You file a police report if you need to tell the police something they don't already know. If the police come upon the thieves in flagrante delicto, they've got paperwork they themselves must file. Thinking about this abstractly, I don't understand why the victim should have a say in the prosecution of an offense. Seems like it just leads to potential problems.

Yikes. I'm so sorry for you. But what happens now? Even if you move away in months, you still have to live down the street from these folks. And, I'm unsure about the "pressing charges" issue. If the police themselves caught the girls red handed, do you even have a say in whether or not they are punished in some way by the judicial system?

I would point out that even if a language is not used conversationally, (though there are those who do speak Latin), there are still many important verbal uses. I can't even imagine memorizing vocab without at least silently repeating the Latin words in my head, speaking them out loud helps more. Same goes for memorizing paradigms. As mentioned a couple of times above, this is even more important for scanning, memorizing and reciting Latin poetry. When composing Latin sentences, it is critical to spell the words correctly, which is trivial if you use the completely phonetic Classical pronunciation. While I'm OK with ecclesiastical pronunciation, I can't believe WTM recommends the vernacular pronunciation. This is a horrible, no-good, un-SWB kind of idea. "bona fide" as three syllables? I can't even fathom how many problems that would cause.

Frankly, I agree with her. There's way too much killing and army stuff for my tastes. A cheap, easy example would be Wheelock, and make sure to get the answer key that's googleable from the Internet. A more expensive, but beautiful textbook is Latin for the New Millenium.

Some people make a much bigger deal about this than it really is. Personally, I prefer the restored classical pronunciation. It is very simple, very consistent, and it makes spelling the words easy. Note that most modern legal terms in Latin are completely mispronounced with respect to all known Latin pronunciation standards! And with regards to Spanish, there's probably more differentiation in how modern Spanish is pronounced all over the world today than the two main Latin pronunciation standards.

If men are dogs (which I don't actually believe), then boys are puppies. For some, it helps tremendously to start the day with exhausting, vigorous exercise. Walking, running, sports, strenuous chores, etc. Getting these boys physically worn out early in the day often allows their brains to focus a bit more.

Yes, but will it be NCAA approved? JOKING!

Oh, I totally agree for all the languages. It just doesn't seem fair that a ninth grader can take AP Human Geography and pass an AP test, but you need a good four years of study before you can hope to take any of the AP language tests.

In additional to all the good information above, you are right to worry about finding a place to take the AP test. While preparing for this test is a lot of work, finding a seat can be almost as much work! My unfounded worry has to do with the fact that there used to be two AP Latin exams: one for "language", the other for "literature", and the college board now just has one Latin exam. Given that this is one of the least popular AP exams, I worry that sometime down the road they may stop offering even this one. I always thought it was more fair to have two AP exams for Latin -- for neither was equivalent to a first year college Latin class, not by a long shot. They are more equivalent to a 3rd year college class, which requires a lot more prep work than, say, APUSH, which is clearly equivalent to a first year college class with no college prereqs.

"Three men in a boat", by Jerome K Jerome, followed by "To say nothing of the dog", by Connie Willis.

Sticking your finger into your friend's ear, leaning over the back of the booth and talking up strangers, tugging at uncomfortable clothes, crying for no apparent reason, leaving the house missing important bits of clothing, talking about only yourself all the time,indulging in so much food and drink that you pass out (fall asleep). Are we talking about teenagers or toddlers here?

I think the reality is much more complicated and nuanced that this. If this school just wanted to get everyone to the same mediocre level, they wouldn't have offered this accelerated "Algebra" to 7th graders. I'm curious if this 7th grade Algebra covered the same material as the 8th grade class (or 9th grade), or if was a special "Algebra for 7th graders"? I think that parents see that college admissions are getting more and more difficult, and that public school education is getting less and less rigorous, so they cry out for more rigor in the classroom. Unfortunately, "rigor" is a pretty fuzzy concept, and it is difficult for parents to verify that the Algebra class their ninth grader is taking is a really solid, rigorous math class, which will teach them concepts and techniques that they will use for years to come. So, the school answers these cries with the simplest, most tangible, visible response they can: They offer "acceleration", and set up classes for younger students to take subjects formerly only offered to older ones. (Aside: I think it is perfectly age appropriate for many 8th and 7th graders to study Algebra, but only if they have had preparatory classes the previous few years, which I don't think happens in many public schools. Indeed, if this school is so concerned about the 7th grade standardized math tests for these advanced students that they spent 20% of class time preparing for the "normal" 7th grade test, it doesn't sound like the school is altogether confident about their baseline skills) So, the school gets to brag that they aren't like all those other "bad" schools, that they offer accelerated classes, and the parents are assuaged. But, what really happens is that many of these kids didn't have the preparation to succeed in the class (and in this case, 15-20% of the time was wasted preparing for a standardized test), so the teacher has to slow down and dumb down the class to meet the students. Instead of Algebra 1, the class ends up being "Algebra 0.75". What is much worse, though, is the students and their parents don't know that this happened. They both think the student got a good grade in Algebra 1, and that all such classes are pretty much interchangeable. Then they run into trouble later in the sciences when they need to apply these tools. I think this same problem happens at many levels. Over and over again, I hear of "AP" classes in the high school where no student bothers to take the AP test because so few ever score well on the test from that school.

UO: We don't do "Social Studies" or "Language Arts". We do study History, Geography, Civics, Reading, Spelling, Writing, and other subjects but I see no need to bundle them all together into one made-up word.

