Latin 51 Syllabus
Dr. Jacques Bailly
Office: 481 Main St. Rm. 300
Phone: 6-0993
E-Mail: jbailly@zoo.uvm.edu
Office hours: TBA: I am most available mornings MWF and after class.

Attendance: Well, duh, you get out what you put in. No makeups ever for anything. Absence will lower your grade as much as it deserves to be lowered—100% divided by the number of class sessions times the number of your absences (beyond 3) seems about right. While I won't take formal attendance, if I notice that you in particular are absent more than twice, I'll start recording your absences. Let's just not go there.

Texts: all available via this web-site.

Exercises: there will be something assigned every day.

Quizzes: There will be a very short review grammar and vocabulary quiz on Wed. of each week at the beginning of class.

Tests: There will be two midterms and a final. They will include translation, grammar and vocabulary, sight translation, English to Latin translation, and perhaps a request that you write a paragraph in English about the content of a passage. There will be a take-home portion. The final will be similar.

Class Project: There will be one, details later.

Grades: I never “give” grades.You earn them. I am, willingly and happily if high, unwillingly and unhappily if low, required to record them.
91-100%=A, 81-90%=B, 71-80%=C, 61-70%=D, 60% or lower fails. Plus and minus for the top three and bottom three points of each range respectively.

Midterms, Final, and Project    20% each
Quizzes                                        20%
I will drop one quiz only in case of an absence.

Please keep a record of your grades.

Extra Credit: Memorize Latin poetry (Lucretius). To get 1% added to your final grade, you must memorize: 3 lines if you have a “D,” 6 lines if you have a “C,” 9 lines if you have a “B,” 12 lines if you have an “A-,” and 25 lines if you have an “A.” You may earn a maximum of 4% added to your final grade.

Contacting me: Phone, e-mail, drop by the office (see top for info.)

My Philosophy: Latin affords us a window onto philosophical systems of great power and meaning, both historically and actually. Reading the texts in Latin gives us the opportunity to read the author’s actual words: if we do not understand them precisely, why bother reading the original? Good translations are, after all, available. If we do not evaluate the text for its significance to us, why study it? As the eagle knows the mountain, so we should know the text.

Education is not preparation for life, it is life.
Paraphrase of John Dewey.