By Makayla Mason

Batavia High school has a wide range of classes to take. Some options are unusual, like Latin in the language department. Latin, though it would definitely be an interesting class to take, is it the most useful one to take?

Batavia High offers Spanish and French, like most schools, but it also offers Latin, an unusual option for sure. Many kids coming in to the start of the new school year have to pick if they want to take Spanish, Latin or French.

“I took latin because I didn’t like Spanish or French. Both of my siblings took Latin and I thought I would look interesting on a college application,” said Kathryn Krypel, a first year Latin student at Batavia High school.

Latin would certainly look interesting on a college application, but would colleges find it useful when considering a student for that school? Wouldn’t a language that was still spoken today be more useful to learn? Students in Latin disagree. They think that colleges would be more impressed with seeing Latin than any other language the school could offer because of how difficult it is.

Even if colleges aren’t impressed, is latin as useful to learn as a language that is actually still spoken today? Latin, being the root of many languages, would be useful when you go to learn other languages, but why would people just not choose to take the class of the language that is still spoken?

Latin is the base of our language and is used a lot in science. Although I knew it would be harder than the other options at school I figured I’d try it.” said Chandler Shoaf, a first year Latin student at Batavia High school.

Latin would be useful to take if you were planning on going into the medical or science field, but otherwise it would be a better choice to go with a language that is still regularly spoken like Spanish or French. Colleges might think it is an interesting thing to see, but it would depend on the college to decide if they thought it was more useful to have than a student that spoke a regularly used language. No matter what language you decide to take at Batavia there will be plenty of college opportunities down the road.