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.

@Hatethisplacetho

I studied Latin (at a state school) and still use it to this day with respect to understanding the meanings and etymology of words. It is also a good logical/verbal exercise, exposes you to some history and classical art, and enables you to learn many modern languages with ease. I am a huge advocate for it as a subject and I hope my DD is at least a little bit interested in it! The thing that kept my interest high was being a huge Harry Potter fan and all the spells being somewhat Latin based.

I was the same. Due to learning Latin, I was able to make reasonable guesses for the meanings of (English) words I'd never seen before, which had a real impact on the books I then read as a teenager.

It all feels a bit 'let them eat cake!' Can't construct a grammatically correct sentence in English, have an undeveloped vocabulary and the reading level of an 8 year old? Well, we're not going to teach you how to do any of that (because if you're from a decent family who cares about your education they would have helped you with all this already so you should just know already and if you don't, well...). Instead, we're going to teach you Latin, because it gives you a solid foundation for all that other stuff we're not going to teach you.

Why does it have to be either/or? At my, supposedly not very good, state school we could take Latin and German/ Spanish / French/ Greek. At my husbands, supposedly, better state school Latin or Greek weren't on the syllabus. It's just another language and not actually a dead one either.

I learnt both German and French at school. Can't say I have ever used either much (unless you count asking for a croissant in a French bakery) as an adult so you could say that was pretty pointless too. i think actually Latin would have been more useful in retrospect for my career in science.

Latin is also the international language of certain sciences.

Really? Name one. Oh, plural...logically and grammatically you must be able to name at least two.

The fact that Latin words are used as names in biology does not in any way mean that it is the 'language of science', and they're perfectly accessible to anyone capable of understanding the science itself. The words are useful precisely because they aren't normal everyday words....some taxonomic names are quite silly in translation. (I use taxonomic information in my work routinely). Does school Latin help you to know the taxonomic species name of a llama, for instance? How about the fruit fly? You might glean a little about it from its name but - having taken very little time to look it up - it's not exactly the most important information.

This notion of the importance of Latin to science belies a shallow lack of understanding of sciences I fear. Or else a lack of either logic or accurate use of language.

In fact, the international language of all sciences now is English, and it would be better to make sure our children can write it clearly. A bit more technical writing wouldn't go amiss perhaps.

Why does it have to be either/or? At my, supposedly not very good, state school we could take Latin and German/ Spanish / French/ Greek.

Where is the space on the timetable? People talk a lot about how kids leave school with no real ability to speak even one foreign language. That's partly down to the way languages are taught and assessed, but a lot of it is that they simply don't have enough input time.

Imo the ideal would be: teach Spanish in primary and in secondary from year 7. Introduce an optional second MFL from year 8 or 9 if possible, for those who are able and/or keen. Offer Latin as a lunch time club if there is interest and a teacher who can do it.

Comprehensive school kid here - at age 12 was given option to study classical Greek and continued with it all the way to university. Taught myself Latin in sixth form as I was headed for classics at uni.

Of course, this was pre-National Curriculum, which - when the Tories introduced it, killed off classics in most of the comprehensive schools which were enthusiastically teaching it.

It all feels a bit 'let them eat cake!' Can't construct a grammatically correct sentence in English, have an undeveloped vocabulary and the reading level of an 8 year old? Well, we're not going to teach you how to do any of that (because if you're from a decent family who cares about your education they would have helped you with all this already so you should just know already and if you don't, well...). Instead, we're going to teach you Latin, because it gives you a solid foundation for all that other stuff we're not going to teach you.

Well quite. I can't help thinking that some of the people championing the reintroduction of Latin have very little idea of the realities of being a teacher, a pupil or a timetabler or curriculum planner in a normal state secondary school in 2021. Latin is not the answer to a single one of the many problems facing state secondary education in England. And moreover, it is not a way of somehow evening out the yawning gap between state school and private school pupils.

What an interesting thread in terms of the spectrum of opinions!

To a previous poster who's a Latin teacher and was curious about if people who'd studied the subject thought it was useful, here's my two-pence.

