The twin anxieties about learning in our time are scatteredness of information and the undermining of mental discipline. In response, classical studies specialize in mental discipline while opening out onto a wide range of subjects from a readily grasped core.

Groton encourages the study of Latin and Greek because of the particular benefits they offer in the development of language skills and the perspective they offer into our culture in a broader sense. Latin and Greek are the basis for several modern languages and can be useful aides in learning them. However, the study of a classical language is fundamentally different in its approach and goals from that of a modern one. While the modern language devotes much of its attention to developing fluency of speech and listening, the classical puts its focus primarily on the structure of the language itself. It encourages precision with words and offers valuable lessons for close reading and written expression in English.

Beyond language skills themselves, these classical languages offer the best access to the cultures of Greece and Rome. These cultures form the basis of much of our modern thinking. Go wherever you wish in literature, history, art, architecture, philosophy, government--even math and science--and you will find that the Greeks and Romans have been there before you. They won't be able to answer your every twenty first-century question, but they will usually have perceived it, and thought about it with genuine perception; and the clarity of their approach, reflected in the kind of language they use, will train you well to pick up on your own thinking where they left off. To a culture like ours, so preoccupied with its own immediate present, these languages open channels not only to the classical world, but to all the interwoven cultural traditions through the two thousand years that separate us.