That £4m on Latin lessons should be spent on a modern foreign language

[newnortherner111]

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/latin-state-schools-england-williamson-b1894202.html

Latest idea from the Education Secretary. Given that the Prime Minister has been in a Catholic church at least once, did he not tell Gavin Williamson that the Catholic Mass is usually in the local language now, and has been for over 50 years?

Encouraging learning Spanish for example would be much better and actually have a use in real life.

I think Lyon does have a place- it's the root of so many different words, a basic understanding would be helpful. I can't say my 2 years of forced German taught me much except can I go to the toilet in German- would have jumped at the change to take Latin and learn more about language

There's Latin and then there's Greek - both valuable,

there's "sympathy" and "empathy"
both words are similar in meaning, but are different, one is rooted in Latin and one in Greek.

Both words are in common usage in the English language.

It's such a useful subject (disclosure I did it at A level). I didn't really understand grammar until I did Latin and I found it incredibly useful post degree when reading tax legislation. It forces you to think in a very disciplined way.

However, I think it might be better to look for retired people who could come in to schools to teach it and get the non specialist teachers to help supervise classes to control behaviour. This is a very big issue with the Cambridge Latin course as it is great but less grammatical than most and therefore it would be very easy for a non specialist to skim over the grammar and not teach it properly as they didn't fully grasp it.

I'm a scientist and Latin has absolutely no bearing on science whatsoever, that chemistry teacher was frankly talking bollocks. Science is one of the few disciplines at university where private school Latin educated people thankfully don't dominate.

As for law, the idea that those studying law can learn the precise nitty gritty of thousands of obscure law cases and concepts but need to be taught Latin at school to possibly comprehend a few non-english phrases here and there is ridiculous.

Also did Latin at large city comprehensive. Probably the most useful subject I learned.

Immensely helpful in learning other languages even non romantic languages such as German, Polish and Russian. Found it relatively easy to pick up Spanish and Italian without formal teaching. Of course, invaluable in helping communication in native English.

Dropping Latin as a subject was a huge mistake IMO.

It's disingenuous to say English is a Germanic? Ok.... Read what I said again mebbe.

For all those clever people out there, whilst understanding the meaning of the suffix 'pathy' derived from the classical Greek 'pathos' = feeling/emotion; it is dependent on the prefix to interpret a 'pathy' word.

Sympathy is Latin in meaning - the prefix 'sym' means with, therefore 'sympathy' means 'with feeling [for]' and the English language accounts for that.

Empathy is classical Greek - "em" means power, added to the suffix 'pathy', it translates to English into the power/knowledge of feeling, which is a bit different from 'with' feeling.

Just sayin'

I didn't go to a private school but knew many who did and learned Latin...they all dropped it as soon as they could in favour of mfl. My friend did a degree in Latin and she says it's pretty much useless and is certainly no language whizz

I'm a scientist and Latin has absolutely no bearing on science whatsoever, that chemistry teacher was frankly talking bollocks. Science is one of the few disciplines at university where private school Latin educated people thankfully don't dominate.

Yes. I've been writing scientific software for 35 years now and I can't imagine any way in which Latin would have been useful in understanding either chemistry or coding/logic. Learn logic by, uh, learning and applying logic. DH is also a chemist - he was forced to to do Latin and Divinity at his private school, at the expense of biology and geography which would have been more useful and interesting to him.
If you do Latin, it's going to be at the expense of something else. Sure, we absolutely do need excellent classicists - but the universities (inc oxbridge) now offer ab initio classics courses. (And no, I didn't need to spend time learning Latin to be able to understand easily what ab initio means. If you're used to talking about ab initio quantum mechanics, a bit of Latin terminology is the easy part.)

Latin is a great subject. The texts you get to work on are wonderful. It is rigorous and develops logical thinking. I wish my children had chosen Latin over Spanish as a 3rd language.

Modern languages are routinely taught in school: English, French, German, and Spanish, some do more than two. Mandarin is also taught in some schools.

Latin is useful, universal and helps with all the modern European languages. It's also very logical.

