My son has the chance to drop Latin in Year 9 to study 'Classical Civilisation' instead. Is this dumbing down?

think it depends which exam board it is - although I believe the "easier" board has now dropped Latin. DD1 will be doing OCR which includes a Roman civilisation paper, but (thank goodness) no coursework.

I did Latin and ancient greek at high school (in Italy). It is not the language that gets harder, once you've covered the basic grammar, it's the difficulty of what you are translating that rises. But surely what's the point in doing Latin if you don't study the literature and roman history. Is this covered in Latin or in the Ancient civilization?

I did Latin GCSE, which included Classical Civilisation modules. IME, because Latin is a 'hard' language, exams were made 'easier' iyswim - I didn't find it difficult to get a good grade in it. Stick with the Latin, keep your options open, it's great!

definitely -did it for a level and as part of my history course at uni. Even though now do something unrelated found the language/logic skills useful not to mention fantastic literature and history

At my dbro's school, classical civilisation was generally known as 'heroes for zeroes'. So yes, it was regarded as a soft option, and I suspect still is. This may or may not matter to you, but it's worth being aware of.

in answer to the op. yes!
latin is brill. tell him to get on with it.

I've taught both.

Stick to the Latin, young man! If you like History, read some ancient history for fun instead of doing class civ.

Is it the Cambridge Latin Course you're doing?

I did Standard Grade Latin and loved it. (Equiv to GCSE)

We had to cover Roman life and do project work as well as the language.

I wish I'd carried on and done Higher. It really was fascinating and did help my English and French.

I even won a Latin speaking comptetion

Latin poetry is a bit saucy though...

DS managed the first year of Latin at GCSE, then slipped out of the class. Perhaps this was because Latin at his school is an extra.... it has to be done on one lunchtime per week, plus one after school class.

They started out with about 12 pupils and they slowly dropped out.... DS made it to the last 5 kids before giving up too. He enjoyed it, but then when the coursework kicked in he started to fall further and further behind.

He does plan to go for Classic Civilisations at AS level though.

Just that one year of GCSE Latin has stood him in good stead for English language (he is predicted A* for English), so I would try and stick with the Latin if he can.

Keep going with the Latin. That way you keep both options open.

O level?

The language does not really get much harder, just more of it IYSWIM. It sounds as if he could do both Latin & Class Civ at GCSE, which would be my choice for him if I were you.

If he got a satisfactory with not much effort then he should breeze it at GCSE. (Latin & Ancient Greek degree here by the way!)

I did clas civ and latin at gcse (in fact loved it so much I did latin after school as they couldn't offer it in the curriculum). I then did Ancient History and archaeology at university.

I would say keep up the latin unless he really hates it as it is very useful for other european languages and if he's really interested in history latin would be useful. Being biased I would say can he do both ? They obviously go together very well. But then, I guess this might restrict what else he does.

I would keep on with the Latin to keep options open. The Latin lessons would have some sort of history/life of the ancient romans components, not be pure language at this stage. also learning latin makes it easier to learn other modern languages (even helps with german due to grammatical structure etc).