Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Turning the clock back, teaching Latin in state schools

Earlier this year, I had time on my hands and dabbled with it. Time permitting, I'd go much further with it.

Generally, as an option I'm supportive. It's good for: Romance languages, Biology, Legal terms, European/Roman History and English vocabulary and etymology.
 
Pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō would have been a definite draw towards studying Latin in secondary, we always loved a good insult
 
I had no choice but to do latin in secondary school...through Irish.
I certainly was not from a middle class home. The class was a mix of all sorts of backgrounds from all over the city. The only requirement being you had to do well in an entrance exam and want to learn through Irish.

I detested latin. The teacher made us learn off the translation passages and I have never ever been able to learn anything off by heart. Don't know why.
So every passage had to be translated. I was so uneasy that I very nearly didnt sit the exam.
But on the day of the exam I decided to give it a go and scraped an honours C.
It was my worst result in any exam...ever.

Ps. They said it would help with English.
Well...no..not when you had to translate it into Irish.
🙄🙄
 
Last edited:
I’ve said here before that I enjoyed learning Latin (state grammar school), and I think what I liked was the etymological links.

Listen, given a blank sheet of paper there are lots of things id like to be on the curriculum. But the curriculum is FULL. For everything you add, you have to take something away. And no one ever says what we no longer need to teach kids to make room for the new stuff.
 
that poem was left out of the 12th grade curriculum here :oops:

Latin entirely was left out of the curriculum and it became a bit of a thing to pretend to hate French and German (but I was good at German)

I was quite interested in learning it but after stealing the only Latin dictionary at school I wasn't able to crack it on my own and we didn't have the web in those days.
 
There are two state grammar schools in our town; one for boys and one for girls. My daughter is still angry that (her school) the girls grammar doesn't offer Latin but the boys grammar does.

It's all Greek to me.
 
i routinely use latin to illustrate spanish in my classes. the conjugation system, the verbal endings, even the sequence of tenses in spanish are basically latin with a few sound changes.

e2a i realize that response comes across a little strongly. you don't need latin to learn any other language but when i tell my students that by learning latin they're learning half a dozen other languages i'm not kidding. the closer you look, there more there is, except for the vocabulary, which in iberia was influenced by arabic, and in romania was influenced by slavic, ee.gg.
I'd second this. I got a D at Latin "O" Level, but it was a very good grounding in grammar, which definitely helped later on.
 
Edit - I messed up the figures.

Tories are still cunts though.

And it is part of the culture war.
very much so. this isn't in any way an idea aimed at actually improving young people's education. it's sending signals to elements of the population (some intended, others not so much) about the direction the tory party want to take us in. whatever benefits learning latin could give to the guinea pigs at these 40 schools, i don't think so many will accrue: it's not only part of the culture war, it's tory froth - the longest lasting effect of which is likely to be to alienate the pupils from latin rather than to encourage them to discover more about the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds where latin was used as a universal language.
 
When I learnt Latin it came with an unspoken assumption that the classical world was superior to the barbarian world and also to the present day. But there was never any negative reference to the violence of Roman imperialism and conquest, to a society pervaded by slavery, injustice and domination of the few by the many. No wonder that Johnson likes quoting it at every opportunity.
 
I had to do Latin in the 3rd year as I was good at French and German and it was supposed to be useful for learning languages. I found it no use whatsoever and would much rather have done woodwork and technical drawing.

I can only remember one useless phrase in Latin but can still remember a lot of the French and German I did over 40 years ago and can even make out most of the Spanish my dad comes out with.
 
When I learnt Latin it came with an unspoken assumption that the classical world was superior to the barbarian world and also to the present day. But there was never any negative reference to the violence of Roman imperialism and conquest, to a society pervaded by slavery, injustice and domination of the few by the many. No wonder that Johnson likes quoting it at every opportunity.
our society is pervaded by wage slavery - and very real slavery too - injustice and domination of the many by the few. so in some ways not so very different.
 
Back
Top Bottom