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

[rachel_loer]

I am in complete support of this petition, both as a Latin teacher and a student. Vergil is a special interest of mine, but diversity is key to keeping up student interest and to developing a well-rounded education.

Rachel Loer
Graduate Student, Rutgers University
3rd-5th Latin teacher, Wilberforce Classical School

[Bill Herbst]

Several years ago, I began an AP program at the public high school where I teach. I had taught the AP Vergil syllabus and excerpts from all of the AP Latin Literature authors in advanced Latin courses with my students before I petitioned the administration to support an AP course. I made a decision at that point to choose the Latin Literature (Catullus and Ovid) option as I felt that the students responded best to those two authors. For the past five years my students and I have enjoyed working through the curriculum of this course and many students have experienced great success both on the exam and in subsequent Latin courses in college. I would love to see the College Board reconsider their decision to discontinue this exam and work with Latin instructors at both the University and secondary level to find an alternative solution.

William Herbst
Bay Shore High School
Bay Shore, NY

[Trudy Stevenson]

The cancellation of the Latin Literature AP exam will leave students of Latin in high schools with limited options to explore Latin authors in depth. I therefore hope the College Board will rescind its decision to cancel this exam.

Trudy Stevenson
The Harker School
San Jose, CA

[Kira Jones]

This is ridiculous. It is sad when people in such a position of power do not recognize the importance of Latin in education.

Kira Jones
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia

[Joshua Hanson]

How can we look forwards if we can never look back? Without the knowledge of those whom our today is built on we can never advance.

Joshua Hanson
Hayfield Secondary School
Alexandria, Virginia

[Catullusisfunnierthanyou]

This is ridiculous. AP Latin was a very crucial class for me in terms of intellectual identity. Also, a chance to read some of history's greatest poetry in its original form is an opportunity that should not be revoked. This is a poor and rash decision by the AP board

[idude]

In high school I was privileged to be able to take both AP Vergil and Latin Lit. As a student at the time, I preferred the Vergil class, but in retrospect, Latin Lit did more to prepare me for college Latin. Being exposed to a variety of authors and types of latin was one of the best things academically to happen to me during high school and I would be outraged if future students were deprived that opportunity.

Philip Katz
Washington University in St. Louis

[Melissa Moss]

Though I generally teach the AP Vergil course, I resent the choice being removed now that AP Latin Lit is no longer an option. I think this is the thin end of the wedge to remove the Latin curriculum, and indeed, any course that is "undersubscribed" from the College Board's offerings.

Melissa Moss
The Williams School

[Jennifer Frank]

I can only hope that the College Board rethinks their decision and we, as lovers of Latin education, can influence it. I know that both my program and my students will be greatly disadvantaged by this sad turn of events. Being a school that currently offers both classes, this will harm those students planning on doing two AP courses and I know that we will struggle to devise a way for students to continue Latin in their senior year after they have finished AP Vergil. I think this really will really hurt the future of classical learning in this country.
Jennifer Frank
Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa. FL

[Brandon Signorino]

This is a terrible thing to do... Effectively, students can double their credit for college in Latin with the two exams, and that helps them to be able to continue their education even further. Taking one of the exams away is taking away some of the opportunity for the students. And since Latin is dwindling or even being taken away at many schools, it's important that we give the students as much opportunity as possible, so that they keep taking more and more Latin.

Brandon Signorino
North Central High School (class of 2007), Indianapolis, IN
Butler University (class of 2011), Indianapolis, IN

[Ronnie Ancona]

Dear colleagues,

The message below is what I've sent personally to the College Board. I, too, appreciate the position Mary and Linda are in as Chief Reader and Development Co. head. Their input on this issue is valued.

However, as you can see, I share the major concern that the offer of added support is meaningless as a "compensation" for the loss of the Latin Lit exam. Teacher support and keeping the Latin Lit exam are not mutually exclusive and no one consulted with teachers or CB consultants (like me and others on the list) to see what kind of additional support, if any, teachers need. The figure about retirement of AP (?) teachers is meaningless in isolation. Even if the source for this were given, so what? Those of us involved in teacher-training programs have tons of great students in the pipeline who are eager to and prepared to take over the teaching of AP Latin now and in the future.

