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In November 2025, Pope Leo XIV signed new regulations for the Roman Curia stating that institutions “shall ordinarily draw up their acts in ” — a quiet but symbolically significant retreat from Latin’s exclusive role.

Leo’s wariness of Latin is understandable. When the “Habemus Papam” declaring him Pope was delivered in Latin, it encountered , reigniting debate about whether Latin is still useful in the modern era.

Rumors of Latin’s demise are greatly exaggerated, but school districts are planning its funeral. That needs to stop; the first step in planning for Latin’s continued life is to resist the elitist label that studying the language imparts. Latin is an equity tool, and we don’t acknowledge that enough. 

Latin programs across the country are being euthanized. In Needham, Massachusetts, a more than $2 million budget shortfall combined with declining enrollment led the public school district to eliminate its entire high school Latin program. Only 62 students were enrolled across four classes, compared to 945 in Spanish. Latin 1 had already been removed the prior year.

Over in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the district decided to Latin out of the middle school entirely — removing it grade by grade over three years — while technically keeping it at the high school for now. The high school Latin teacher warned it would be unsustainable: Without a middle school feeder, most students simply wouldn’t switch languages.

A t across Denver Public Schools put Latin at risk at Riverside High School, where the teacher noted that the lack of Latin in middle schools was already contributing to low high school enrollment. 

Cutting Latin off in middle school is the death knell for the language. Middle school Latin gets cut first due to low enrollment, which then makes high school Latin unsustainable, creating a self-reinforcing decline; about 80% of students who took Latin in middle school had been continuing it in high school.

That’s why the language is on life support. Only about 1,513 public high schools teach Latin, out of roughly 24,000 high schools total —  about of schools. That’s just public schools; private and Catholic schools push the number higher, but a comprehensive combined figure isn’t tracked precisely. Estimates put total K–12 Latin enrollment at around 210,000 students, which is about of all students studying a foreign language.

This decline is not new: High school Latin students dropped from around 700,000 in , largely due to the post-Sputnik push toward math and science. More recently, Advanced Placement Latin exam takers fell from 6,083 in 2019 to 4,336 in 2025,suggesting continued erosion at the advanced level.

That’s bad for English speakers, as Latin forms the root of nearly two thirds of English vocabulary, especially the advanced words used in science, law and literature. For school-related vocabulary, the figure is 90%. Studying Latin can strengthen reading comprehension, which is why some schools still offer the course. 

It’s time to address the real reason why Latin studies have been declining without many scholars becoming too concerned: the elitism debate. 

Classics always had an elite image — classical knowledge was historically the hallmark of gentility — and parochial and private schools maintained classical standards longer than most public ones.This difference in offerings is most stark in the U.K.: only of private schools.

In the U.S., Latin is especially concentrated in certain types of schools: elite independent prep schools — such as Exeter, Andover and Groton — and Catholic secondary schools where it’s often required. 

But a third type of school is breaking that loop: charter schools. They demonstrate how to keep Latin alive. Classical Charter Schools in the South Bronx offer a tuition-free education in one of the most underserved congressional districts in the U.S., with Latin as a core part of the curriculum. Latin instruction starts in , framed not as prestige-building but as a practical tool: improving English grammar, spelling, vocabulary and readiness to learn other languages.The idea is to flip the script: give low-income kids the same linguistic tools that elite schools have always hoarded.

Latin critics have pointed out that no one speaks the language but that’s not exactly true.  Linguists like Tim Pulju argue that Latin never truly stopped being spoken — it continued in Italy, Gaul, Spain and elsewhere, g into the Romance languages over centuries.There’s an important distinction:  Classical Latin of Cicero and Virgil became fixed and may have died conversationally but Vulgar Latin — what ordinary Romans actually spoke — kept evolving into what we now call Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. 

For Latino students especially, Latin can be framed as the root of their own language, not a foreign elite artifact but something ancestral and relevant. 

Latin is very much alive but it’s limping. Presenting it as an equity tool rather than a classical tradition can change who sees themselves as a potential Latin student and can change curricula — and lives.

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