I grew up bilingual as my mum is Italian, so when I started Latin causally at school I found it extraordinarily easy. I was one of those weirdos who did it to a full A level; when I was studying it I found translation easy, and always lost marks in the analysis sections which was more like writing an English essay on the theme etc. Basically, not to blow my own horn but I can get by pretty well in Romance speaking countries due to either the Italian/Latin/French I grew up speaking/studying respectively. Although there is the question of chicken or egg in the sense that, growing up bilingually, I probably have a better sense or shared words/etymology regardless of the fact I studied languages formally, but the formal education helped.

Flash forward to now...so I'm a junior doctor, and it's often said to me 'oh studying Latin must have helped you'. Well, in my experience, not really. Yes lots of medical terms are in Latin, but I don't speak or interpret Latin, I merely pepper medical conversations with Latin words to sound clever, and often avoid using them completely when talking to laypeople (i.e. patients) because that's part of good communication. My OH is also a doctor, is not particularly confident with MFL, definitely didn't do Latin and yet they do not struggle when we talk about our work including the Latin/Greek terms that are involved. At the end of the day, me saying Sella Turcica when I talk about anatomy is a bit pointless unless you know the context about which it's placed, and also at med school we were taught that it translates as Turkish saddle because that's what it looks like, which reduced my 7 years of Latin study to about 10seconds of focussed teaching.

So to people who says it helps with certain jobs that still uses Latin phrases, I would possibly disagree based on my experience. However, I think the benefits do include a certain grounding in linguistics, as people have discussed the ability to think logically which has applications from programming to code breaking, and interestingly, what no one else has talked about, is the civilisation aspect. Outside of finding the language part easy, I enjoyed the analysis of the period as a whole - studying the various styles of governance, the type of law, the differences and similarities of life now compared to thousands of years ago. One of my A level texts was Cicero's In Catalinam and it certainly is a good price of rhetoric but I always remember the discussion with my Latin teacher around it "so Cicero was arguing to sentence this person who was sort of trying to improve the lot of the plebians - that doesn't seem very egalitarian'. I think that made me a more rounded person, and whilst you could gain that experience from other humanity subjects such as English literature or history, I think the combination of the pure study of language with the contextual element makes Latin a very helpful subject to study, as it possibly comes closest to being a critical thinking course. However, I'd be happy with a pure critical thinking course being taught instead.

I agree again, lazylinguist. Also, many are claiming Latin has helped them with logic. Why not go to the heart of the problem and make teaching logic and critical thinking compulsory? Another thing I was never taught at my comp or sixth form was how to construct an argument, how to write an essay etc. This, again, put me at a huge disadvantage as an undergraduate, it was only as a postgraduate and through independent study that I learned how to write an academic paper. It's all very well for those fortunate enough to have parents who cared about their education and who were sent to decent schools to then sneer at those with poor grammar and recommend Latin as the cure-all solution, but you're probably not aware of how much many comprehensives lower down the tables are not teaching the very basics. Don't blame the products of the system, blame the system itself.

It's not reintroducing anything. Latin is already taught at hundreds of state schools. 40 state schools adding Latin to the curriculum over the next 4 years is going to make bog-all difference to whether it is viewed as an elite subject taught only at private schools.

This is a bullshit policy announcement of something that already happens, similar to Gav's announcement that mobile phones would be banned in classrooms a few weeks ago. It makes people think that Gav is actually doing something.

Where's the covid catch-up funding, Gav? What is happening re covid in schools in September? Why did you cut free school meals funding during a pandemic? Why have you scrapped level 3 BTECs?

I wonder how many state schools already teach Latin anyway. Mine did although I didn't take it. The announcement reads as if nobody is taught Latin in state school anymore - is that true?

Agree with PPs-Latin is still an important language as the basis of many MFL and is widely used in A&P, medicine, other sciences, and law.

@lazylinguist I posted my rant before I read your post, and totally agree. My BIL teaches private, his wife teaches state, their differing experiences are eye opening and I'm not sure either of them need any more stress!

I'm really glad I did Latin at school. It means far less recourse to the dictionary because I can often work out Latinate words, and I think it really helps people's written English.

For many years, my job involved vetting reports written by dozens of staff, and those who had done Latin wrote far better English. Not just grammatically correct, but succinct and well-structured, with cogent arguments and proper punctuation. "They didn't do Latin" became the office shorthand for staff who produced page after page of barely comprehensible drivel that had to be virtually rewritten ab initio.

