From ginlindzey@austin.rr.com Sun Sep 9 06:51:06 2001 Received: from mxu104.u.washington.edu (mxu104.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f89Dp6068354 for ; Sun, 9 Sep 2001 06:51:06 -0700 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by mxu104.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f89Dp5x17493 for ; Sun, 9 Sep 2001 06:51:05 -0700 Received: FROM sm14.texas.rr.com BY mxu4.u.washington.edu ; Sun Sep 09 06:51:05 2001 -0700 Received: from Ginny (cs6625189-8.austin.rr.com [66.25.189.8]) by sm14.texas.rr.com (8.12.0.Beta16/8.12.0.Beta16) with SMTP id f89DxSXD031189 for ; Sun, 9 Sep 2001 08:59:28 -0500 Message-ID: <01f801c13936$76cabd60$9c01a8c0@austin.rr.com> From: "Ginny Lindzey" To: References: <5E5B5397B92DA849874262D1AF191C2C02489A63@exchange2.ColoradoCollege.edu> Subject: Re: a secondary teacher's reply / GREs Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 08:50:59 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 I confess that what has occurred to me during this thread is that secondary teachers are far less reluctant to preach the glories of taking Latin than our colleagues in the universities. We are more than happy to point out that students who take Latin top the SAT scores ( http://www.promotelatin.org/latin.htm#SAT ). I guarantee you that all the parents who come to back-to-school night get a flyer with that information on it. WHY? Parents and students alike are concerned about getting into college, about SAT scores, etc. However, when it comes to the GRE, how many undergrads do you know purposefully major or take courses in a subject that will help them with the GRE? Does anyone ever think about it or use this information? Or maybe, the better question is why do secondary teachers jump on the chance to us SAT scores? I may be way out of line here, but I can't help but wonder if it has, to a certain extent, something to do with job security. There is no tenure in public schools. If we can't build our programs up AND KEEP THEM UP, we are looking for a new job or teaching courses we don't want to teach. Our students are too young to think about what they want to be for the most part. They haven't really seen what all is out in the world. Maybe a few will become classicists and that's great. BUT, most of them do know that they want to get into college and that gets a lot of students through our doors. As secondary teachers, we bank on this. We use anything we can to point out that Latin will help with SATs. I don't recall ever seeing or hearing anything at university about preparing for grad school. After all, most were in the diploma mill for their BAs--to get that magic paper and get out. In other words, most were NOT thinking of grad school--at least a large number of the people I knew (ok, ok, I had the misfortune of living in a dorm filled with mostly sorority sisters who were only interested in their MRS anyway). Therefore, there was not the same urgency in general to find ways to do well on the GRE. Or even if there was a goal of doing well on the GRE, there was never any suggestion of course work that would help--only mention of taking prep classes, etc. However, there were certainly plenty of people out there who knew they were going to Law School or Med School and they often ended up in classics. But what about other areas like Business and whatnot? Why not take these GRE scores and advertise? Why not promote classics as a great major to prepare you for grad school? Some people don't even care what their BA is in since it is the graduate degree that matters to them. We should take advantage of that. If I learned anything from Karl Galinsky over the years, it is that there is NOTHING WRONG with tooting your own horn. No one will know what you do if you don't. I'm going to find that original post on the GRE scores and get it up on then NCLG website. Then I invite all universities to use this information. In fact, I dare the APA and CAMWS to promote this information at the university level. WHY NOT?! ginnyL, rambling on (my apologies) ============= Ginny Lindzey, Editor Texas Classical Association CAMWS State VP TCA, AP Latin, Greek Too: www.txclassics.org NCLG: www.promotelatin.org Lindsey Davis: www.lindseydavis.co.uk .