Not really sure what to make of this

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jul/31/latin-introduced-40-state-secondaries-england

Except it’s just created a headache for the poor buggers in DfE who are involved in the Becoming a Teacher service.

In pictura est puella nomine Cornelia

Gallia in tres partis divisa est. (First line of Caesar’s Gallic Wars part 1, my set text for Latin O’level many years ago.)

In and of itself, great. Be good to get more kids learning about the classics etc.

In the context that they’re cutting funding for things like music, drama and fine art because they’re not STEM subjects and it will pwn the libtards at the Guardian, but not Latin because they did it at Eton and it’s therefore fine…. Sigh.

Seem to recall our French A level teacher saying that doing Latin would have made learning other languages easier.

Though I am so old that we were still under Roman occupation at the time

Seem to recall our French A level teacher saying that doing Latin would have made learning other languages easier.

My Spanish teacher in Granada said the same, but only in the context of learning Latin based languages. **** all ‘extra’ use for Slavic/Cantonese as far as I can tell.

He did have a PHD (or the Italian (not Spanish) equivalent) in Latin so maybe had a skewed viewpoint on how to learn

Was an option at my school. Could choose Latin or Classics. I chose Classics. Good to have more choices but not if other subjects are removed to make way for a relatively pointless language.

I thought the only modern use for Latin was for dumb toffs trying to fool gullible voters into thinking they were suitable leaders.

In a school textbook all those years ago…
Latin is a language
As dead as dead could be
It killed the ancient Romans
Now it’s killing me.

We had compulsory Latin at school for a year or so, complete waste of time and this is just a pointless squirrel thrown out by the worst government in living memory.

Seem to recall our French A level teacher saying that doing Latin would have made learning other languages easier.

Our German teacher said we all needed to learn to speak English before we could learn any foreign language, state secondary on the West Coast of Scotland 😂

Did Latin at school for a couple of years. Also German and French. All children should do German, French and Spanish (ideally Italian too). Language skills are fundamental to supporting good educational outcomes. But Latin is dead and this is more pointless todger waving by the cretinous Boris and chums.

In the context that they’re cutting funding for things like music, drama and fine art because they’re not STEM subjects and it will pwn the libtards at the Guardian, but not Latin because they did it at Eton and it’s therefore fine…. Sigh.

The thing is – Eton’s quite big on the arts – it churns out far more actors, directors, comedians, writers,  musicians, composers, artists and designers than it does anyone else (or at least its only its arty alumni that have ever managed to do anything noteworthy)

In fact if you scroll through the list of old Etonians on Wikipedia it looks like STEM subjects aren’t really the school’s strong point. 🙂

Meanwhile… schools and sixth form colleges all over the country struggling to provide modern language teaching.

All children should do German, French and Spanish

Despite doing French A level i’d Say nah to French & German- Spanish has more widespread speakers so will be more useful.

I also did O level Latin – was top of my year (only 2 classes took Latin😄).

As much as I would have loved to study it at A level and it would have been an easy subject for me, I couldn’t see a future use compared to a modern language & maths.

Only found out from my Latin teacher after I sat my A levels if I had taken Latin he could have got me onto his old college.

I did Latin O level as it meant I could avoid Rugby. Can’t say I remember much of it…

MoreCashThanDash
Full Member

Seem to recall our French A level teacher saying that doing Latin would have made learning other languages easier.

That is true. But how many languages do you plan to learn? “If you learned Latin first then learning french would be easier” “Yeah but if I had to learn latin first, I wouldn’t learn french at all”

You know how they sometimes have to teach people old computer code languages because there’s ancient obsolete computer hardware that’s still in use? This all smacks of the same thing but entirely so that people can still communicate with Jacob Rees Mogg.

Romanes Eunt Domus!

As a Latin A Level enjoyer way back when, I see relatively little value in it at a time when support for living languages and non-STEM stuff is struggling. If you are learning French and Spanish alongside it, yes, there’s an argument that it ‘makes it easier’, but not really enough to justify ploughing through Caesar’s Gallic Wars for years.

Smells more like someone sucking up to our glorious emperor just because he ambled through Classics at uni and likes to pop the odd Latin phrase into his wiffling.

The thing is – Eton’s quite big on the arts – it churns out far more actors, directors, comedians, writers, musicians, composers, artists and designers than it does anyone else (or at least its only its arty alumni that have ever managed to do anything noteworthy)

I think that is more a function of what we consider noteworthy and I would be surprised if STEM uptake is still not very high at Eton.

That said in my generation the awarding of scholarships at Eton was weighted towards performance in the Greek and Latin papers. The two guys in my year that I knew who got top scholarships ended up as a Classics Academic and a journalist, but both were bright across board.

Eton and Oxbridge are integral parts of reproducing class inequalities. The idea that studying Latin is some kind of equal opportunities leveller is about as likely as wearing a bow-tie makes you JRM. Blame the poor for not doing their declensions. They couldn’t staff it anyway, yet another distraction.

@thepurist

We used the same book! Brother was called Flavia, IIRC?

