>Evelyn Waugh, a novelist, valued his classical education. Not because it enabled him to understand ancient languages: Waugh could remember no Greek, write no Latin and enjoyed reading neither. But it did enable him to excel in a more important exercise: spotting and judging those who knew less than he. Such people (“most Americans and most women”) betrayed their deprivation with sentences of “inexcusable vulgarity”. “I do not,” he wrote, “regret my superficial classical studies.”
>Latin occupies an odd place in English curriculums. One part proper subject, two parts smug social shibboleth, to have chanted “amo, amas, amat” in a Latin class has long implied membership of another kind of class altogether. The decline and almost fall of Latin in state schools in the 20th century did not diminish its social cachet, because numbers in fee-paying independent schools remained high. In 2020 eight times more pupils sat Latin GCSE at Eton, a posh school, than in the entirety of Northumberland. Waugh considered Latin the mark of a gentleman. Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge University, puts it more briskly: it gets seen as a subject for “posh white boys”.
>This harms it—a bit—and helps it—a lot. Posh white boys tend to do quite well for themselves. A famous example recently left Downing Street; as he left, Boris Johnson mumbled that he was like Cincinnatus, a reference to a retiring Roman that both alarmed classicists (Cincinnatus returned as a dictator) and appealed to them (they got the joke).
>Classicists may lament the passing of the subject’s golden age, but it declined for good reasons. A Britain alternately warmed by the white heat of technology and chilled by fear of the cold war had to prioritise science over dead languages. In 1960 Oxford and Cambridge dropped Latin O-Level as an entry requirement. Good thing too, says Professor Beard: not to have changed would have been “bloody stupid”.
>Changes continue to be made. Cambridge University has just introduced a four-year classics degree for those who have studied no Latin at school. And while he was in office Mr Johnson tried to make the subject more accessible via the Latin Excellence Programme, a £4m ($4.6m) scheme to bring it to 40 state schools.
>Which is why, on a rainy Monday in September, in Pimlico Academy in London, children sit in a lesson that would have felt familiar to Waugh. The verb “esse” is chanted; etymologies are discussed; the word “conjugate” is used fearlessly. Its pupils would have felt less familiar to him, however: almost half of pupils in the school are on free school meals; 15% have English as an additional language; many are even female.
>Employers and universities still like to see Latin, explains Ian Patterson, the academic head at Pimlico: there is a “prestige attached to it”. The pupils like it too: shouting “sum, es, est”, they think, is fun. But Latin is about more than verbs: it makes them feel clever too, says one pupil, as “not lots of people learn it.” Waugh could hardly have put it better himself.
As a linguist, utter waste of time. By all means learn it as a hobby but don’t waste kids’ time this way.
They should offer Arabic or Chinese.
Why spunk money on something like this when most kids leave school without basic knowledge of finances or economics. Teaching kids useful tools like fiscal responsibility and debt would be a far more useful use for the money. We really don’t set the kids up to succeed.
Even a more useful language. Basic first aid?
Lingua latina mortua est, et discipuli non possunt studere quam scholae anglicae non possunt docere.
*posh school alumni post corrections below*
Even if we decided to ignore the anti-intellectualist urge toward teaching “real life maffs n finance innit”, or try to plug shortages in The Holy STEM, or try to get a few more nurses, or whatever else the Mail readers are on about this week, I’m not sure the purely academic subject I’d choose would be Latin.
To study for study’s sake is a fine thing, and learning to think is always useful; but it helps if the students are interested in it. Trying to remember whether “domus” takes the locative or ablative hasn’t much mass appeal. I say this as someone who enjoys studying languages.
For a nation that values academic attainment, this is a great idea. For us, not so much.
Latin is a dead tongue, dead as dead can be
First it killed the Romans, now it’s killing me
I had Latin for 2 or 3 years – I reckon that makes it about 150 hours of my life I’ll never get back – we were given all the bollocks about various reasons why it was useful, but certainly in my case it was not useful at all.
I’m all for kids learning second languages, but it needs to be something used, Latin isn’t it
Learning the dying language of minor ethnic groups like Welsh and other native language is seen as nobel and worthwhile endeavour.
Learning the basics of the language’s of the foundational civilizations of the west and the roots of the European language’s is seen as snoby elitist waste of time.
Would like to see a shift away from boring grammar and conjunction.
To a focus on vocabulary and the shared aspects of all major indo European language’s.
My daughter learns Latin at School and loves it and it being the root of so much connects with her other language studies. I think having a very good passionate teacher helps particularly in a School environment that values it.
Secondary Comp me is a bit jealous everytime I visit her school for reasons like this.