She needs to talk to an academic advisor or Dean of Students quickly, and understand what all the options are. At many colleges, a GPA under 2 puts you on academic probation for the following semester, after which the student is subject to being dismissed from the school if they don't bring their GPA up. I don't know what the implications of dismissal are on student loans, or applying to some other school, but those are things she needs to consider.

My heart goes out to you and your niece. Obviously, it is Spring semester now. Is this her first semester at college? If not, how did she do fall semester?

While you may not need a bunch of extra credits, you may need more semesters. I'm guessing a classics major at Boulder requires at least three years of a classical language, which certainly needs to be taken sequentially, and probably aren't offered in the summer. So, if halfway through your first semester as a transfer student, you suddenly decide to add a Classics major, and first semester Latin/Greek/Whatever isn't offered in the spring semester, it's going to take four years to finish.

When I hear my friends talking about how their public school kids are accelerated into Algebra in seventh grade, I wonder about how much they are actually doing. I would certainly expect memorization of and derivation of the quadratic formula in any Algebra class. Perhaps a bigger question, though, is what other topics were skipped or glossed over in that class? Asking the students to memorize the quadratic formula doesn't sound like a difficult teaching assignment: if that was skipped, what else was? Many of these topics are important for science classes down the road, so I think you should be very grateful that this placement test revealed this deficit.

This doesn't strike me as odd -- she added a major, to double major in English and Classics, and I'm guessing that the Classics major at UC Boulder is set up to take four years from scratch, no matter how many gen ed requirements you've got out of the way.

I think everyone should get a "free pass" or two to not like some classic. So many books, so little time.

I think this shows how varied the American educational landscape is, but I wonder if these essays are comparable to the Oxford ones, which, according to Stripe's newspaper story above, take an average of 18 hours to write, with some English majors taking up to 30 hours per essay.

This is, I think, a much bigger difference in the approach most American Universities take compared to yours. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many first year classes here that require frequent essays. How long are these essays, and how many per class?

I find it interesting how different universities (especially in different countries) operate. One small nit-pick is that, at least at my alma mater, an "hour" was 50 minutes. I'm curious how many minutes there are in an "hour" at other institutions. There were about 16 weeks in each semester, so one-credit hour represented about 13 total hours over the length of the course. (In retrospect, this seems like a tiny amount of total time). As seems universal, a "full load" was from 12 to 18 credit hours, and (excluding labs), and one credit hour always corresponded to fifty minutes worth of lecture or recitation session. So, between 10 to 15 clock-hours of contact a week, not counting optional office hours, and other drop in help. Now, what varies a lot is how much of the teaching is done by TAs. Again, for my big-state university, a freshman might take a five credit calculus course, where 3 hours are lectures by a professor, and 2 hours are discussion led by a TA; a four credit introductory foreign language class, entirely taught by TA, a four credit introductory literature class with 3 hours of professor lecturing, and 1 hour of TA, for 13 total credits, of which 6 credits worth (or five hours) are taught by professors. Liberal arts colleges will probably have few or no TAs, as will community colleges.

I'm curious what a "graduate student tutor" is in the UK system? In the US, big state schools often have classes taught by TAs (Teaching Assistants), graduate students who are paid to teach classes, either as the primary contact, or in smaller recitation sessions when a professor teaches a large lecture. Sometimes TAs will also be hired to conduct drop-in extra help in certain subjects. One-on-one tutoring of undergraduate by graduates students is, I think, rare here, and perhaps usually done in an ad-hoc way.

That's what she gets for judging a book by its cover! :laugh:

I would recommend not using GSWL yourself, if your kids are using it. It is very basic, and there is a lot of grammar that it skips over, which is fine, but kids often ask good questions which require more insight than such elementary texts have, and you might be led into giving a wrong answer. e.g, someone here recently posted something to the effect that "Latin grammar is very easy and logical, for example, all nouns ending in -us are masculine". Which is true for the grammar you cover when you are just starting out, but after a while you'll learn that it just isn't true in all cases. If you are just at the same level as your students, it is easy to make this kind of mistake. So, I would recommend at least a high-school level text for self study. Wheelock is ubiquitous, incredibly cheap if you get it used, and with a bit of google'ing, you can find an online answer set which has a lot of good stuff in it as well. It covers most of Latin grammar, so it is nice to have a grammar guide in one book. Latin for the New Millennium is a newer text which has some nice features, but it much more expensive, as what Wheelock covers in one book, it takes two or three books to cover. The College-level texts, I think, are a bit harder for self-studiers. They are a bit more complete when it comes to grammar, but really assume you have an expert to help you along. If you've taken Latin before, you probably know this, but the first steps I recommend for an adult are 1) Memorize all the paradigms. This is tedious, but will pay great dividends later. Quickly (within a week), get all the noun declensions in your head, and then over the course of several months, write them all out 100 times in a blank notebook. It should take about 5 minutes to write them all out, so if you can find five minutes while the kids are at karate or where ever, writing them out will help to reinforce them in your head. Then do the same thing for verb conjugations, which takes a lot longer. 2) Memorize a basic set of vocab, in both directions. Wheelock has a basic set of about 1,000 words you should learn. I like the smartphone or table flashcard apps for this. Again, this is often something you can do a few minutes at a time in between other activities. 3) Work through every chapter of Wheelock, and do all the exercises. Note that the whole book usually covers about 2 years of high school Latin, so you can take your time with it.