Thread 14 Starmer - The Starmeristas Strike Back

[DuncinToffee]

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And I still try to forget "Ecce! In pictora est puella"

Awful decision, my school in the 70s never offered it but i suspect that the children who do take Latin are passionate about it and will now be devasted.

It's ridiculous that students currently taking the GCSE aren't going to be allowed to finish.

Latin is useful as a way of teaching the structure of language. It would be great to bring it into primary schools, then we could stop waffling on about fronted adverbials.

I haven't really found it useful. I got my O level mid 80s from a northern comp. It was fun, and I went on to study languages but I can't say it helped much.

To be fair, @pointythings any language would do that. I learnt more about grammar from studying French than I did from my English lessons at school back in the day.

Rubbish to cancel any subject mid course though.

I studied Latin at a Grammar school in NE England in the 70's.
Maybe the private schools where they do provide Latin could offer children from state schools some help to finish their course?

I did Latin O Level at school. I've found it useful all my life. I do think pulling it while students are doing their GCSE is hard to justify.

I think only about 2.7% of state schools offer Latin compared to 49% of private schools.
Maybe if the Cons. party had not spent £700 million pounds of tax payers money sending the 4 volunteers to Rwanda there would have been some money left for teaching Latin?

The scheme was ending in 2026 any way so it does seem a bit strange to stop it a year earlier.

Yes of course anyone who has started should be allowed to finish their GCSE, whatever the subject, they wouldn't tolerate it for their own children...

£4m in terms of Govt spending is chicken feed.

I didn’t know that. It’s an even more bizarre decision in that case.

I did Latin O level and lived it. (state school comp in 80s) . Wanted to do A level but they didn't offer it.

Da mihi osculum is my favourite phrase remembered.

Never learnt Latin but picked up quite a few words and phrases over the years, nil satis nisi optimum.

Suggestions for thread titles please

I'm not sure I can get excited about Latin - it used to be necessary to have it to get to university, study classics or support languages. But of doubtful utility in 2025

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum?

I did Latin 'O'-level, back in the 70s, in a Northern comprehensive. Can't really say it's made much difference - although I have also got French 'O' and 'A'-level and German 'O'-level, so possibly a wider exposure to different languages has been useful.

I can see why they've stopped the scheme - they're really scrabbling around for money right now! - but I think it's very unfair on those children who are just coming up to their GCSE exams.

It is but the education budget is cut to the bone. There is no heating, no cleaning, there are no TAs...

Gets my vote 😁

This Latin thing isn't a 'course' as far as I understand it.. It is similar to the funding schools around us get to teach primary teachers to teach French, I believe. So I guess any schools employing a Latin expert to train up their staff either accelerate the training or find different funding streams, as we so often have to do. I suspect it isn't widely used so hardly any of those state schools actually made use of it. There is a better Cambridge Classics scheme that we have used that provides loads of material and training.

We'll see if they axe the excessive bursary to train next as it really is a way of people who will never teach in the state sector making quite a lot of money!

It's probably the single best subject to study if you like to learn how words and languages work, regardless of specifics.

And it also tends to come with a barrel load of incredibly useful history. And reading Latin suddenly brings long dead people to very vivid life - Juvenal is just as cutting now as then (we did Satire 15 for O level ...)

Still; a chacun son gout.

First program I wrote in school on an Apple ][ was to decline Latin nouns.

Show me someone who thinks there is such a thing as useless knowledge, and I will show you a fucking idiot.

Mine too! Very appropriate all round.

Love it.

I’m amazed that there are bursaries for training in Latin and classics, especially if those training are mostly going to the private sector. Doesn’t seem a good use of public money
I have a 1970s O level too from a Welsh comprehensive but it was only taught to 10% of pupils and there were only 6 of us in the O level class so must have been hard to justify even then. It’s been handy on odd occasions (I’m a Welsh learner so it’s useful sometimes when guessing what a word may be) but I also took French and German so have wider exposure.

Oh yes, they are really generous! Many subjects are back to having no bursary at all - English, for example.

Presumably it's "elitist" these days to be able to read that without Google Translate ? I remember enough to be dangerous.

Anyone remember when Pope Benedict resigned, and there was a journalist who got a huge head start on the headline as they could understand Latin, and the announcement ("nuntius" is Latin for messenger, by the way) was read in Latin before English.

Been ages since I saw a cod-Latin piece in Private Eye. Which sadly means the readership is less appreciative these days.

Does anyone here watch House of Games? They do a round in different languages, I usually manage to work it out except when it is in Icelandic or Finnish.