Teach him Latin instead.

Latin, for an English-speaking country, is a more important subject than English grammar. If you can only teach your child one subject, due to time constraints, then teach him Latin. The truth is that you don’t need to teach him English grammar during the elementary grades.

There was a time in America when the study of Latin was an integral part of a child’s education.

There was a time in America when we were not the dumbed-down people that we are today. How much does the loss of knowing Latin have to do with it?

As a simple study of Latin could swing the pendulum back to the way of literacy, it may have a lot to do with it.

(It could also swing us back to the way of a civilized democracy. We have to remember that to survive, a democracy depends upon a literate populace; therefore, the suggestion to study Latin, is more than just an appeal to literacy, it’s an appeal to the preservation of all that has made this country great, which is under attack today.)

When your child studies Latin, he learns grammar which is why you really don’t need to teach him both Latin and English grammar. Grammar is universal in the sense that while the rules of grammar may change according to the language, the grammar itself does not change.

A verb will always be a verb, and a noun will always be a noun regardless of the language you speak.

While English grammar is essential to know, as well, a child will understand much about English grammar just by studying Latin grammar.

It’s like architecture. We all need a home to live in, but the architectural style of your home and the materials that it’s made with will vary depending upon where you live. In the same sense, we all need words to communicate with, but the words we use and how we arrange them will differ.

When it comes to studying the English language, as long as your child grows up in a home where English is spoken, he’ll be able to apply the Latin grammar he knows to the English language.

“In England up until the 1850s, only Latin and Greek were taught at the leading schools during the entire ten or eleven years that children spent at school. Despite that apparently limiting factor, children in those days received – paradoxically – a far better all-round education than anyone comes near to receiving today.”

— Mr. Gwynne

But studying Latin offers something that studying English does not: a child’s understanding of the meaning of words and his versatility constructing sentences in Latin will be much greater than it would be if he were to only study English grammar.

This understanding will naturally carry over to his versatility with the English language, no further work needed.

For example. when a child learns Latin, he will learn the parts of speech. He will learn how to construct and deconstruct a sentence. In fact, he’ll learn this so well that he’ll be able to do it as easily as you and I can add two plus two.

Another benefit to learning Latin, and arguably even more important, is that when your child knows the root meaning of at least 50 percent of the words in English, which he will learn when he studies Latin, then he can think in many, many shades of gray rather than just black and white.

Much of why we’re struggling to make sense out of our national conversation today stems from a lack of literacy. The discourse is becoming more and more primitive as it’s reduced to an “us and them” discussion because we don’t have the words to think and communicate with.

Studying the Latin language is the antidote to our own loss of language and the decline of our civilization.

To give you a very concrete example: when your child studies Latin, he’ll meet words like “vulnerare” and he’ll learn that the word “vulnerable” comes from the Latin root “vulnerare.” There’s a nuance to the English word which implies that when we’re being vulnerable we can be emotionally wounded.

If we don’t understand this precise nuance, what’s to stop us from choosing to use “unprotected” or “unguarded” instead?

Yet when you look at the Latin root for the word “guard,” you find the word “custodire” which means to “protect.” When you look up the word “protect,” you find “defendere” which means “to repel or to ward off.”

In the English language, we use the words “vulnerable,” “unprotected,” and “unguarded” interchangeably to mean that a person is “letting down his guard.” Can you see that in Latin, each word has a different nuance? How much more exact our thinking becomes when we understand the nuances between synonyms.

When you know the Latin root of the English word, then you can choose your English words with precision. The more precision we employ in language, the deeper and richer our understanding becomes and the more shades of gray we can comprehend.

By learning Latin, your child will learn grammar, expand his vocabulary, and deepen his understanding of the meaning of words; hence, he’ll reach new heights of literacy.

“Latin is an academic subject easy enough for the least intelligent of us to grasp all its basic elements...”

— Mr. Gwynne

He won’t be able to do this just by studying English grammar. He could learn the Latin roots to the English words, this is true, but what a dry and less effective way to master the English language.

Two hundred years ago, children and adults knew the meaning of many more words than we know today. Something like reading a classic book was not perceived as being so difficult to read as it is today. Classic books aren’t difficult to read if you have the vocabulary that’s necessary to understand what the author is communicating.

Translate this lack of vocabulary into an inability to think and communicate well, and you can see why we have such a grave problem on our hands.

If you’re pressed for time, and you don’t think you can handle teaching both Latin and English grammar, then choose Latin. Your child will thank you 100-fold when he’s grown.

If you read George Orwell’s book, 1984, you’ll find that one of the strategies they used to gain absolute control over the mind, and therefore the behavior of the individual, was a significant reduction of vocabulary.

They took away the words we use to think with.