Everyone’s favourite fake posh boy has been on LBC this morning and he’s been quizzed on his knowledge of Latin, and he failed (you’ll be entirely unsurprised to hear).

big question is what does the latin become more important than in the big list of stuff that should be on the national curriculum but isn’t and as others have pointed out, better for us to concentrate on one or two languages to teach at secondary level and do that properly.

Also Eton and the like have produced lots of actors, directors etc but that has little to do with the teaching and everything to do with the london proximity, family connections (the arts and particularly the theatre are massively nepotistic) and the ability for the rich to support themselves whilst working for nothing to gain access.

We used the same book! Brother was called Flavia, IIRC?

<throws blackboard rubber at househusband>

In pictūrā est puer Rōmānus, nōmine MARCUS!

Flavia is clearly feminine.

Now write it out 100 times!

Seem to recall our French A level teacher saying that doing Latin would have made learning other languages easier.

I’ve heard that before, I don’t think it bears much scrutiny TBH. I think it would be more useful if school kids were taught Spanish rather than Latin (and French for that matter)

Yeah “Flavia est magna puella”. Sextus was the other boy.

Now repeat after me, while I smack this metal ruler on the desk. And make sure the people upstairs can hear you!

is ea id
eum eam id
eiuis all genders
ei all genders
eo ea eo

40 years ago and it’s still there. Useless, but there.

eiuis all genders

What, boy? STAND UP!

EIUS!

I wonder what the Latin for pedant is? Paedagogum, perhaps…

Latin is interesting, classics are interesting, learning lots of languages is great

BUT

Kids can only learn so much, and there is much that they need to understand before Latin.

How many Latin teachers do we have, by the way?

The book with Flavia, Sextus et al. was Ecce Romani.

God I hated latin at school, was one of the best days of my life when they finally let me drop it and do classical literature O level instead. And I still can’t see any use for it, other than studying history or archaeology. If you want to learn a latin-based language, learn Spanish.

I think it would be more useful if school kids were taught Spanish rather than Latin

Latin is the ancestor of the romance languages so does have the benefit for those. It would be less useful for other language families.
Really if you want language education to be effective though it is really needed when in primary so the brain is still in a language learning mood.

Latin is the ancestor of the romance languages so does have the benefit for those.

But the time wasted learning Latin could be spent on learning Spanish. And once you know Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are a doddle. (I’m suggesting Spanish as it’s a far more widely used language, not because there’s any particular advantage to it when it comes to learning other Romance languages).

Flavia is clearly feminine.

@martinhutch I neglected to mention I got (this was 37yrs ago, mind) the lowest mark in the school’s history in the final exam – 13%

Now write it out 100 times!

Kiss my hairy, haemorrhoidal arse; not even the school I teach at does lines! You’d have to give me a verbal warning first, then fill out a form to get a text message sent to my parent/guardian.

I taught a bit of Catullus (in translation) which could spark up all sorts of interest but let’s not forget it was slithy Gove who demanded that GCSE Literature be only English literature (out went ‘Of Mice and Men’ etc) plus he abolished coursework hence the shitstorm over estimated grades which could have easily been avoided. The press let him off.

I’m all for learning a little latin if I can have a 200k+ a year job writing for The Daily Telegraph but somehow I doubt the latin would help.

Absolutely ridiculous idea also guessing the teachers for it have long since retired. I’m 50 and can remember the husband and wife latin/classics teachers from my dodgy valleys comprehensive being made redundant as they are family friends.
This must have been 25 plus years ago…. last day in the staff room the head stands up and thanks them for their service does a speech and hopes the redundancy package helps as finding jobs teaching the subject will be difficult. They thank him very much and mention that after their 6 weeks summer break they’ll be starting work in a private school…. on a lot more money…. in Bermuda 😉

I neglected to mention I got (this was 37yrs ago, mind) the lowest mark in the school’s history in the final exam – 13%

I managed 11% in my final German exam. A source of great pride. 🙂

While I have very little time for the herd of unqualified baboons we currently have in government, I also detect a woeful level of ignorance in this thread regarding the benefits of a classical education.

Latin is one of the original inflectional languages: this means that the endings of its words (especially nouns and verbs) change to convey different grammatical meanings and contexts. In contrast, English is an almost purely analytic language which uses additional words (e.g. prepositions) to create context, having lost most of its inflection following the Dark Ages.

Modern inflectional languages include German, the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansch – Latin’s direct descendants), Greek, Slavic and Baltic languages as well as Arabic.

Beyond the obvious etymological benefits for learning Romance languages, studying Latin when you are young establishes a solid grammatical foundation for acquiring any other inflectional language later in your life. Moreover, I find that its rules and structures provide an excellent training in logic. As an (admittedly extreme) example, the Nobel Laureate Tony Leggett (one of Britain’s top theoretical physicists in the past half-century) took his first degree in classics before switching to physics.

In summary, I see many possible advantages to broadening access to Latin in secondary education.

Meanwhile back in the real world