A
dead language helps forge identity and esprit de corps, like boot camp for
Marines.
Black men don’t do Latin. Or do
they?
Turns out, too, that the young men
of Boys’ Latin have become pretty good at distinguishing their ad hominem from
their ad honorem. This month the school received the results on the
introductory level National Latin Exam, a test taken last year by students
around the world. Among the highlights: Two Boys’ Latin students had perfect
scores; 60% of its seventh-graders were recognized for achievement, 20% for
outstanding achievement; and the number of Boys’ Latin students who tested
above the national average doubled from the year before.
“I invite anyone who doubts what
this does for our students to come to a graduation and watch 100 black boys
sharply dressed in caps and gowns and proudly reciting their school pledge in
Latin,” says the school’s chief executive officer, David Hardy. “Not only is
this an unexpected sight, it defies the low expectations society puts on young
black men.”
The traditional arguments for
studying Latin are well known. More than half of English words have Latin
roots, so students who learn Latin improve their vocabularies and linguistic
skills. In addition, the discipline of studying Latin—the logic, the structure,
the rigor—helps train young minds to think more clearly and systematically.
All these arguments Mr. Hardy accepts and occasionally
invokes himself. But for him Latin is also a way of addressing the most
wretched fact of today’s Philly school system: Only 8% of young black men who
graduate from one of the city’s public high schools will go on to a four-year
college degree, according to a December 2015 longitudinal study
called “From Diplomas to Degrees” by Drexel University’s Paul Harrington and
Neeta Fogg.
Now, any columnist who notes the
racial disparities in education, especially when coupled with a call for the
parents of poor minority children to have more options when it comes to
schools, invariably receives mail that begins like this: “I have been an
educator in the public schools for more than 20 years, and you are badly
underestimating the reason [bad families, poverty, IQ, whatever] these kids
aren’t learning.”
Translation: Black children, or at
least inner-city black children, are ineducable. Needless to say, Mr. Hardy and
his merry band at Boys’ Latin hold a contrary view. In February they helped
launch a campaign called #blackdegreesmatter to highlight why college, and the
higher lifetime earnings it generally brings, is so vital for young black men.
It’s true Boys’ Latin is filled with
all the challenges that come with West Philadelphia: neighborhood drug dealers,
gangs, struggling single moms. You name it, Mr. Hardy says, Boys’ Latin has got
it. The difference is the school refuses to accept it as an excuse for not
achieving.
Why Latin? Partly it’s that the
language immediately raises expectations all around. You can’t fake Latin, either.
When these boys learn it, they taste the satisfaction that comes from
achievement.
Partly it’s the school’s thing. Even
if students hate Latin, says Mr. Hardy—maybe especially if they hate
it—it’s something everyone at Boys’ Latin goes through, what boot camp at
Parris Island is for Marines. It builds identity and esprit de corps.
It’s also what helps make Boys’
Latin attractive to the Philadelphia School Partnership, an influential group
of donors whose mission is to get more of the city’s kids into great
schools—and put more on the path to college. Since 2011, these men and women
have spent nearly $60 million in private funding to help thousands of
low-income students attend schools such as Boys’ Latin.
As long as the school is doing great
things, folks at the Philadelphia School Partnership don’t care whether the
institution they are supporting is a traditional public school, a charter
school or a private school. When they look at Boys’ Latin, for example, what
they see is this: a high school that sends more black boys to college than any
other in Philly—and has a waiting list to get in.
Boys’ Latin is not without its
critics, who point to so-so scores on state tests. Mr. Hardy argues that the
scores, which have been rising, are still better than the alternatives for most
young men in West Philly. For him the most important measure is that his
students are getting their college degrees.
Young black males, Mr. Hardy says,
get plenty of messages that they are not good enough, that excellence is beyond
their reach and that college is for other people. The beauty of Boys’ Latin
is that every day its students see examples of young black men challenging the
reigning tropes of underachievement.
“Nobody expects black boys to do
Latin, because it’s hard,” says Mr. Hardy. “And that’s exactly why we do it.”