I did Greek for a year too, but foolishly opted for German at o-level. (A timetable clash meant I couldn't do both). I regret that now, because it's pretty easy to learn German independently, Greek not so much.

And I might have been more inclined not to jack in my A-levels after a year as I would have loved to have done Classics at uni.

I left school in the early 70s and back then, Latin A-level was pretty much a prerequisite for doing an English degree. I assume this is no longer the case, as it's so little taught.

I'm totally in favour of Latin being more widely taught, but given the parlous state of schools and education generally, I'm not sure it would be top of my list for having money spent on it.

I loved Latin as a subject but think that it needs to be studied as part of a coherent and well funded improvement of state provision.

If you have Latin then you have the basics of every modern Romance language - Italian, Portuguese, French, Spanish etc.

I never studied Portuguese or Spanish but thanks to Latin I can generally get the gist of what I'm reading.

And this is to say nothing of the roots of some of our English language, medical science, legalese etc.

Latin is very useful and anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.

@Hatethisplacetho

I studied Latin (at a state school) and still use it to this day with respect to understanding the meanings and etymology of words. It is also a good logical/verbal exercise, exposes you to some history and classical art, and enables you to learn many modern languages with ease. I am a huge advocate for it as a subject and I hope my DD is at least a little bit interested in it! The thing that kept my interest high was being a huge Harry Potter fan and all the spells being somewhat Latin based.

Same, I found it very useful and still do to this day.

DS attends a state school and they do Latin (and classics) alongside modern foreign languages from year 3 right up until GCSE (large school with junior and senior parts) and I think it helps them a lot because Latin is the root of so many other languages.

I enjoyed the analysis of the period as a whole - studying the various styles of governance, the type of law, the differences and similarities of life now compared to thousands of years ago.

But you don't need Latin to do that. The development of democracy is interesting but if we wanted to teach children about that, we wouldn't start by making them learn Ancient Greek. The systems which developed in China are also interesting but don't require us all to have mastered Mandarin.

Not just grammatically correct, but succinct and well-structured, with cogent arguments and proper punctuation. "They didn't do Latin" became the office shorthand for staff who produced page after page of barely comprehensible drivel that had to be virtually rewritten ab initio. wink
How revolting that you are actually being smug about this.

I actually wish I’d learnt Latin (and Ancient Greek) at school. But maybe I’m weird. I’m crap at languages in general so not sure I’d be any good.

I did Latin for two years and now work in the language industry. I do think teaching people a dead language is an odd way of getting them interested in living ones. I'd set up an introduction to languages course covering basic linguistics and translation, and make much more use of the second languages already spoken by millions of children like Polish, Urdu etc.

Latin is absolutely brilliant for English language development: grammar and vocabulary. It’s very logical so it appeals to children who might otherwise prefer STEM to languages.

It’s a crying shame that it’s largely only available at private schools as it would be hugely beneficial for other children.

MFL I this country is woeful.

DD was taught a bit of French (badly) at primary and then a bit of Spanish (well) at secondary.

Other countries which teach English so well seem to pick one main language (English) and focus on that.

I wonder if it would be a good idea for UK schools to pick one MFL and focus on that from Nursery/Reception up and have it taught properly, not by a teacher whose knowledge of the subject is that they got a C in GCSE 20 years ago.

@Newrumpus

"Not having Latin available at state schools in discriminatory. It makes it more difficult for those not accessing a private education to compete in certain fields. It is a source of cultural capital. I studied Literature at Cambridge University and remember the crippling inferiority I felt when I realised that there were cultural references that I didn’t understand which my peers did. This isn’t just Latin but Classics, more widely. Latin should be available for all not just the elite"

This poster is absolutely correct. DD aged 16 also (bogstandard comp) realised this and taught herself Latin (which she found more enjoyable than MFL). Now she's at Cambridge, it has come in very useful. The concept of cultural capital is often overlooked. If we look the actual rationale behind Williamson's plan, he wants to bestow cultural capital on our working class kids, just like Ken Livingstone did back in the 80's. Eat the rich.