The Natural Method of Teaching Latin: Its Origins, Rationale, and Prospects

Author(s): HENRY WINGATE

Source: The Classical World , SPRING 2013, Vol. 106, No. 3 (SPRING 2013), pp. 493-504
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Classical Association
of the Atlantic States

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PAEDAGOGUS

The Natural Method of Teaching Latin:

Its Origins, Rationale, and Prospects
HENRY WING ATE

ABSTRACT: In contrast with the traditional grammar/translation

method of Latin instruction, the Natural Method relies almost en
tirely on the use of spoken Latin in the classroom, generally to the
exclusion of the vernacular. This article examines the origins of the
method in late nineteenth-century Europe, the theories that prompt
ed the method, and early attempts to implement the method in the
classroom. Special attention is given to W. H. D. Rouse, who is
generally credited with first applying the method to Latin teaching.
The article concludes with an assessment of the effectiveness of the
Natural Method as a means of Latin instruction.

For well over a hundred years there has existed, mainly in England and the
United States, a small but devoted segment of the Latin teaching community that
has advocated a very different method of Latin instruction from the centuries
old and still nearly universally accepted method that we know as the grammar/
translation method. This group of dissenters has viewed the grammar/transla
tion method, with its heavy dependence on memorization of the complicated
grammatical forms of Latin and its emphasis on written translation exercises,
as being too tedious, too difficult, too boring, and too likely to lead to a loss of
student interest.
This newer method, seen by its adherents as a remedy to the "grammar
grind" that has prevailed for over a thousand years, is known by a number of dif
ferent names, the principal ones currently being the Natural Method, the Direct
Method, and Living Latin. But whatever name is employed, the methods are
essentially the same in that they are all conversational methods and rely heavily
on the use of spoken Latin in the classroom. They are based on the concept that
"the mother tongue must be banished from the classroom." All instruction by
the teacher, all student responses and questions, and all textbooks must be in
Latin only, with no English permitted in the instructional process.
Proponents of the Natural/Direct Method often contend that its use can be
traced back to the Middle Ages and that it was the primary method of instruc
tion until the seventeenth century, when the vernacular began to replace Latin as
the language of the universities. They base this contention on the fact that Latin
was spoken so much in grammar school and university classrooms throughout
these centuries.
If we want to look at the history of the use of the Natural/Direct Method—
at its origins and rationale—it is probably well to begin with this proposition that
its use is merely a return to the methods of medieval times and the Renaissance.

Classical World, vol. 106, no. 3 (2013) Pp. 493-504.

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494 Classical World

It is quite true that Latin was spoken in place of the vernacular almost
entirely in the universities of Europe and England until the seventeenth century,
and it is true that it was spoken a great deal during the last three or four years of
grammar school instruction. What is not true is that the Natural/Direct Method
was ever generally used as a teaching method. For nearly a thousand years, Latin
was spoken almost exclusively in many, many classrooms and on many, many
playgrounds, but it was seldom, if ever, taught by the Natural/Direct Method.
The single most distinguishing feature of the Natural/Direct Method is
that the language being acquired must be taught in that language, and that "the
mother tongue must be banished." This concept was never a part of the teaching
methodology during the six centuries in which the grammar school held sway in
Europe. Boys entering those schools were taught in their native language until
they knew Latin grammar and syntax quite thoroughly and had spent a thousand
hours or more reading, writing, memorizing, and reciting Latin. The books they
used, be they the Colloquies of Corderius or Lily's Grammar, contained English.
Not until the students had been instructed thoroughly in Latin grammar by use
of their mother tongue and had acquired a large Latin vocabulary did the class
room become Latin-only territory. By that time, after a year or two of six hours
a day, six days a week, eleven months a year of preparation, they were expected
to speak Latin on a regular basis, as that was the main point of the grammar
school—to prepare them for the complete Latin environment of the universities.
And by that time they were ready to do just that. But the main instruction
in the language had been accomplished using the mother tongue. What was re
quired after that was practice, practice, and more practice in speaking, reading,
and writing Latin. We can see the pattern of using the mother tongue for instruc
tion during the early stages of the curriculum and the insistence of speaking only
Latin during the later years in the practices of several typical grammar schools in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:

