why was my son not offered classical civilisation or latin then

[southeastastra]

is it cause he goes to a shite school?

Latin is overrated. People can only ever remember Caecilius est in horto.

Ahem. Metella stabat in horto.

Quintus wants a new toga.

And: Caecilius ancillam emit. ancilla est pulchra. Melissa Caecilium delectat. Melissa quoque Grumionem delectat. Melissa quoque Quintum delectat! Metella est irata, ancilla Metellam non delectat! (eheu!) Metella non est contenta. Caecilius dormit. Quintus quoque dormit. Grumio est in culina. Metella ad portum ambulat. Metella pecunium portat. Metella venalicium videt. Venalicius Metellam videt. "salve, Syphax!" vocat Metella. "salve, Metella!" vocat Syphax. Metellam servum quaerit. Syphax valde ridet. Syphax magnum serum habet...Metella fortem servum videt. Servus Metellam sauviter salutat. Servus est Clemens. Metella est contenta! Metella est laetissima! Metella servum delectat. Metella servum fortem emit et ad villam revenit. Clemens Caecilium non delectat...

All I get from that is "hello Syphax! said Metella. "hello Metella" said(says?) Syphax.

Metella is not happy. Caecilius sleeps.

Grumio is in the kitchen.

I can say road trip in latin though

Iter Faciamus!

Ancilla is beautiful. She caused a lot of trouble. Caecilium likes Melissa. Melissa likes Grumio. They all swung.

See? Latin is modern and relevant.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

bellum bellum bellum
belli bello bello
bella bella bella
bellorum belliss belliss.

that's it. All I can remember.

Back in the seventies we had to do a 'practical' subject - cookery or needlework for girls and woodwork or metalwork for the boys. Was nothing to do with who was clever or not but gender really mattered. Mustn't grumble - we've come a long long way since then.

Needlework vere combibo

I'm only posting here because you keep using my name!!!!!!

Ah good old Quintus, although the latin teacher used to say it as queentas

I remember Quintus! All I got from a year of Latin was 'Quintus Scintilla Est', which I am sure I made up and it seems to imply that Quintus is his mother

My DS goes to a state comprehensive school - he has just chosen his GCSE options and will be studying RE with Philiosophy, and Civilisation & Ethics next year.

those sound very interesting Mrs Flittersnoop, I would like to take those up myself.

I did Classsics A level, fab subject. History, Literature, Philosopy, etc all rolled in to one

ooh clearly not spelling

DS goes to a former Grammar school that still has pretensions to being a Grammar school IYSWIM!

DS (13) has Aspergers and sees the world in black-and white terms. He is v. opinionated, has a strong sense of inustice and we (family, school, SENCO) feel it will be v. useful for him to learn how to examine and debate Other Points Of View!

Sorry - INJustice I meant .

DS is also a passionate, committed and highly argumentative atheist, in spite of having a wee "girlfriend" at the local church youth club who is a committed Christian.

I'm hoping he will learn tolerance, understanding, and the ability to keep his gob shut if he wants to keep his woman happy!

dd does latin and classics for gcse at her indep school, loves both

I didn't really get many options at GCSE - had to do technology, even though I was shite at it, could pick history or Geography and had a choice between French or German, now they don't have to do languages or humanities or technology - unless their chosen diploma course at college gets cancelled and ICT (which gets lots of points for league table purposes) is full - then they have to take History and Geography regardless of whether they have a snowflakes chance in hell of getting a grade.

It seems to be really difficult for schools. It is awful that so many children are dropping languages and that the very traditional subjects are not taught, the brightest children miss out, but at the other end of the spectum with inclusion there are lots of children at comps who have no hope of getting traditional GCSE's and we aren't offering them many options either. Private schools don't have to cater for so many abilities

In latin you learn vocabulary like death, killing, war, gladiators etc. In French you learn the days of the week , food and weather... I know what I would choose to study if I was a boy of 12!

and they all start killing and shagging their relatives before you are even out of the GCSE course. Shagging texts before A level is very cool

pagwatch
Hopefully the pillaging and looting etc will spice up the GCSE course but in years 7-9 Caecilius seems to do a lot of flower arranging and walking the dog or whatever. We were talking about the word incendiary for some reason and I asked DD what was the Latin for a fire and she didn't know!

don't recall any shagging in DD1s GCSE Latin texts - we had swathes of Caesar on the Druids and poetry which didn't make sense even when we'd translated it into English. If there was sex in that, it was far too subtle for me .