All best,
Ronnie
It's too long for one message here, so I am posting in three parts.
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To the Trustees of the College Board,

I was truly stunned by the announcement that the Latin Literature AP Exam would be cancelled after the 2008-09 academic year. As a professor of Classics interested in having the best prepared Latin students enter our universities and as someone who has been involved with the Latin AP Program for close to two decades, as AP Exam Reader, College Board Consultant, contributor the AP Central’s Teacher Resources, and author of two widely used AP Latin textbooks, I find this sudden action with its myriad of negative educational consequences truly devastating to the study of Latin at both the secondary school and university levels. In my role as Director of the M.A. in Adolescent Education in Latin at Hunter College, I am very involved in Latin teaching training. To have virtually no notice for this significant change to what many future teachers will be expected to teach is very disruptive to university programs that have been trying hard to support the educational experience of AP in the secondary schools. This action has dramatically affected my confidence in the AP program as a whole, for it shows lack of respect for the constituencies the AP program is supposed to serve as well as little interest in educational outcomes.

I would like to outline here the problems I see with this decision in hopes that it will be rescinded.

There are three issues involved (1) the announced change itself (2) the lack of professional consultation and (3) the lack of lead time for teachers, schools, and others involved in AP to prepare

(1) The change itself

The Latin Literature exam (in one form or another) has a very long and valued history in the AP curriculum. If this exam is cancelled it will be the first time in the AP Latin program's entire history, which began in 1956, that lyric poetry will not be included in Latin AP. It should interest you that in the early days of Latin AP those who took the Vergil AP only received one semester’s worth of college placement credit, while those taking what eventually evolved into the Latin Literature AP received two, for the latter was considered "more advanced" than Vergil. It was 5th year and Vergil was only 4th. (See Ancona and Hallett, “Catullus in the Secondary School Curriculum,” in Skinner, A Companion to Catullus, Blackwell, 2007, esp. pages 484-86.) It is ironic that Latin reading considered at one time more advanced than Vergil is now being eliminated from AP curricula.
(continued in next two messages)

[Ronnie Ancona]

(part 2 of 3)
Many schools only offer the Latin Literature AP, while others count on it as a second Latin AP, along with Vergil, for giving their students a full and rich experience of college level Latin in secondary school. While studying Vergil at either the secondary school or college level is a very worthwhile experience, having it as the only AP Latin option presents many problems for the preparation of the best Latin students. College professors want their incoming students to have as varied an experience of Latin as possible and Latin teachers at the secondary level may become bored with teaching the same AP Latin course over and over again. In addition, the Latin Literature curriculum (especially the Ovid option paired with the required Catullus) has generated lots of interest and excitement about studying Latin in recent years. There are both teachers and students who prefer the Latin Literature curriculum to the Vergil. I have no interest in arguing the merits of these individual authors. I teach them all on a regular basis and enjoy doing so. However, one of the advantages of the Latin Literature program is the fact that one is not reading the same single work the entire year. Students and teachers may engage with a particular poem of Catullus or Horace or a particular selection from Ovid or Cicero. The Catullus and Horace poems, for example, are often quite short and provide variety of theme and style. If a student does not especially connect with one poem, he or she may with another. With the Vergil syllabus one does not have that chance.

(2) Lack of consultation

The fact that the Latin profession was not consulted about the making of these changes is astonishing. When some of the Cicero content in the Latin Literature exam was recently changed there was extensive polling of Latinists beforehand. Why with a much more major change like this one was this not done?

Whatever problems were perceived in the current Latin AP program should have been shared with the Latin community as a whole. If there were economic considerations, the source of these should have been made explicit. If economics required some sort of change in the program, the pedagogical consequences of any proposed changes should have been carefully explored.

The fact that the AP Latin Test Development Committee was in no way consulted about the cancellation of the Latin Literature Exam, nor were Latin teachers at the secondary or college levels, completely undermines the College Board’s educational credibility. What professional expertise do the Trustees have to make decisions that affect secondary school and college programs in Latin? None. Instead of working together with members of the Latin and classics community to address any problems with the program, the Trustees made a unilateral decision devoid of any considerations for its educational impact.

(3) Lack of Lead Time

Leaving aside the pedagogical issues, the timing of this announcement is terrible for teachers, administrators, publishers, and others involved in AP. The local public school in the district where I live, for example, currently teaches AP Latin Literature in the 5th year and non-AP Vergil in the 4th. With no time for advanced planning is a teacher supposed to suddenly change that non-AP into an AP class with students who may not be ready? Or switch Vergil to 5th year and over this summer, with no compensation, invent a new curriculum for her 4th year course? This is just one small example of the impact this might have. To use the College Board’s own language, pre-AP and vertical teams require program planning and sequencing of skills. To suddenly pull out one piece of an educational program disrupts the whole.
(continued in next message)