Is there any evidence that learning Latin improves educational outcomes?

[tethersend]

...Or is it a case of mistaking correlation for causation?

I've noticed a trend to include Latin on the curriculum amongst some academies and free schools- I wondered if there was a sound evidence base for doing so?

I did Latin to O-level. I enjoyed it and do think it helped with other languages (including English), although agree it might have been even more useful to learn another modern language. But I am glad I did it.
DH did a classics degree, and is an absolute whizz at cryptic cross words. I am sure there is a link.

I did Latin for 2 years. It didn't help with my English or French or anything at all. I think it's ok as a subject for some pupils who are already doing well in other academic subjects and want an extra string to their bow, put don't pretend it's particularly useful.

Imo it'd be more useful to have more pupils doing economics, another neglected academic subject.

Well, apart from "amo, amas, amat, amamus. amatis, amant," "Cornelia sub arbore sedet," and knowing that nominative, accusative, genetive, dative and ablative are different grammatical cases (don't ask me when the ablative is used - I can't remember and don't care, I just remember dominus, dominum, domini, domino, etc, etc...), I really can't say I remember anything of Latin lessons. Frankly, I think you can learn about the connection between Latin and romance languages in far more effective ways than learning basic Latin. However, some knowledge of Latin can be fun when trying to work out Latin inscriptions. You'd probably have to have wasted a lot of years learning it just for that pleasure, however. I'd rather spend the time learning a living language, although Latin well taught is probably more enjoyable than a living language badly taught. I definitely preferred learning French and German, though, and have most definitely found those far more useful in real life.

I went to a comprehensive in a city with a lot of deprivation. I was lucky enough to be introduced to Latin through the efforts of an English teacher who cunningly convinced the headmaster to let her offer Latin as an alternative to double games. As you can imagine, there was a very high uptake!

Of the thirty odd pupils only two of us took it at standard grade (Scotland) but by the time my brother was there a few years later the class sizes were in the twenties. I will always be grateful to that teacher for the opportunity she gave me.

I went from a B or C student in languages to straight As and it was all because of the foundation in grammar that Latin gave me. I went on to study languages at degree level and although I have forgotten all my Latin I still use the grammar in my work today.

rabbitstew did you use Ecce Romani too or are all girls in Latin textbooks called Cornelia?

I do believe it was called, "Ecce Romani" .

I have O grade Latin and just had to google uxorious - sounds stifling.
More useful than my higher Biology in my case and definitely preferable to double games. I also used it as a way to avoid doing French and for me I think it is more useful as at that level if you ever need a mfl you pick it up better by immersion than study.
I have a degree in economics and would not advocate teaching it in schools. Too many simplistic monetarists trying to run the country already. Background in classics is far more helpful.

I think Latin is hugely useful if you go on to study languages seriously

As is Greek

There's a shortage of people who can read medieval Latin. I know of a county record office that wanted to recruit an archivist who was a Latin specialist a few years back and couldn't find anyone. Vast quanties of historical records, the history of our nation, will become inaccessible if there are no Latinists. (I'm a historian who failed O Level Latin.)

My husband always calls putting Latin on the curriculum a dog whistle for the middle classes. Our local power-crazed academy of a primary has done just that and it's totally working although you know in reality that it's going to be half-assed half an hour for a week for a term, but people are doing the whole renting next door for admissions 'for the Latin'. Results are great at this school, but is it because they learn Latin or because they attract the sort of parents who are seduced by the idea of Latin?

It's very hard to argue against any subject not being valuable, but there isn't room for everything on the curriculum. My kids' school does some very creative stuff, but it means that handwriting is squeezed. Latin is great, but is it better than coding? Or touch typing? Or dance? Or any number of great enhancements that there just isn't room for.

"I went from a B or C student in languages to straight A's and all because of the foundation in grammar Latin gave me".
DS2 would agree that the foundation of Latin grammar helps significantly with other languages. He did Latin from yr 4 and the discipline required for learning the grammar and the fact that many words are common to other languages he feels has made a big difference and the skills required for the translation he applied to his other languages. I don't think we should underestimate the pleasure and importance of learning something just for the sake of it either does it really matter if it's not useful in later life?

I don't think we should underestimate the pleasure and importance of learning something just for the sake of it either does it really matter if it's not useful in later life?

I completely agree and it seems that education at nearly all levels now seems to squeeze out this very important thing.

The mention of Ecce Romani above takes me back....

I was rubbish at German until I started Latin . Obviously that is an indictment of the God-awful GCSE German teaching /textbooks, where you were meant to pick up the grammar by osmosis, but from my point of view it formed the basis for all my subsequent language learning.
I did a degree in it and it has been hugely useful but to be fair I worked in museums, archaeology and academia and am now a historical novelist so it might not be quite so useful for most people...
I am teaching ds1 now. He has behavioural problems and whenever he gets excluded from school we sit down with Minimus and it's, like, Latin therapy

That's interesting Countess. I do wonder if its the precision of Latin that attracts DD. She is a very anxious person and doesn't like things that deviate from their own rules.