In all four of these curricula [Eton, St. Paul's, Ipswich, and Winchester] the
essentials have been exactly the same. The boys must first memorize their
accidence in English. They then memorize their rules of construction, also in
English, make and memorize illustrative Latins upon them, and begin acquiring
a vocabulary.1

At the Perse School [mid-1600s], almost the whole of the schoolboy's time
would be devoted to the study of Latin. In his first year he would be fully
occupied in learning the elements of Latin accidence, and would probably be
expected to commit to memory lists of common words. In his second year, after
fully mastering grammar, he would turn to an elementary phrase-book, thereby
becoming familiar with the structure and idioms of the language. In his third
year, conversational methods of teaching would be introduced?

1 T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke, vol. 1 (Urbana,
111., 1944) 146.
2 J. M. Gray, A History of the Perse School, Cambridge (Cambridge 1921) 30-31.
(emphasis added)

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 Paedagogus 495

In France, the school at Guyenne declared its aim in 1583—"The purpose of

this school is to learn the speaking of Latin.'"' The method used is described by
William Harrison Woodward:

. . . Beginners were taught the rudiments by aid of the vernacular.

. . . The course required the disticha de moribus of Cato with a French
parallel version. . . . and Estienne's French manual of Latin grammar.
. . . The intimate connection between French and Latin teaching at this stage
is laid down in Estienne's book. . . . This retention of French as the vehicle of
instruction in Latin is to be noted.4

In an article published in 1950, "The Use of English in Latin Teaching in

England in the Sixteenth Century," J. P. Tuck looked at both the textbooks used
and the oral use of the vernacular in the classroom. He found ample amounts
of English in both instances. In the first paragraph of his article, Tuck states
his purpose: "The object of this article is to show that, although Latin speak
ing was a recognized part of the curriculum, there is no evidence that the use
of spoken or written English was dispensed with in the grammar schools."5 On
the contrary, English was used freely in the lower forms when the students were
learning Latin grammar and syntax and amassing a vocabulary. After that had
been accomplished, they attacked spoken Latin with a vengeance, which would
be expected, as fluency in speaking Latin was a major goal of the system. But it
simply would not have occurred to a Latin teacher in 1500 to attempt to teach
beginning students Latin without the use of the students' native language.
Tuck concludes with his summary of the uses of the vernacular in the teach
ing of Latin in the grammar schools of the sixteenth century:

This brief survey of published material shows that there was in existence a large
collection of vernacular texts prepared for school use, and a great many more
have no doubt finally perished. From this material and from other documents
on the curriculum of the grammar schools of the period 1520-40, we can
reconstruct the kind of teaching which went on. First of all, reading in English
demanded by the school statutes was taught as a preliminary to Latin grammar.
. . . Secondly. English writing was taught as a preliminary to Latin writing.
Thirdly, the grammars recited and memorized in the junior forms had their
rules in English, and included instructions for analyzing English sentences by
means of a Latinized English grammar. . . . Fourthly, Latin speaking was at
first taught with the aid of English idiomatic sentences, rendered as literally
as possible into Latin, and the reading of texts in class was accompanied by
construing in English, word for word, to ensure understanding. . . . Fifthly,
the translation from English into Latin was a feature of the curriculum right
through the school. . . ,6

3 W. H. Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, 1400

1600 (New York 1967) 144.
4 Woodward (above, n.3) 144-48.
5 J. P. Tuck, "The Use of English in Latin Teaching in England in the Sixteenth Cen
tury," Durham Research Review 1 (1950) 22-30.
6 Tuck (above, n.5) 27-28.

