to think that the advantage of a classical education is that it enables you

[grovel]

in later life to despise the riches which it prevents you from attaining?

DD (y5) attends a state school and is being taught Latin. Supposedly the opportunity will continue thru GCSE.
I am rather unconvinced of the possible usefulness, mind.
Friend who teaches MFL Spanish & French but never studied Latin says that she can read it anyway.

I can't believe the poster who said they never made use of geography or history; how can you understand anything happening in the world around you without tapping into those disciplines?

ps: DD has had a good snurk at some of your rhymes

What a peculiar OP.

Another poster with a classical education here. It's something I thoroughly enjoyed, did well at and have an A level in Latin to prove it.

On that alone, YABU.

I hated Latin. However I like modern languages, which are useful in themselves instead of just being a pointless memory exercise.

The time spent learning a dead language could be more profitably spent learning something useful, for example, how savings and investments work, or why credit cards are so profitable, or your chances of losing money on betting or lotteries.

I always thought I despised wealth because I was jealous and idle, and thus unlikely to earn any. Am dead chuffed to find instead it's because of my Classical Education!

ragged - I've taught French and Spanish despite having only a B GCSE in the former and having never learnt the latter, but my Latin made it dead easy. I do have an A* in Italian though which probably helps. On the other hand, my modern linguist colleagues who did my maternity cover found the Latin a little more difficult, though by no means impossible.

Of my GCSE students last year the ones who did both Latin and French did better than the ones who just did Latin and I believe it's because the skills from one reinforced the language learnt in the other.

PigletJohn - your opinion seems to me a little short-sighted, though you may think me biased. It's not just about learning the language (which is definitely not dead), but about acquiring a range of useful and transferable skills. Companies such as IBM and Hewlett Packard are keen on Classics graduates because they have the logical thought processes required in computer programming. I bet your teacher wasn't as exciting as me, either!

One of my favourite 'Latin' rhymes:

Brutus adsum iam forte
Caesar aderat
Brutus sic in omnibus
Caesar sic inat

I cut out and stuck to my diary (and carefully transferred and re-stuck annually to the new diary ) a quote from Des Lynam that I found in the newspaper - 'You have got to have great respect for anyone with A-level Latin'.

I did A-level Latin and got an A and can't remember any of it. Oh dear. But it didn't stop me getting a horrid job in the City paying shedloads. Couldn't stick at it, it was miserable, but the riches were there for the taking!

DH is teaching himself Latin - he does computer wizardry stuff, so that makes sense jetgirl.

Surely this is no longer true by simple virtue of the fact that it is generally only the already relatively wealthy who even get the chance to study classics these days?

Matsikula, further back in the thread people were talking about Latin on offer in state schools.

jetgirl - while I do think that Latin is valuable and am glad (in retrospect) that I studied it at school, where do you get the idea that IBM and HP are keen on classics grads?

Really, they aren't. They are keen on CompSci, EE, Maths and Physics grads, same as any other technology firms. A classics graduate would not get a look in the door for any vaguely technical position. Maybe in an administrative post but no more so than any other graduate.

at jetgirl.

Jetgirl, did any of your modern languages colleagues teach German or Russian? Because they both have all that declension business.

I only understood the point of all the memorising that you had to do in Latin until I started learning German - our Latin teacher was never able to explain it.

I went to a state school and Latin was offered, but not Greek. It still is offered from what I hear (friend who has daughters at the school).

Elladee schools, yes, but probably not in your average comp, and definitely not at primary school level.

i am not anti-classics by the way, just think that addressing the lack of emphasis on modern language learning is more of a priority.

I have a classics degree. No, I have two.

It has certainly enriched my life, but not possibly with the kind of riches I suspect you are referring to.

It has however, enabled me to have a reasonably leisurely life, while my dh works his arse off.

sorry, that should read 'state schools, yes'...

Frank Lampard got A* in Latin for GCSE. I thought I would just throw that in for what it's worth.

jetgirl
"PigletJohn - your opinion seems to me a little short-sighted, though you may think me biased. It's not just about learning the language (which is definitely not dead), but about acquiring a range of useful and transferable skills."

Just think of the advantages, instead of learning something dead, which has transferable skills, of learning something alive which has transferable skills.

So you get two benefits instead of only one!

IBM was quite happy with me despite my lack of Latin degree. I had something else more useful.

MALINOIS classics = language skill = computer skills.

a classics degree might not get you into training on its own any more, but it used to. My dad was headhunted back when computers had valves for that reason....

"classics = language skill = computer skills."

Nope.

You might equally say
Crossword puzzles = Logical Problem Handling = Computer Skills

Or
map design = spatial handling = computer skills

Or
Sudoku = number juggling = computer skills

There are plenty of things you can learn, that are actually useful or relevant, that can give you transferrable skills. It is stupid to spend your time on something which is fundamentally useless in the hope that it might subsequently help you to do something useful.

If necessary you could say
Learning Russian = language skill = computer skill

But "equals" is wrong in all of these.

PigletJohn you're IBM - things fall into place now about your posting style!

I am a scientist of sorts - my classical education has been really useful - mainly because I enjoyed Latin and Greek so much so they stuck in my brain long enough that I discovered you can work out most obscure anatomical and medical words with a combination of the two. That's not to say you need it - far from it - but it made my undergrad and postgrad studies much easier.

EggyAllenPoe It's a nice idea, and might have been true during the infancy of computing (although I suspect a background in maths would have been more useful) but sadly not true now.

A classics graduate isn't going to get past the first interview at an IT firm, unless they cover algorithms, higher-order functions, recursion and B-trees on the Greats course nowadays.

Not any more.

I have an A* in Latin at GCSE, from a state school. I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination, though I am successful in my chosen field. Latin helped me attain a wide vocabulary, which is very useful when writing descriptive, but technical, reports, which is central to my job. I also found it really interesting.

I would have taken it at A level but I didn't think it it would be useful. I didn't realise at the tender age of 15 that no one gives a shit what A-Levels you did by the time you're in your second week of your degree. And A Level Latin would have got me onto my degree course just as well as any other.