It was German that I found much clearer once I started Latin too Countess. I managed an entire school career without a single English grammar lesson so it was invaluable there too.

Again came in handy when I took up Arabic. Strangely enough, it was probably least helpful with the romance languages I learned.

It's code for "we are a de facto selective school"

Ooh. I have Latin A-level (30 years ago, but hey, the language has been dead a lot longer than that). Wonder if our local (aspiring) comp would like a Latin club?

Countess (not chasing you round the boards, honestly), we have the first Minimus book. Are the others any good? Do you work through them systematically learning the vocab or make like DD and mainly look at the pictures?

Isn't Latin being useful for other languages just a reflection of the way mfl tend to be taught? It seems to me a lot of mfl teaching is confused by the concept that total immersion is the best way to learn a language - thus, formal grammar is not always immediately taught. However, that utterly fails to acknowledge that the students in question are not even remotely totally immersed in the foreign language and therefore need to have the rules made explicit to them, because they really don't have enough exposure for them to be implicit... meaning they are only really learning to parrot a very limited number of stock phrases if you don't make the grammar explicit to them that would enable them to become a bit more adventurous. Latin doesn't have this problem, because it's a dead language, so you are force fed grammar from the very beginning, which is a useful base from which to acquire other languages, as you now know what sort of rules you are supposed to be looking out for... Replacing all that by teaching English grammar is a waste of time, because if you can already speak English, learning English grammar is an utter bore, whereas learning the grammar of a new language at least seems to have some point as a means of helping you learn the language...

I know I particularly liked German as a language because of all the rules of grammar, which, like Latin, made it quite satisfying to "work out" how to say something. I, personally, don't like to be taught foreign languages by learning pathetic phrases about buying ice creams or asking where the cathedral is, etc, or singing silly songs. One thing Latin did have going for it was it got straight down to grammatical basics on day 1, because it would have been very silly to teach you how to order an ice cream in Latin...

I have mixed feelings about Latin. I loved it at school and did A level. It was useful in my very traditional MFL degree because I studied Old Early French and a bit of historical linguistics. There's no doubt it can help with grammar (but I was a grammar fiend all along, so I doubt I would have had any trouble without it).

But... I have a bit of an issue with the idea of teaching Latin in order to help kids with grammar or to give them a linguistic base. It seems ludicrous to me that it would be necessary to teach a whole other language, taking up a whole extra subject's space on the timetable, particularly a dead one which will be of no long-term use to the vast majority of people, just in order to gain a better understanding of English and/or the modern foreign language they are learning.

Latin isn't magic! The problem is that grammar has for so long been neglected in teaching English and MFL . If you are allowed to properly spend the necessary time on that, then you really won't need to teach Latin.

I guess that when the fashion swung towards communication and expressing yourself in MFL and creativity in English, the only subject where it was still educationally acceptable to spend ages on grammar was Latin, because you don't have to devote any time to speaking it!

Don't get me wrong - it would be very sad if teaching Latin were to die out altogether, but I think the skills it teaches would be just as easy to teach through the medium of a modern language, were we allowed to actually do so (I'm an MFL teacher, incidentally ).

snap, holmessweetholmes.

Apparently Nero had ice cream! Maybe we need the Latin for 'Please put down your ice cream and direct me to the fire station.'

I had to go Latin GCSE at school (the less academic were allowed to do Classical Civilisation instead). Private girls' school in the 90s.

I don't think it was necessary to force us all to take GCSE in it but it certainly helps with other languages, some sciences, and answering my DS1 questions now about why we call certain things what we do!

I did the Cambridge latin course at school. It was fun, and like the others said, you learn a bit about English and structure and grammar at the same time. Quite a bit about Romans. TBH, I have found my O level chemistry useful. But not O level maths. I have never had to integrate anything (in the mathematical sense).

I went to Pompey to vist Caecelius's house .

I have nothing against Latin and agree that it has its place. Some people (very few) will go on to seriously use Latin in adult life. For most, just the studying of it has benefits - but they are learning benefits, not Latin-for-its-sake benefits.

I think many of us here are just querying its venerated status. It would be a terrible shame if nobody studied Latin. But doing so does not have higher moral status and it doesn't indicate higher intellectual reach.

I did French and German (and English Language) at secondary school and Latin at university. I learnt more about language, grammar, sentence construction etc etc from two semesters of Latin than in all the previous years put together.

I agree with the pp that this is probably as much to do with teaching methods for MFL as some kind of superiority of Latin, but I do think that it is a useful enabler for all sorts of other subjects.