"LATIN IS FOR POSEURS IN JUNIOR HIGH"
[2/10/2024]If I have to look at another scientific name written in Latin, I might just need to go back in time and kill the dude who standardized it. And guess what? I found out what that dude's name is: Carl Linnaeus. Some Swedish academic in the 18th century just LOVED Latin, and made it my problem about 300 years later. Although to be fair, most academics in the 18th century loved Latin for some reason. I STILL DESPISE IT.
Like, seriously! Why do all these campus fraternaties still use Latin? Why do all these white people love Latin? This is a rabbit hole that I could totally go down if I didn't respect myself.
I once had a funny conversation with a good friend of mine who lives in Boston, the same friend who just told me "Carl Linnaeus" exists. When I visited them, we talked a lot about the differences in our education and the general education systems we grew up with. My education is frankly pretty scuffed; despite that, I am lucky to feel informed and educated. Because of that, I also have some strong opinions about the education systems I'm familiar with (even as they have changed). And my friend is much the same: lucky to be educated, though their knowledge differs much in its consistency and specific expertise over mine. They're a tutor of basically all fields of knowledge the American education system expects a kid to know through high school (algebra/calculus, english literature, social sciences and history, etc.).
Then, one of the only "arguments" (it was more a discussion than anything) I've ever had with them was while driving on a side road from Concord, in the middle of that same conversation, and I'll never forget it. They said something like, "I teach my students the Latin roots of English words to help them understand the word better!" and I went, "excuse me?"
What a bizarre thing, to have to learn another, ancient language in order to learn English. The concept baffled me! We talked on and on about what students need in school, what the "current workforce" needs out of students, and what students need seperately from and interwoven in with their education. Their take was basically that not only would learning Latin help with the literacy of students who need to read and write academic papers at a university level, but that in general, students should be required to do hard things they don't like in order to learn problem-solving skills.
See, I can't say I even disagree with the notion; the current academic environment does greatly require these things, and making sure kids are educated in a multi-disciplined way to help them become well-rounded in their own knowledge is crucial. I just... my gut reaction was so, SO strong to this almost cop-like notion of "just comply to our current system the way it is currently built" that I had to take a breather and listen to their thoughts before deconstructing it in my head. And again: we discussed, and ultimately neither one of us necessarily disagreed with the fundamental facts that our current education system is broken in the ways it forgets about children and underpays teaches (and how this leads to a steep influx of nihilistic pacifism for everyone in it). I simply come back to this conversation from time to time.
My friend is well-meaning, and hell, I'd even say they're a damn good tutor. This same friend is one I bonded with over our love of Patrick Schneeweis' work as a touring anarchist musician. We've both been listening to this guy's music for well over eight years now (them more than I; they love folk punk, I'm just a distant appreciator). I used to own a copy of "Probably Nothing, Possibly Everything" on tape, where in the liner notes Pat wrote that one of the greatest inspirations of his time as an arachist was the novel "The Dispossessed," who I'd later find out to my great surprise was written by Ursula K. Le Guin of the Earthsea novels.
"The Dispossessed" is dense. My partner and I have been listening to the audiobook together, barely on Chapter 3. To say it is greatly impressive in all its aspects would be an understatement. Le Guin does what many others stop short at: truly imagining, picturing a complete anarchist society free from the shackles of capital, but not free from the bonds of fundamental human suffering and emotion.
Some of the most striking concepts that come back to me often upon reflection of this novel are about language and education. The power of non-possessive nouns, the open-discussion format of their classrooms, and most of all, the freedom for students to choose what discipline of knowledge they would like to specialize in of their own volition. To say that Le Guin is a poet and a skilled wordsmith would also be a grand understatement and a disservice to her work. It moves me. It had given me pause for reflection on the bigger question I still often think about: "did the education system fail me?" I can't go back now on my answer, having read what I've read. The answer is "yes."
I fell through the cracks. I changed my school so many times just due to shitty circumstances that my knowledge was left scattered and unfocused. But for all intents and purposes, my new school required I take a level of arithmatic that my old school did not. At the time, I was failing so much in something I was forced to do that it nearly broke me. My already suffering emotional state was compounded by a system that did not care about me as a person, but rather cared about what credits I did and did not fulfill to get me out the door, out of the "care" of a system that was not for me and into the world, to eventually be lost.
I admit, in this moment, I felt the need to be fulfilled internally, spiritually, academically, where the education system had failed to do so for me. Internally, I needed to put in the work to help myself, only after admitting that I needed help, and wanted to work towards a better self. No academic system could make that conclusion for me. But the education system I found myself in nearly beat a love of education out of me, not nursed it into me. That's where it failed me, and that's where it continues to fail a greater population of children. It made me not want to learn, because it tried to get me to be someone who I was not: someone fine with the status quo. Someone who learned math because "I had to" despite not wanting to at the cost of my mental health. It wanted me to be a factory worker while the smoke filled my lungs; it wanted me to love the sensation of fumes in my throat, and not to question it.
"The Dispossessed" does not free the anarchist society of Anarres from criticism either. It often poses the questions of "what can we learn from history, and what should we leave behind?," and, "how can we be free if others, elsewhere, are not?" For those too, I do not have a perfect solution. No education system will ever give you the tools to change it, because that is not what it is there for. It is there to get people to work. In a sense, it will always be to prop up the current system. But in learning, we also discover what we do not want; forming opinions of what we do. That things could always be better. What is joy in leisure, if there is no hope in work? In the education system I grew up in, I learned that Latin is an ancient language historically used by white men in power, men that possessed slaves, and that slaves were forced to work.
I believe some academic papers (don't ask me to cite them; BAD PRAXIS, I KNOW) have said that the language we speak does not necessarily correspond to the ways in which we think. I'm not certain how true that is. The academia determines it to be true, that certain linguistic exceptions and flexibility means that "technically this is correct." But you just need to learn about Aboriginal languages to know that this may need another pass. Some lingustic groups do not even have possessive words, almost untranslatable if not for exceptions and localizations.
I do not want to learn Latin. But at the end of the day, guess who's now sitting her happy ass in the basement of a university building spending countless hours to help tutor my fiance for his plants class. It's me. Of course it just had to be me. I mean, I'll do it because I love my partner of course, because this class is pretty damn difficult. Doesn't mean I'm happy about it. He's not happy about it either, he's the one that needs this credit in order to get his degree, and he's also dyslexic! This shit sucks! At the cost of this modern education, it seems like we had to pay the piper one way or another. These names aren't going to learn themselves.