Tuesday, 28 April 2009
The Dead Language Lives
A heartening report on the radio last night about the successful reintroduction of Latin into schools, via [Lat.] the Cambridge Schools Classics Project, which does this kind of thing, making Latin accessible to all. As one of the contributors pointed out, Latin acts as a ladder to higher ways of thinking and higher forms of discourse (hence the centuries-enduring Gradus ad Parnassum). It certainly leads to clearer thinking, especially about the structure of language and therefore meaning, and, happily, half-opens the door to a range of other modern languages - imagine how infinitely harder it would be to learn Italian with no knowledge of Latin. I think, historically, the learning of Latin has also been a ladder whereby children of lowly origin can, in every sense, 'get on' - that is why the teaching of Latin was central to the grammar school curriculum. And that is why, my friends, we have Shakespeare.
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I was the only pupil in my whole school (of 500) who studied latin. It was all a bit sad and 'Mr Chips' as my old latin teacher was so pathetically grateful to have even one person to talk to about a subject he loved so much.
ReplyDeleteNaturally the school had removed latin from the timetable, so I had to have classes in my spare time. We used to sit in his car in the school carpark during lunch breaks and I'd wade through the Latin Reading Course whilst he sat there quietly with his seatbelt on and ate his beef paste sandwiches.
We did Latin up to what used to be called 3rd Form (I still don't understand the new money) but the teacher was so utterly horrible that only one person took it for GCSE, and she was nuts.
ReplyDeleteI did Classics mind and there were only 3 of us in that.
A friend of mine taught Latin and drama in Leeds. Both were eventually phased out and he was made redundant, he took up gardening, at least he had a fast track to it's terminology.
ReplyDeleteThe only word I can think of in a drama/ gardening context is 'plot'
ReplyDeleteI did Latin up to the old O Level but not after that. It wasn't thought sufficiently practical and only brainy high-fliers were allowed to continue with it. But neither that nor some years of Roman Catholic mumbo-jumbo in Latin has stopped me from discovering the classical world, a wonderful and inexhaustible subject. My idea of a perfect holiday is pottering around some old sites in Italy, Greece or Turkey. Old they may be but they are alive to me. I don't owe that to skool but to brilliant writers and scholars like Robin Lane Fox.
ReplyDeleteCompulsory Latin was a punishment we got for doing well in our exams - YOU ARE A CLEVER BOY, THEREFORE YOU MUST DO LATIN.
ReplyDeleteWhat's particularly daft is the argument that Latin teaches you to be logical, an argument almost always advanced by people so logically challenged that they don't allow for the alternatives that you could have studied had you not wasted six hours a week on bloody Latin. Moreover, these idiots cry, it teaches you the meaning of English words. That was demolished in the first Latin class we had: what, enquired the beak, does the Latin verb "amare" mean? "Sir", enquired a bright bairn, is it to do with "amiable"? Sir was too illogical to see that his argument had been demolished - we inferred Latin meanings from English, not arsy-versy.
And then, one glorious day, we learned that the ancient Scottish universities no longer demanded Latin for entry. He didn't see us for dust.
In my day too Latin was never enjoyable - but then nothing else was taught enjoyably either. I 'did' it to O-level, then another term later, reading proper stuff. Though very very little of it has stuck, I remain convinced it did me some profound good, something beyond just learning a language.
ReplyDeleteLatin made me find 'How to be Topp' funny.
ReplyDeleteThat's true - and that alone is sufficient reason to be glad you've suffered Lat, Fr, Hist, Geog, Geom, Algy ect ect....
ReplyDeleteI am a Latin Student at Westlake High School in Atlanta,Ga. I am going into my 3rd year of Latin, and I think that it is helping me alot. Latin has increased my vocabulary and helped me quite a bit in my literature classes. I am an AP(Advanced Placement) Language student and my teacher incorporates latin quite often.
ReplyDelete