“You have been admitted to participate in the ‘Living Greek in Greece’ Program. Admissions this year were extremely competitive, but your application showed a strong background in Greek and a love of humanistic learning,” Joseph Garnjobst, chair of the Hillsdale College Classics Department, read in an acceptance letter addressed to him. “We are looking forward to spending time with you this summer in the Garden of the Muses.”
Garnjobst will attend The Paideia Institute’s “Living Greek in Greece” course this summer, July 30 to Aug. 14, 2016. “Living Greek in Greece” is a two-week, intensive course in which participants fully immerse themselves in the Ancient Greek language.
Open to both faculty members and undergraduate students, the Paideia Institute requires that its students complete one year in Attic Greek, reaching the ability to read the language, which is no problem for Garnjobst, who has had three decades of experience with Greek.
“I am glad that the Paideia Institute saw fit that there was a place for someone like me there, as opposed to limiting it and saying that I’m overqualified,” Garnjobst said.
About 15 students in attendance will take two seminar-style classes in conversational Greek, as well as read parts of Homer’s “The Iliad” in Greek. The institute will offer supplemental courses in addition to the main courses.
These Greek classes will be something entirely new to Garnjobst.
“I have discussed ‘The Iliad’ in English plenty, and talked about Greek grammar in English, but never in Greek,” Garnjobst said.
Founded by Father Reginald Foster, a Latinist for the Vatican, the Paideia Institute offers six different immersion courses in Latin and Greek throughout Europe.
“Paideia’s programs have two goals: to provide rigorous and intensive periods of study of Latin and Greek from all periods and to inspire participants to form a close personal relationship with the classics through extraordinary learning experiences,” the Institute’s website stated.
Despite the fact that Garnjobst will be staying at a resort in the Peloponnese, he plans to use his experiences to enhance his own teaching of Greek at the college.
“I am going to work 12 to16 hours a day composing Greek everyday and coming up with lesson plans. I’m going to come back and scare the daylights out of my incoming freshman,” said Garnjobst. “Once they get over that initial shock, I hope that it is a real game changer for them.”
Garnjobst said he hopes to enhance students’ overall performance by immersing beginners in the Greek language. With the study of “dead” languages, Garnjobst recognized the difficulty when it comes to the actual speaking of the language.
“I think one of the things that makes the study of Greek and Latin so difficult is that it isn’t spoken, that looking at words on a page without that spoken element really has you studying that language with at least one arm tied behind your back,” he said. “It becomes more of an intellectual puzzle or distraction, rather than a language that is actually spoken and understood.”
One of Garnjobst’s Greek students sophomore Emily Barnum agreed that the speaking aspect will benefit the classroom approach to the language.
“The idea of bringing spoken greek into the beginning classes is a great idea,” Barnum said. “I just started my first spoken language this semester, German, and what I have noticed is that speaking a language does help you learn the reading and writing part and it is so much more natural. It turns it from being a more analytical endeavor and makes it more intuitive.”
Garnjobst is open to the possibility of either himself or a fellow colleague taking a similar Paideia Institute course in Latin in the future for the enhancement of the college’s Latin program.
“I hope that this is something that will affect the way that I teach for the foreseeable future” said Garnjobst, “I am going to take this opportunity and make the absolute most of it.”