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496 Classical World

From all the evidence, it is very clear that in the grammar schools of Eng
land, the European mainland, and the American colonies there was never any
effort prior to the nineteenth century to "banish the mother tongue from the
classroom" before a student had developed a firm grasp of Latin grammar, vo
cabulary, and syntax. Hence it is quite clear that the Natural/Direct Method of
teaching Latin was seldom, if ever, used before 1900.
When and where then did the Natural/Direct Method first appear? Here
again, the evidence is clear. The method grew out of efforts in the late-nineteenth
century to reform the teaching of modern foreign languages. Before 1800, the
teaching of a modern foreign language—French, English, or German in particu
lar—was not regarded generally as an important part of the school curriculum.
But as interaction among the countries of Europe became more common, it
became obvious that teaching modern foreign languages was a proper role for
schools. At the same time, it was also obvious that they could not be taught as
Latin had been taught through the centuries—taking up six or seven hours a day,
every day.
So new methods of teaching language were sought, and by the mid-nine
teenth century theories were sprouting up in France and England and particu
larly in Germany that proposed new ways of teaching modern languages. One
of the earliest proponents of a new method was J. S. Blackie, a Scot, who in
1852 delivered two lectures in which he advocated banishing the mother tongue
from the classroom, and teaching by a "direct association of objects with the
foreign word" so as to break the "evil habit of continuing to think in the mother
tongue."7
In 1874, a Frenchman, Lambert Sauveur, published his Introduction to the
Teaching of Living Languages without Grammar or Dictionary, which advocat
ed an "emphasis on the living language through the use of natural conversation
in class and the banishment from the classroom of the mother tongue."8 Sau
veur's conversational teaching method became known as the Natural Method.
But these were really forerunners to the period of what is generally called
"The Reform Movement" or "The Great Reform." The year 1882 is taken as the
actual beginning of the Reform Movement, for it was in that year the German
Wilhelm Vietor published his pamphlet Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren!
Ein Beitrag zur Uberbiirdungsfrage (Language Teaching Must Start Afresh! A
Contribution to the Question of Stress and Overwork in Schools). Vietor's pam
phlet was a trumpet call for reform of modern foreign language teaching that
brought forth an outpouring of ideas on pedagogical methods. Vietor's cry of
"Tod den Regeln und Satzen!" ("Death to rules and sentences!") was taken up
by modern foreign language teachers across Europe.
The Reformers differed on minor points, but they were remarkably united
in their main theories.

The Reform Movement was founded on three basic principles: the primacy of
speech, the centrality of the connected text as the kernel of the teaching-learning
process, and the absolute priority of an oral methodology in the classroom.
Though these principles were variously interpreted by different writers, there
were no serious disagreements about their basic objectives.'

