Having not gone through the Belgian school system, can anyone explain to me why this obsession in Belgium with specifically Latin and Greek studies? They seem to me to be absolutely archaic and useless topics to spend so much time on in the modern age?
Whenever I ask people they generally have no defence for the Greek, and some half hearted defence for the Latin, “it makes it easier to learn other Romance languages later, and if you study law or medicine later it will help you with the terminology…” Both of these seem like pretty poor reasons, because learning Latin to learn a Romance language seems like a useless extra step; me learning French hugely helped me to learn Spanish later, so you might as well focus on learning an actual living Romance language. And as for the legal/medical terminology, both of these directions of study involve so much memorisation of material that the effect of knowing these terms seems marginal at best.
So, can anyone mount a defence of these subjects in school and help me understand what I’m not seeing? Thanks!
by Orlok_Tsubodai
25 comments
Ben Weyts wants us to think about the Roman empire every day.
I never studied Latin or Greek.
Greek imo seems indeed kinda useless, unless you got some interest in history or archeology.
My girlfriend learned Latin, and I notice whenever we’re on a vacation, it’s easier for her to understand sign, because she can relate them to some Latin word that looks the same.
It’s like she learned multiple languages at once, without ever knowing those languages.
Also a lot of medical terminology and medicines make more sense when you have a base of Latin.
Reading Harry Potter is apparently also more funny.
So, I’m not sure if it’s a useless skill to have. Sometimes I think I should have learned it. But on other moments I think some science or economics class also would’ve been useful.
FYI, I did art, now that’s some useless shit.
The real reason is that it has been proven (statistically) that you have the best chances of success later at university level. You learn to learn something that seems completely irrelevant, but which you still have to learn. I still remember that you had the best chance of passing the screening exam for a doctor’s degree if you had taken Greek during secondary school. It is obvious that if you have taken Latin – Greek your language comprehension will improve greatly. By the way, your argument about learning unnecessary things applies to many things, I think it is always best to have the best possible foundation in Mathematics and Languages.
I never understood it either and I’m (now) a teacher.
The only semi-non-lame excuse I can think of is that Latin would teach the kids about declension (linguistics), perhaps history of Romance languages, and some fun stuff like translating Latin graffiti. The class is probably expanded to Classical Studies.
Tbh it’s very “rabble-rabble, screw change!” to me.
Latin for me was a good basis to learn a structured syntaxis and to think about reasoning and logic.
Is that effect quantifiable? Doubtful. Also I switched to sience in my 4th year.
The biggest benefit I got for doing Latin was that striving for something was not a bad thing per se, our class seemed a bit more driven to go for higher scores in those first three-four years, whether due to engaging teacher or a more competitive atmosphere. Afterwards most kids that didn’t like hard work in other classes either dropped out or had enough smarts to muddle through anyhow, so there was less of a difference.
Maybe Latin is just that, some self-selection thing by children themselves (or ambitious parents) to push them to achieve the maximum.
Even learning German was a lot easier with Latin in my head. Greek is only useful for its alphabet.
Studied Latin Sciences in high school. Besides the extensive vocabulary and grammatical rules, you learn history, art, critical thinking, philosophy, poetry, theatre, politics and general linguistics all in one course. It’s great.
Did Weyts study Latin and Greek? And if he did, did it improve his chances of succeeding in a timely manner in higher education?
As someone who did 6 years of Latin, I often get this question by people who didn’t take it.
It is not comparable to your french or English classes at all. Latin is more foundational. It’s the language equivalent of learning maths (latin) to learn physics and economics and chemistry later
It’s also about logical reasoning, you learn to decrypt texts, much like a puzzle in cryptography today, you learn to extract meaning from structure.
Less important and usually misrepresented, In the meantime, you learn about history and Roman culture (this is less important, but a side effect of the fact that all Latin was written in that era). But this is not the main benefit, although it helps.
So it is actually very valuable, and definitely helped to shape my analytical thinking, but it suffers from a marketing perspective in that nobody actually knows this, or is able to defend it. Most decision makers actually did not study Latin themselves…
Common people on the street think it is about getting a headstart to become a doctor or so, or just learning words. That’s wrong as well
The only reason my parents oush me in the latin grec thing, was the social segregation.
I did Latin mathematics and it was my favourite course. It’s not so much the language, although it helps when learning other languages, but the history, the politics, philosophy etc. it’s insane how many Roman ghosts influenced our history.
Not everything has to be directly “useful”, but I do believe it made me better than if I didn’t do it.
I don’t understand why people who didn’t do Latin and/or Greek are so opposed to other people following it. It has historically produced good results, it’s one of the most fun courses in secondary school and you don’t really miss out on anything else. You can follow Latin – mathematics and maybe miss out on few hours Spanish and German or you can follow Latin – modern languages and miss out on science and maths, but chances are high you were never going to pursue carreers related to those courses anyway.
This comment section fails to distinguish useful or effective vs efficient. Sure, it’s useful to study Latin. The arguments vary but a common one is that you more easily learn medical terminology.
