The Latin for the Judging

[steepholm]

Because my comprehensive school had (until the year before I went there) been a Secondary Modern, it didn't teach Latin, preferring to specialise in woodwork and cross country running. This made me really cross, aged 11

Comments

[callmemadam]

Great header!

Whatever the reasons for this decision, I still welcome it. It's worried me for some time that studying classics has become as exclusive today as it was a hundred years ago.
As an example of how it need not be, see the poet Tony Harrison. Working class boy who made his way through scholarships to being someone who could translate Greek plays for the stage.

I've just remembered that I mentioned this very thing here.

[steepholm]

I'm certainly not against Latin being taught in schools, and of course sometimes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. I wouldn't say it's as urgent as fixing the crisis in modern language teaching, mind.

[puddleshark]

The proposal to teach Latin in state schools seems to rear its head on a fairly regular basis, but nothing ever comes of it. Where would you suddenly find a large supply of Latin teachers? Unless you had a time machine.

So yes, maybe it's just Gavin Williamson sucking up to Boris Johnson's public school snobbery. "If you oiks were to learn a bit of Latin, maybe you would acquire our superior values of Hard Work..."

[callmemadam]

The idea that learning Latin makes you snobby is the very thing I would like to see the end of.

[steepholm]

Logistics aren't this government's strong point.

[callmemadam]

What is?

[sartorias]

Heh!

Yeah, looks like another jab at snobbery.

[poliphilo]

I was taught Latin up to "O" level standard.

It means I know a few tags (just like Boris), can partially decipher church monuments- and am sometimes able to work out what an English or foreign word means by digging down to its Latin root. These aren't negligible skills- but whether they represent a good return on the thousands of hours I had to dedicate to learning them is something I've never been able to decide...

Boy A and Boy B, Ana Kriegel murder, man arrested.

[ron_broxted]

Doesn't Bozza have a degree in Latin?

Re: Boy A and Boy B, Ana Kriegel murder, man arrested.

[steepholm]

Yes - though not a First, much to his chagrin, allegedly.

RE: Re: Boy A and Boy B, Ana Kriegel murder, man arrested.

[ron_broxted]

Read his biography, literally, his Dad gave him everything. In 2 minds over Latin - I had to read a Romanian article and if one knows French, Italian, Spanish, then easy enough. That said, quote from Sarf Lunnen half a century ago "I ain't gonna meet a 2000 year old Roman am I?"