7 E. W. Hawkins, Modern Languages in the Curriculum (Cambridge 1981) 119-20.

8 Hawkins (above, n.7) 127.
A. P. R. Howatt, A History of English Language Teaching (Oxford 1984) 171.

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 Paedagogus 497

It was the joint insistence on the first and third of these principles—the
primacy of speech and the absolute rule of "banish the mother tongue"—that led
to a large number of the methods becoming known collectively as "The Direct
Method." Because the methods of the reformers differed so slightly, the name
Direct Method over time became the one used in general for all the others. In
1904 Otto Jespersen, in his How to Teach a Foreign Language, listed nineteen
names for the method, including "The New Method," "The Natural Method,"
"The Direct Method," "The Conversation Method," "The Anti-Grammatical
Method," and "The Anti-Translational Method." His personal preference was
the "Living" method.10
The period of reform lasted from 1882 until the outbreak of World War 1
in 1914. Although theories abounded and countless experiments were tried in
many countries of Europe, the method was never generally adopted in any coun
try. Many factors contributed to the failure of the Direct Method and the failure
of the Great Reform—some inherent in the method itself and some external to
the movement.
Certainly the war contributed to the failure of the Direct Method. Germany
had provided the initial theorization that led to the movement, and after 1914,
outside of Germany, all things German became unwelcome. Also many able
young language teachers died in the conflict. And in general, the war introduced
an atmosphere in which there was little will for experimentation.
The factor involving the teacher requirements of the method was of more
lasting importance. The Natural/Direct Method requires an extremely talented
teacher—talented linguistically, talented histrionically, and talented in salesman
ship (selling the idea that the best way to learn is to forbid the use of one's na
tive language in the learning process). Most teachers were unable or unwilling
to "gambol about the classroom" to express the idea of "running," as J. Levy in
1878 described Natural Method teaching."
A British government Board of Education publication issued in 1912 as
sessed the progress of the newer, "direct" methods of instruction of modern
foreign languages and reported that there had been practically no progress in
the typical grammar school. A few schools that had the sort of high-energy, very
talented teacher that the Direct Method demands had had some successes, but
there was little use of the method in the average grammar school. The circular
reported that, "In many schools which claim to have adopted the newer meth
ods, the staff is unequal to the task."12
The coup de grace to the Direct Method and to the Reform Movement came
in 1917 with the publication of Harold Palmer's The Scientific Study and Teach
ing of Languages. Palmer was the best known and most influential scholar of lin
guistics of his time and a strong advocate for change in the methods of teaching
of modern foreign languages. Having earlier been interested in the possibilities
of the Direct Method, he turned firmly against it with his book of 1917. Palmer
saw in the banishing of the mother tongue, particularly in the early stages of
learning a second language, what he termed the "Fallacy of the Direct Method."13
Striking at the heart of the rationale behind all of the conversational methods,
Palmer wrote:

10 O. lespersen. How to Teach a Foreign Language (London 1904) 2, 192.

11 L. G. Kelly, 25 Centuries of Language Teaching (Rowley, Mass., 1969) 11.
12 Hawkins (above, n.7) 134.
15 H. E. Palmer, The Scientific Study and Teaching of Languages (London 1917; repr.,
1968) 59.

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498 Classical World

The exclusion of translation (using the mother tongue) as a regular means of

conveying the meaning of words is an uneconomical and unnatural principle....
You, a teacher of English, are giving lessons to a Norwegian. Your pupil asks you
the meaning or meanings of the English verb 'to realize.' Do not waste twenty
precious minutes in forging definitions which will be imperfectly understood;
refer your pupil to a good English-Norwegian dictionary. . . . The vehicular
language for all explanatory matter should be that which is best known by the
student. . . . Strange to say, methods exist the object of which is to teach the
most elementary vocabulary of a foreign language, and in which the "directions
for use" are given in precisely the language of which the student is presumed to
be ignorant. . . . Our arguments show with cumulative force that the exclusion
of the mother tongue is generally, if not always, a vicious procedure productive
of most harmful results.14

In 1918, something in the way of a final report on the Direct Method was
issued by a committee established to evaluate the state of modern foreign lan
guage teaching in England. That report, commonly called the The Leathes Re
port, found:

The Direct Method has certain inevitable dangers. ... If attention is

concentrated too exclusively upon the spoken language, too much is apt to fall
upon the teacher; the contribution of the pupil is apt to be slight. . . students
are not so well grounded, knowledge is superficial and inaccurate. . . . After all
the effort that has been made during the last two decades this verdict is very
disappointing.15

The history of the emergence and experimentation with the Natural Method
is quite clear. The Method was first devised in the late 1800s in an effort to re
vitalize the teaching of modern foreign languages. It was tried with little general
success over the next thirty years, and by 1920 had practically faded from use.
But in the meantime, in a most curious development, a number of classi
cal language teachers, in a truly remarkable leap of the imagination, theorized
that the new Natural/Direct Method, first and foremost a spoken method that
had been invented to teach living languages, might be used to teach a dead
language—a language no longer spoken by any nation on earth. And so, around
1900, attention turned to attempts to teach Latin by the Natural/Direct Method.
W. H. D. Rouse, one of the foremost classicists of the early twentieth cen
tury and a brilliant linguist, is generally given credit for first applying the Direct
Method to the teaching of Latin, and he was certainly the one man who was most
responsible for popularizing it. In 1890, at age twenty-seven. Rouse accepted a
position at Cheltenham College, where he first gained his enthusiasm for the
Direct Method of teaching Latin. As Rouse's biographer recounts it:

The staff (at Cheltenham) included several modern language teachers who were
enthusiasts for the use of the Direct Method in modern language teaching: that

14 Palmer (above, n.13) 60-61, 173, 175.

15 Gt. Brit. Committee to Inquire into the Position of Modern Languages in the Edu
cational System of Great Britain, Report (London 1918) 55.

