Which made me sad to read this story in Schools Week:
Thousands of secondary pupils are facing "significant disruption" after the government scrapped its state school Latin programme mid-year as it seeks to plug a fiscal black hole.
In a letter seen by Schools Week, the Department for Education has informed schools it is terminating its Latin Excellence Programme in February.
The £4 million scheme was supposed to run until 2026, but government has enacted a break clause to end it earlier. The scheme provided a centre of excellence to create resources for partner schools, and also funded teacher salaries and trips to Rome.
Money is tight, but having read recently that the proposed GCSE in natural history is on hold because it's seen as a Tory initiative,* I suspect a combination of inverse snobbery and Gradgrindery is at work here too.
For myself, and perhaps because we received so little formal grammar teaching in English in those days, I found studying Latin invaluable because it taught me how languages work. That was about the most useful knowledge I brought to studying philosophy at university, though those staples of primary school maths, Venn diagrams, proved to he useful in proving the validity or not of syllogisms.
A few weeks ago, Liberal Democrat MPs were posting about their belief in choice in education as a way of justifying their opposition to VAT on school fees. If choice is good for those who can afford private education, then it is good for everyone.
So I hope to see them posting in favour of giving state schools the freedom to offer a diverse curriculum - including natural history and Latin.
* Mary Colwell once wrote a guest post for this blog making the case for this qualification, The idea that natural history is somehow Tory reminds me that George Orwell began one of his As I Please columns in Tribune: "Last time I mentioned flowers in this column an indignant lady wrote in to say that flowers are bourgeois."
4 comments:
Some time in the 1960s the Times Literary Supplement published an editorial on calligraphy. I can't remember the exact quotation but the gist was something like this: that as a means of making books calligraphy was superseded by the printing press; that as a means of drafting formal documents it was superseded by the typewriter. But in its twentieth century revival it is among the fine arts, so safe from further technological incursion.
I suggest a similar conspectus for Latin. As everyday speech and writing it went with the ancient world. As a means of learned exchange it became obsolete as vernaculars stabilised around the sixteenth century. As a mark of a liberal education it lost ground to English and the sciences. (I know of a Middlesex grammar school headmaster, himself a classical scholar, who was worried about this.) As a guide to English grammar the latter itself (and a great deal of it is now taught) is more to the point. As what Mary Evans called an education in the thankless task - well, that undertaking is no longer thought respectable. So if we now wish for a revival of Latin would not the best thing be to promote it as a fascinating study in its own right? This may not appeal to Labour ministers - but it might appeal directly to some schools and their pupils who could clamour for it. I think university departments of classics could do a good promotion job.
I find it ridiculous that Natural History is seen as a Tory thing when nature surrounds us and has done since time began.Political ideology more than common sense!?
In the days when we sought to produce mechanics and engineers, boys (and girls with enlightened parents) were encouraged to play with Meccano.
I think Latin can be seen as a sort of linguistic Meccano. It shows you how the bits of a sentence fit together. And for my money, if teaching as many children as possible a bit of Latin meant that I never again heard (or read) "should of", that would be worth a penny on anyone's income tax.
Delighted to post my support for Latin in state schools. One day we will have a government that thinks education is worth spending decent money on. Until then those who can will continue to spend money on getting their kids the nest education possible, be it my buying houses near to good schools or by paying gees.
Post a Comment