9 comments
>Evelyn Waugh, a novelist, valued his classical education. Not because it enabled him to understand ancient languages: Waugh could remember no Greek, write no Latin and enjoyed reading neither. But it did enable him to excel in a more important exercise: spotting and judging those who knew less than he. Such people (“most Americans and most women”) betrayed their deprivation with sentences of “inexcusable vulgarity”. “I do not,” he wrote, “regret my superficial classical studies.”
>Latin occupies an odd place in English curriculums. One part proper subject, two parts smug social shibboleth, to have chanted “amo, amas, amat” in a Latin class has long implied membership of another kind of class altogether. The decline and almost fall of Latin in state schools in the 20th century did not diminish its social cachet, because numbers in fee-paying independent schools remained high. In 2020 eight times more pupils sat Latin GCSE at Eton, a posh school, than in the entirety of Northumberland. Waugh considered Latin the mark of a gentleman. Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge University, puts it more briskly: it gets seen as a subject for “posh white boys”.
>This harms it—a bit—and helps it—a lot. Posh white boys tend to do quite well for themselves. A famous example recently left Downing Street; as he left, Boris Johnson mumbled that he was like Cincinnatus, a reference to a retiring Roman that both alarmed classicists (Cincinnatus returned as a dictator) and appealed to them (they got the joke).
>Classicists may lament the passing of the subject’s golden age, but it declined for good reasons. A Britain alternately warmed by the white heat of technology and chilled by fear of the cold war had to prioritise science over dead languages. In 1960 Oxford and Cambridge dropped Latin O-Level as an entry requirement. Good thing too, says Professor Beard: not to have changed would have been “bloody stupid”.
>Changes continue to be made. Cambridge University has just introduced a four-year classics degree for those who have studied no Latin at school. And while he was in office Mr Johnson tried to make the subject more accessible via the Latin Excellence Programme, a £4m ($4.6m) scheme to bring it to 40 state schools.
>Which is why, on a rainy Monday in September, in Pimlico Academy in London, children sit in a lesson that would have felt familiar to Waugh. The verb “esse” is chanted; etymologies are discussed; the word “conjugate” is used fearlessly. Its pupils would have felt less familiar to him, however: almost half of pupils in the school are on free school meals; 15% have English as an additional language; many are even female.
>Employers and universities still like to see Latin, explains Ian Patterson, the academic head at Pimlico: there is a “prestige attached to it”. The pupils like it too: shouting “sum, es, est”, they think, is fun. But Latin is about more than verbs: it makes them feel clever too, says one pupil, as “not lots of people learn it.” Waugh could hardly have put it better himself.
As a linguist, utter waste of time. By all means learn it as a hobby but don’t waste kids’ time this way.
They should offer Arabic or Chinese.
Why spunk money on something like this when most kids leave school without basic knowledge of finances or economics. Teaching kids useful tools like fiscal responsibility and debt would be a far more useful use for the money. We really don’t set the kids up to succeed.
Even a more useful language. Basic first aid?
Lingua latina mortua est, et discipuli non possunt studere quam scholae anglicae non possunt docere.
*posh school alumni post corrections below*
Even if we decided to ignore the anti-intellectualist urge toward teaching “real life maffs n finance innit”, or try to plug shortages in The Holy STEM, or try to get a few more nurses, or whatever else the Mail readers are on about this week, I’m not sure the purely academic subject I’d choose would be Latin.
To study for study’s sake is a fine thing, and learning to think is always useful; but it helps if the students are interested in it. Trying to remember whether “domus” takes the locative or ablative hasn’t much mass appeal. I say this as someone who enjoys studying languages.
For a nation that values academic attainment, this is a great idea. For us, not so much.
Latin is a dead tongue, dead as dead can be
First it killed the Romans, now it’s killing me
I had Latin for 2 or 3 years – I reckon that makes it about 150 hours of my life I’ll never get back – we were given all the bollocks about various reasons why it was useful, but certainly in my case it was not useful at all.
I’m all for kids learning second languages, but it needs to be something used, Latin isn’t it
Learning the dying language of minor ethnic groups like Welsh and other native language is seen as nobel and worthwhile endeavour.
Learning the basics of the language’s of the foundational civilizations of the west and the roots of the European language’s is seen as snoby elitist waste of time.
Would like to see a shift away from boring grammar and conjunction.
To a focus on vocabulary and the shared aspects of all major indo European language’s.
My daughter learns Latin at School and loves it and it being the root of so much connects with her other language studies. I think having a very good passionate teacher helps particularly in a School environment that values it.
Secondary Comp me is a bit jealous everytime I visit her school for reasons like this.