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 Paedagogus 499

is, teaching a language by speaking it. The impetus for this movement had come
from Germany, and in particular from the campaigning enthusiasm of Wilhelm
Vietor, whose polemical pamphlet Language Teaching Must Start Afresh: A
Contribution to the Question of Stress and Overwork in Schools had appeared
in 1882, and formed part of a contemporary German debate on that subject.
But since one of his major targets was the stultifying study of grammar, the
contemporary teaching of Latin and Greek inevitably took much of the weight
of his attack. ... A few months before Rouse arrived in Cheltenham, the school
had been the venue for a conference of the reformers, so that he will probably
have been made aware of the issues.16

C. W. E. Peckett. a former student of Rouse and later the Headmaster of the Pri
ory School, Shrewsbury, sets a later date on the beginning of the Direct Method
experiment with Latin:

As far as I know the Direct Method of teaching French was invented by M.

Chouville and M. de Glehn when they were teaching at the Perse School in
the early 1900s. The Headmaster, Dr. W. H. D. Rouse, found their work so
successful that he decided to adapt their method to the teaching of Latin.17

In any event, is seems clear that if Rouse was not the first to consider the
idea that a dead language could be taught by the Natural Method, it was he who
first put the concept into practice on any scale, and it was he who oversaw the
only sustained use of the method for the teaching of Latin, and the only instance
in history that the method has been used for Latin with any degree of success.
Rouse and the Perse School form one of the most remarkable stories in the his
tory of teaching, and it is to that story we now turn.
The story of Latin taught by the Natural/Direct Method centers around this
one man and his school. Rouse, born in 1863 in India of a Baptist missionary
father, became a brilliant linguist, the best-known classical scholar of his day, an
extremely talented and energetic teacher, a translator of Greek and Latin—his
Iliad and Odyssey are still in print—a founding coeditor of the Loeb Classical
Library, a songwriter, a dramatist, a cyclist, an eccentric, and the celebrated
Headmaster of the Perse School for twenty-six years, from 1902 until 1928.
When Rouse was appointed Headmaster of the Perse, the school had fallen
in reputation and in size. Within a very few years he gathered about himself a
brilliant staff of teachers and had revitalized the school. Early in his career at
the Perse, Rouse introduced into the curriculum the Natural or Direct Method
of teaching Latin. In spite of all his other accomplishments, it was this twenty
six-year-long experiment with the use of the Natural Method that brought him
so much attention. During those years, he became known as the founder, the
most prominent practitioner, and the greatest publicist of the Natural or Direct
Method of teaching Latin.
Prior to his appointment as Headmaster of the Perse, Rouse had taught
Latin and Greek at several grammar schools—Bedford, Cheltenham, and Rugby.
At both Cheltenham and Rugby he had become aware of experiments using the

16 C. Stray, The Living Word: W. H. D. Rouse and the Crisis of Classics in Edwardian
England (London 1992) 12-13.
17 C. W. E. Peckett, "The Oral Method." JACT Review , 2d ser., 11 (1992) 4.

