Countywide : More Students Arrive, See and Conquer Latin

For a toga party, it was a pretty tame affair. About 40 toga-clad students gathered in an Irvine high school classroom Friday for inspection and instruction by Latin teacher Martha Altieri.

But it was just a warm-up for the main event March 15 and 16, when 1,400 Latin students from throughout the state are expected to descend on the Woodbridge High School campus in Irvine for the 41st annual California Junior Classical League convention.

There will be competitions in Latin oratory and sight reading, where students will be judged in such esoteric categories as vowel length and consonant quality. There’s also a catapult competition and slave auction, where students are sold to the highest bidder to raise money for scholarships.

Latin students from 40 high schools throughout the state, including 13 Orange County campuses, will take part in academic and athletic events at the annual convention. The state organization is affiliated with the 60-year-old National Junior Classical League of Oxford, Ohio, which promotes the study of Greece and Rome.

“Everything that we do is based on the Romans,” said Altieri, a 15-year Latin teacher and one of three leaders of the state league. “The way we build our roads, our government, our marriage customs--there’s hardly a topic you can think of that doesn’t relate to the Romans. It’s really important that the kids have that understanding of why we do things the way we do today; it does go back to the Romans.”

Latin also helps boost Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, Altieri said, standing near a scale model of the Colosseum constructed out of sugar cubes by her students.

But it is the social activities held by high school Latin clubs scattered around the country that have the most appeal, said fourth-year Latin student Jennifer Michalek,a 17-year-old Woodbridge High senior and president of the statewide organization.

“We have club events all year long,” she said. “We have a lot of activities, from movie nights to the quest for Roman citizenship, where students go through a bunch of different trials, kind of like some of the Roman heroes did. The idea is to incorporate all sorts of different attributes of the personality into these different games.”

Santa Margarita High School Latin teacher Bill Falls said he has witnessed a rebirth of interest in Latin. Both Falls and Altieri credit the National Junior Classical League for putting life in what is often called a dead language.

“It’s a trend throughout the United States,” Falls said. “People are beginning to see a value in it, even beyond the practical. Ninety-five percent of my kids now say they take it because they enjoy it.”