Well, wouldn’t it be more efficient if these students would actually learn anatomy or other subjects that are taught in medicine?
I doubt that Latin is the most efficient use of your time for any of the benefits that people claim. It’s asier to learn new languages? Why not spend that time learning those actual languages? Are you going to be faster learning Latin and then German than simply learning German?
I did one year of Latin, failed at the Latin part so went on to science. Became an engineer later. I must have picked up critical thinking somewhere outside of Latin. Seems like my fellow engineers also can read the Greek symbols in our math equations.
People who question the usefulness of Greek and Latin Studies are usually the ones who never took them (or had to quit).
I’m done explaining the benefits. My kids do Latin (not Greek as it is not taught in their school) and as long as they aren’t asked by the school to change courses, they’re gonna stick with it (or change to 8 hrs math).
Been saying this for years, Latin is useless and kids only study it because they think it’s hard and lack the critical thinking at young age when they have to pick what they want to study in high school.
“It’s better for language learning” bro, just learn another language, cut the middle man (Latin) out and learn another useful language.
“It’s better for medicine and it’s terminology” again, better of studying something else like biology or chemistry for a few extra hours/week.
As a result you get a bunch of adults propegating the myth of studying Latin and kids who believe it because it’s considered hard and end up trying it. Despite 90+% of those I know that started it haven dropped out of it studying something they actually find useful.
I think that this day and age Latin and Greek should be prioritized because they’re probably the only two studies in high school that actually teach students how to be good at language. I don’t know if people realize this, but modern students are **fucking horrible** at reading and writing. They have an incredibly basic vocabulary, don’t know what a “samengestelde zin” is and take days to read 5 pages of text.
With Latin and Greek you not only learn complex grammar but you actively expand your vocabulary, learn to read and analyze complex sentences and get to understand the *why* and *how* of syntaxis. There’s a reason why Latin students are consistently better at basic linguistic skills than anyone else. And let’s be honest, having basic linguistic skills is at least as important as knowing how to do basic maths.
Besides that an other *vital* aspect is critical thinking. You are actually reading and translating primary historical sources. You have to know the context of these texts and answer questions like “Who wrote this? Why? For whom? During what period?”. By doing so you actively learn how to be critical, something you otherwise only learn during history class and that is only max 2 hours a week.
That’s just show. If they can’t find enough students in 2 years, they also won’t find it in 3 years.
I wonder what will happen with the more niche BSO and TSO studies.
I got the points given to defend Latin or Greek studies. But I’m pretty sure that mandatory programming (not bureautics) would be really more useful. We are in the era of computers. Basic programming skills are useful to get the principles used by so many systems.
It is part of a nation-building propaganda. The current Western/European civilization is supposedly built on ancient Greek and Roman roots. So they want people to get in touch with them and be more familiar.
Otherwise, it is just something useless.
Thanks for all the interesting responses! My take aways so far:
• Latin appreciators mostly laud the analytical and critical thinking skills as primary benefits, and that it prepares excellent critical thinkers and achievers.
• People also seem to enjoy the Roman historical aspects of the courses (which I entirely understand as a Roman history buff, and I guess if they aren’t covered in history class, good that they’re covered here)
• No one wants to defend Greek or ascribe similar benefits to it, so I really don’t see why that is still in the mix.
I still do wonder how much off the supposed positive effects are a bit of confirmation bias (if it’s considered the most challenging and prestigious direction you end up with a group of the most ambitious and committed students, who will of course out-perform their peers), but clearly many of the people who take it seem convinced they got benefit from it and enjoyed it, so that’s great!
Latin was the only somewhat challenging course I had in my first half of middle school. It hugely helped me in finding an efficient studying method and made sure I was not completely bored to death by everything. It’s also just super interesting and even now in medical school the terminology is a lot easier to grasp with some background in Latin.
As a history nerd I wish I got to learn Latin & Greek, but I had to choose Economics because it was more useful for what I wanted to do later, I’d hate to see it being abolished.
If our end goal of formal language education is all about attaining fluency (B2 and beyond), then teaching Greek and Latin won’t make sense to shove them down to everyone who isn’t interested in taking classical language subjects.
> “We moeten voorrang durven geven aan uitdagende opleidingen, zoals de richtingen met Grieks en Latijn.”
Last time I checked it was science and engineering that were the most challenging (and needed), not languages. What has changed?
Your learn quite a lot and since it is a “dead language” it is almost useless as a language. It is definitely true that it makes studying anatomy much easier.
But the biggest reason for it’s existence is that it is something new and difficult that you won’t learn anywhere else (pretty much everyone starts at the same knowledge), so it’s a great thing for students that are faster learners. Typically you get a class off more intelligent students, so the tempo can be higher. Also, when you have 5 hours of Latin, those 5 hours need to come from other courses. So you’ll get less hours for other topics but typically have the same learning material to cover, so again a faster tempo.