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500 Classical World

Natural Method in the teaching of modern foreign languages, principally French

and German. He saw in his appointment to the Perse an opportunity to try the
method with the classical languages:

In 1904 Dr. W. H. D. Rouse. . . began to develop "The Direct Method" of

teaching Latin and Greek. . . . The method has been called "direct" because it
seeks to connect, in the pupil's mind, the word or phrase directly with the object
it describes, avoiding the intervening obstacles of grammar and translation.18

Much later, in 1927, just before his retirement. Rouse explained how he origi
nally became interested in the idea of using the Natural Method in the teaching
of Latin:

After a few years spent as a Schoolmaster. 1 felt a conviction that there was
something radically wrong. . . . The trouble lay in the spirit of the boys. . . . With
the majority of boys, the work was an unmitigated grind, disliked and, when
possible, evaded . . . why this was so, I did not know . . . the whole thing was
dead. 1 had only a feeling that the key to the situation lay in making the work
real by some means, and conversation suggested itself as a possible means.1"

And teaching by conversation it would be for the following twenty-six years—

and not just for Latin and Greek. For while the classical languages were certainly
at the center of the curriculum Rouse developed at the Perse School, the course
of study included other languages as well. Rouse was first and foremost a lin
guist, and his school was for the most part a school of languages. He advocated
beginning French at age nine and adding other languages as a boy advanced. In
his history of the Perse School, S. !. D. Mitchell outlines Rouse's curriculum:
"He planned that every boy should learn four or five languages. . . . French at
9, Latin at 12, Greek at 14, and German or Italian at 16."20 Of course all the
languages continued until the boy left the Perse, so in his last years he would be
studying four languages concurrently.
Rouse was an extremely energetic and tireless teacher. His biographer
Mitchell points out that "He was a teacher rather than an administrator. No
other headmaster can ever have had a full a time-table as his—eighteen periods
a week with the Sixth Form alone."21 He conducted his Latin classes in accor
dance with pure Natural Method standards, with no English permitted. Rouse
described his method in a speech he delivered at a conference in 1913:

The Direct Method is to associate an act or a thing, and later a thought, with its
expression in a foreign language, without the interference of an English word.
For example, we do not say, "The Latin for I walk is ambulo," but the teacher
actually does walk and, doing so, says, "Ambulo." When a certain number of
words are thus learnt these are used to explain others, and Latin is learnt very
much as we learned English.22

18 C. W. E. Peckett, "Direct Method and the Classics," CI 46 (1951) 331, 333.

19 Stray (above, n.16) 19-20.
20 S. J. D. Mitchell, Perse: A History of the Perse School, 1615-1976 (Cambridge
1976) 132.
21 Mitchell (above, n.20) 113.
22 Mitchell (above, n.20) 111.

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 Paedagogus 501

Rouse was an able publicist, and through an organization he founded to

promote the Natural Method of teaching Latin, The Association for the Reform
of Latin Teaching (which still exists as the Association for Latin Teaching), he
was able to spread his message throughout England and beyond. His classroom
was a lively, engaging forum, and he encouraged friends and skeptics alike to vis
it the school and observe the teaching. In a letter to Rouse, members of the Perse
Board of Governors wrote, "Your experiment is being watched all over England.
. . . It would be a thousand pities to see it collapse now it has got so far."23
In addition to being a brilliant linguist with a great deal of energy, Rouse
had a flair for acting that allowed him to present to visitors to his classroom an
engaging demonstration of the Natural Method in action. Nearly everyone who
observed his class left with a very good opinion of the method. There were, how
ever, two questions that dogged Rouse and his "great experiment," as he called
it, throughout his years at the Perse. These were questions relating to any objec
tive assessment of the ability of the Perse students compared to students at other,
more traditional, schools, and questions relating to the difficulty of replicating
Rouse's apparent success in the classroom.
Rouse always had a noted dislike of testing and would not permit his stu
dents to take the annual Board of Education examinations. C. W. E. Peckett
saw this lack of testing in a positive light: "Since we were not allowed to take
outside examinations, we never wasted our mental energy in learning to de
feat examiners."24 But another former student, F. R. Dale, saw that a failure to
measure the success of the program objectively invited skepticism: "It was also
unfortunate that Dr. Rouse . . .refused to submit his boys regularly to any public
examination."25 Rouse always regarded his teaching by the Natural Method as
an experiment, yet he steadfastly refused to allow any evaluation of the results
of that experiment.
The second problem that always attended the use of the Natural Method
by Rouse had to do with the inability of anyone outside of the Perse School to
replicate what had been seen in his classroom. In articles written to newspapers
and journals by those who had observed his classes, we see the same comments
again and again:

