will a lack of Latin prejudice ds's chances?

[fircone]

ds is very academic.

he will be attending the local comprehensive next year. The school has an excellent reputation, but does not teach Latin. Assuming (rather early!) that ds might wish to study English at a (top) university, would his lack of Latin prejudice his chances of success?

I regret not studying Latin: we were encouraged at school to take 'living' languages, and I can't say I have ever felt a German A Level has been of any use in my life whatsoever.

Should I look to try to teach him at home, or find a tutor? And do Russell Group universities realise that state school pupils may not have had the opportunity to study classics?

I'm not pushing ds into anything - I just wanted a bit of advice. And I thought it might be fun to learn Latin together with ds if we had a chance (yep, he is rather a geek).

I sometimes get myself into a bit of a frenzy coming on MN when people say, "Oh, the reason I pay for the dcs to have a private education is they have so many advantages - the school even has its own time machine and the dcs simply whizz back to ancient Rome to experience the language and culture first hand. "

Not even Xenia's children have had the advantage of a time machine ...

Lack of latin is no disadvantage.

What, you mean your state school doesn't have a time machine fircone????? jeepers, time to move house

I'd have said mood too. Come on pointy, dish!

dd's school (local comp) has just started teaching Latin this yr.

Our local comp teaches Latin too. There's a pretty good range of modern langs too - French, Spanish and German.

.... and of course there's a time machine.

I did Latin, French, German and Italian at school.

Latin was my most important subject (by weighting) in my baccalaureate. It was not particularly useful to me and I have forgotten nearly all of it.

Don't worry about it.

Latin verbs were drilled into me at my grammar school so severely that I can still reel off amo, amas, amat by heart (in several tenses) some, ahem, 30 odd years later

I am trying so hard not to bite on Swedes' post. Someone please...

I teach at a Russell Group university, Marina. And I get quite a few English students in my Latin beginners class. But it's entirely voluntary: I only look very pleadingly at them when I meet them in the corridors...

Haven't read whole thread, but I don't think any universities demand Latin now. I did English at university, with quite a lot of language/linguistics and Old English, and while a bit of latin would not have gone amiss, German is much more useful - English is a germanic language! DH went to Cambridge and did latin GCSE privately as his school didn't offer it. It wasn't essential, but was useful for his degree, history.

Given that Latin is almost exclusively taught in Independent schools, it would be outrageous for Uiniversities to penalise applicants without Latin.

I learnt all about the indicative, subjunctive etc but never came across one term (mood) that covered these terms.

I have nothing of interest to say on the matter.

and as I said before, Latin is an easy option.

I haven't read the posts because I'm too lazy but why do you need to know Latin for English?

Less than 200 words please

It does depend on the examining board Pointydog. When I studied GCSE Latin, my school chose not to use the local examining body as it was really poor for latin- you were given a printed sheet of all the possible words that could be used in the exam! They chose a course that included translating pieces by Pliny and Virgil amongst others.

I hated Latin at school. Badly taught and felt utterly irrelevant. But I really enjoyed Classical Civilization. My sister has a Latin A level, which was very useful when she subsequently studied Botany (and probably also when she studied Theology).

yes, the old virgil translations. But pupils had gone over the pieces so often in class that once you remembered the first sentence, the rest just bubbled out from memory.

In response to the OP, my ds is at a grammar school and studied latin for three years. When it came to choosing his GCSE options, he wanted to drop it. I was not too keen on this as I thought it would be a useful Olevel to have for University entrance. Before deciding, I spoke to several of ds's teachers at parents evening, specifically for history as ds is interested in this, and also English. ds's teachers assured me that ds would not scupper his chances by dropping Latin. HTH

i have just named\my child a really silly name and the classics/latin teacher at ds1 schoool is about the only person to appreciate it!