Excerpt from The Teaching of Modern Languages The question of methods has doubtless occupied the attention of teachers as long as language teaching has existed. There was a time, however, when there was no dispute regarding those questions which are to-day most generally discussed; when each language teacher, apart from the slight peculiarities of his own individuality, pursued the same course. In this place we are interested merely in foreign-language teaching; and in our discussion we must begin at a point before civilized people, in the accepted meaning of the word, inhabited North America. There was at that time in the Old World but one foreign language in the schools: Latin. It was not until later that Greek was added; it was not until after the destruction of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) that highly educated Greeks fled toward the West, taking with them their language and the remains of their art. Latin became thereafter the common language of the educated, of the learned. Whoever would rise to higher refinement, whoever would enjoy the beauties of the classics, was obliged to learn the ancient languages, - there was no other possibility. And the purpose of such study indicated at once and in a perfectly natural manner the way to be followed - and the means of making the start in this way. Students wished to understand the classics. Without further ado they took up the various authors and began to decipher them, gradually becoming at home in the language. In the Latin schools Cicero was put into the hands of the beginners. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.