And then I remembered how Dr. Rouse and Mr. Appleton also could not explain
how they taught. When asked they could only answer: 'Come and see some of
our lessons, then you will know." Many people came to their lessons and thought
them amazingly effective. Then they went away and tried the method in their
own classrooms; and failed utterly. So they decided that Appleton and Rouse
were either geniuses, who had some special gifts, or else they were charlatans.26

In fact, the Direct Method sixth form does not admit of widespread expansion.
What a Rouse could, and a Peckett can do, how many of us would care to
attempt?27

23 Stray (above, n.16) 19.

24 Peckett (above, n. 17) 6.
25 F. R. Dale, "Latin by the Direct Method," G&R 11 (1933) 68.
26 Peckett (above, n.17) 7.
27 F. R. Dale, "W. H. D. Rouse and the Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching,"
Didaskalos 2 (1964) 113.

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502 Classical World

Andrew Lang asserted that "Dr. Rouse's method is an admirable method, but
only a very clever man, I am afraid, can employ it. The master must be as
thoroughly alive as he makes the pupils alive; and this vivacity is not given by
nature to all schoolmasters. ";s

After hearing Rouse for six weeks and observing the results with the class, most
of those who were there left for their own schools wildly enthusiastic to try out
his method. ... In almost every number of the Classical Weekly issued since
then some teacher has given his experience in teaching, or rather attempting to
teach, Latin by the direct method, for few seem to have succeeded.-''

That the Natural Method was extremely dependent on the skill of the teach
er and seemed to be nearly impossible to be used successfully by a teacher of
average ability did not go unnoticed by the British government. In 1923 a gov
ernment committee published a report on the state of classics teaching. The
committee responsible for the report had sent three members to inspect the
Perse School and took evidence from Rouse and his teachers. Among the conclu
sions resulting from their investigations, there appeared at the end of the three
hundred page report a recommendation on the use of the Direct Method for
teaching Latin:

The Direct Method, though in the early stages it has proved to be in many
respects successful when employed by specially competent teachers, is not
suitable for general adoption.30

Rouse continued at the Perse School until 1928, when he retired at the age of
sixty-five. During his long, twenty-six-year tenure at the school, his attention
was always centered on what he called his "Great Experiment," the teaching of
Latin by the Natural Method. The concerns of his admirers and detractors alike
that his methods were hard to replicate in any other school were proven to be
quickly justified when, within one year of his retirement, the teaching system at
the Perse began to fail. In October 1929 the British Board of Education, which
had for the previous twenty years given the Perse School grants based on its
experimentation with the Natural Method, reviewed the changed situation. The
answer came quickly, "The Board does not feel justified, in view of the changes
and the personnel responsible for the classical teaching, in continuing the grant
after July 1930."31 Within two years of Rouse's retirement, his "Great Experi
ment" was over, and the Perse returned to the method that had been used there
prior to Rouse's headmastership.
Rouse was not unaware of the problems inherent in the Natural Method
and realized that he had failed to prove the adaptability of the system on a wide
scale. F. R. Dale noted:

28 Mitchell (above, n.20) 119-20.

29 M. J. Russell, "The Direct Method in Teaching Latin: Some Objections," CJ 12
(1916) 210.
50 Gt. Brit. Committee to Inquire into the Position of Classics in the Educational
System of the United Kingdom. Report (London 1923) 276.
51 Mitchell (above, n.20) 175.

