Latin is far from a dead language in the nation's secondary and elementary schools, where a revival in its teaching is creating a severe shortage of qualified teachers.
"There are more jobs than Latin teachers," said Robert Wilhelm, a classics professor at Miami University and director of the American Classical League's teacher placement service.High school enrollment in Latin hit bottom in 1976 when only 150,000 public school students were enrolled. Since then, enrollment has been steadily climbing.
While high school students nationwide are discovering Latin, the greatest development has been in the middle and elementary grades.
A national mythology exam, sponsored by the Elementary Teachers of Classics, was taken by 3,200 students in grades 3 through 8 last year. This year, that soared to 6,500 students, and Wilhelm expects more than 10,000 students will sign up for the spring 1992 test.
Why this interest in a language and culture that reached its peak some 20 centuries ago?
Wilhelm says it is because including Latin in the curriculum produces results.
"Latin is a good language to introduce students to the structure of language," he said. "It increases students' abilities to understand words, know where they come from and how they work in a sentence. You can also use it as a springboard to study history, society and art."