I did Latin at school and wish I had worked harder at it, frankly. Nevertheless I'm glad it was 'around' more then that it has been in recent years, even a smattering of Latin helps.

I love language and if you know Latin you can very quickly pick up a lot more languages. I think it’s important that we keep such a principle language alive

Sorry for double posting.

As long as they've binned "Caecilius et Metella" and their fecking atrium as part of any curriculum, then classical languages might stand a chance.

Listening to Caecilius and/et Metella talking about being beautiful (ego sum pulchra) in or out of their bloody atrium was enough to put me off.

Thankfully I found being a dustman made me much more appreciative than if I'd followed the expected doctor route.

Latin is brilliant. I use it or transferred skills (or both) every single day. @GreenestValley has it down.

Shoot me for the view but I’d vote for it, and for widening participation to try to help smash some of the misinformed societal perceptions (which, disappointingly, are evident even on here).

If everyone had been fortunate enough to have been taught Latin at school then the standard of writing on this forum and on other social media would probably be a lot better because, quite honestly, it's often appalling. A lot of people who post online have very poor spelling and an even worse understanding of grammar. 'Would of ' comes to mind, no idea of the difference in usage between 'there, their and they're' and don't start me on the need to proofread before posting.

A good education is very important so don't slate it.

Totally disagree, Latin is the root of all European languages so has benefits in terms of understanding the linguistic principles underpinning all languages.

This. Think of it as an English extension course. Knowing the origins of words is very helpful in problem solving and communicating, and so many origins are in the Latin language.

Is it just me or do some of those supporting this Latin lessons idea come across as bots? Ive just RTFT and some responses really stick out, and with others it comes across as an older demographic with no idea how schools are now going with the 'we did it in our day' narrative

Probably the most useful subject I learned

Really PP, more useful than Maths, English, MFL, science? A 'dead' language was the most useful

A good education is very important so don't slate it.

Bit hard to get with a government deliberately underfunding education and teachers leaving the profession due to the contempt they are often shown.

A good education is very important so don't slate it.

Latin lessons being more important than a guaranteed meal?

Latin was always taught in years gone by and not at the expense of any other subject. It's extremely useful being the basis of all European languages, is helpful in the sciences too.

In the Netherlands (where I live) it is taught in state schools to the most academically gifted (private and independent schools aren’t a thing here). DD has just switched to the non Latin and Greek version of the education stream (Atheneum instead of Gymnasium) because on top of learning English, Dutch, French and German it was too much and would have come at the expense of other lessons later on.

The idea of bringing Latin and Greek to mainstream education is laughable and just shows how deluded and shortsighted the Tories really are. For those screaming that Latin and Greek are gateways to learning other languages etc, if it is taught, it will be an either or situation.

@noblegiraffe

He has just dropped in this culture war bullshit to make sure that people are talking about this and not the fact that he has just scrapped level 3 BTECs.

Thank you, someone else who sees through this garbage.

Why don't parents engage with what is happening to schools more generally?

If you fall for this crock of shit you're a twat agree with this sentiment from @chunderwunder

@BashfulClam

Latin is useful for law and medicine. My chemistry teacher had studied Latin and said it really helped him with his chemistry degree…,spanish probably would be less useful to him. My best friend is a lawyer and uses Latin terms daily.

I'm a chemist. I have a PhD I'm chemistry. There is some Latin terminology in chemistry, particularly in organic chemistry for the position of chemical groups on molecules, but the meanings are so specific to chemistry that I don't think it would have made much difference to me to have known the English translations.

I studied Latin at school. Originally because I wanted to study law. But the benefits of studying Latin based languages (Romance languages - French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish) was the real benefit. Latin is also the international language of certain sciences. Perhaps people who have not studied latin lack the understanding of its importance.

Yes, the plebs are too fixated on trivial matters like school buildings falling down and kids being educated in the basics, they don't understand the value of 40 schools (only 40!) teaching a small number of pupils Latin.

This policy has been designed to appeal to snobs. It is clearly working.

I learnt Latin, btw.