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 Paedagogus 503

Whatever the prospects of the Direct Method . . . the ranks of Tuscany have
forborne to cheer. Rouse did give his views to a meeting of the Headmasters'
Conference. He felt that he was regarded as a crank or an impostor, hawking a
gold brick.3

ln conclusion, any evaluation of the efficacy of the Natural/Direct Method

of Latin instruction must take into account three considerations—the historical
record of its use, the soundness of its fundamental tenets, and its compatibility
with the generally accepted goals of Latin instruction.
Regarding the historical record, it can be said with certainty that Rouse's
retirement brought to an end the longest and most thorough attempt to employ
the Natural Method in teaching Latin. Conditions more conducive to success
than those that obtained at the Perse under Rouse cannot be imagined. In Rouse
and his staff there existed a group of extremely talented and energetic teachers
entirely devoted to the Method, and the British government very much wanted
to see the project succeed, having supported it at the Perse with grants for twen
ty years. And yet, at the end of the day, the verdict was negative: "The Direct
Method is not suitable for general adoption."
But Rouse's proselytizing had borne fruit and had resulted in a sizable fel
lowship of true believers who felt that it still might be possible to employ the
Natural Method successfully. Indeed, that idea persists to this day. The organi
zation Rouse founded to spread the word, The Association for Latin Teaching,
continues and its monthly publication, Latin Teaching, still advocates the use of
the Natural Method. And over the years since the Perse experiment ended there
have been a number of short-lived tries at the use of the Method. But those at
tempts have been, almost without exception, tied to one energetic and talented
teacher who was a strong advocate of conversational Latin and a good enough
salesmen to convince a school's administration of the Method's merits. But tied
so firmly as they are to single individual advocates, Natural Method programs
seldom outlast the tenures of those individuals—which is exactly what occurred
at the Perse with Rouse.
Regarding the soundness of the theoretical underpinnings of the Natural/
Direct Method, there are serious questions. The most basic idea behind the
method—that it is worthwhile spending a considerable amount of time learning
to speak a dead, unspoken language—is so counter intuitive that it requires a
great leap of faith to embrace it. Its advocates argue that in learning to speak
Latin, a student learns to "think in Latin," and can progress more rapidly to
ward an ability to read ancient Latin literature. This is an unproven theory, and
even if true would still leave unsolved what seems the insurmountable problem
of the two-year time constraint most Latin students face. A second theoretical
issue relates to the stipulation that the "mother tongue must be banished from
the classroom." Harold Palmer referred to this idea as the "Fallacy of the Direct
Method." Here the question is: Can it ever make sense to deny a student, in
learning anything, his most valuable learning tool—his native language?

32 Dale (above, n.27) 111.

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504 Classical World

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the failure of the Natural Method
to achieve wide acceptance stems from its incompatibility, in comparison to the
grammar/translation method, with the major goals of Latin instruction. Which
ever of those goals we look at—be it the gaining of an acquaintance with Roman
literature, or the training and disciplining of the mind that the complex, precise
grammar of Latin affords, or the goal of understanding English grammar more
thoroughly, or help in the development of a larger and more nuanced English vo
cabulary—the Natural Method fares poorly in the comparison. The great amount
of class time that must be devoted during the first two years of instruction to
learning basic Latin conversation greatly reduces the time available to spend
on those instructional goals. Hence, there is less time available for reading and
discussing Latin literature. And the de-emphasis of grammar and an antipathy
toward the memorization of grammatical forms that provided the initial impetus
for the Natural Method at its founding a century ago—indeed, one of the names
used for the method early in its history was the "Anti-Grammatical Method"—
work counter to the goal of instilling mental discipline and mental agility in the
student. In addition, the vocabulary attained in conversational methods is much
smaller than that attained in reading/translation methods, and the syntax of sen
tences in beginning conversation is vastly less complex than that of written Latin
literature—all factors that work against the goal of attaining a better grasp of
English vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and writing style.
In short, it must be said—given the poor results of past experiments with
the Natural/Direct Method, its lack of a truly rational set of underlying premises,
and its lack of compatibility with the primary goals of teaching Latin—that it
is difficult to view it as a viable instructional method for the teaching of Latin.

MADISON. VA.
wingatehenry@gmail.com

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