to approach our syllabi so that we can keep enrollments up and give our students the best experience possible. As to improvement... again, I am glad to hear of additional support for teachers, but to borrow the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." AP Vergil was not broken. For that matter, AP Literature was not broken. How is eliminating one of the two syllabi going to fix anything?

As to the last sentence, it was perhaps the most upsetting to me of all. In short, I refuse to be a standard bearer for a decision from the CB with which I whole-heartedly disagree. My students will continue to enjoy and benefit from AP Vergil and... whatever course I devise to take the place of AP Literature (should they decide to take it without the hope of AP credit). But students in this day and age are coddled and protected enough, and I think it behooves us to teach them to recognize things for what they are and call a spade a spade. While I will make it clear to my students that their education and enrichment is a priority to everyone involved, I will not present this decision as anything other than what it is - a travesty.

I close by saying, first, that I apologize if this post grew wordy or unclear at any point; my web browser crashed as I was finishing a first draft, and I had to rewrite the entire thing from scratch. But more importantly, I in no way mean to attack Ms. Gillison. I recognize that she is in a most difficult position, and have nothing but respect for her. I merely write to address what I see as a most disturbing action and justification by the College Board.