Boris's battle cry:
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5 average rating | Comments (10)
Last Updated:
14 July, 2011
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News
Let the Games inspire a generation of state-school classicists
Forget whether or not you have any tickets. The big question of the 2012 Olympics will be: do you have the necessary classics knowledge to recognise a Panathenaic horseman when you see one?
Boris Johnson believes the forthcoming London Olympics should serve as a rallying cry to state schools to fly the vexillum for latinae scientia.
In an article in this week’s TES, the London mayor calls for a significant increase in the number of training places available for would-be classics teachers. At the moment, 70 classics teachers retire every year and only 30 are trained to replace them.
And the Training and Development Agency for Schools has cut the number of places on offer to ancient-world linguists.
“I believe fervently that a training in classics is one of the best, if not the best, that a young mind can have,” Mr Johnson wrote. “It is a universal spanner for so many other languages, and it also gives young people access … to an understanding of world history, from our ideas about democracy to the Arab Spring.”
He describes his decision to install a frieze of Panathenaic horsemen - copied from the original at the Parthenon in Athens - at the Olympic village in east London.
Mr Johnson then claims that Latin and Greek, like Odysseus, have emerged intact from the kingdom of the dead. Latin, Greek and ancient history are ranked alongside mainstream subjects as part of the new English Baccalaureate.
“Not a bad record for supporters of a subject that is meant to be dying,” Mr Johnson wrote. “But these hardy and hunted classical guerrillas, Odyssean in their cunning and tenacity, must step up the fight.”
Wilf O’Neill of the Association for Latin Teaching said: “Schools wanting Latin teachers can’t get them, because there aren’t enough trained.
“But Latin is the basis of our culture. Culturally, linguistically, literally, everything goes back to Greece, via Rome. Latin is the vehicle by which European is transmitted, and has been for centuries.”
However, Peter Jones of the Friends of Classics organisation points out that 75 per cent of state schools do not offer any classical subjects, while 70 per cent of independents do.
“If you think there’s any value at all in uncovering the history of much of our political, educational, intellectual and artistic development, then the failure to teach classics is a dereliction of academic duty,” Dr Jones said.
“We’re not talking about forcing it down people’s throats - just making it available. Where it is available, children leap at it like starving dogs.”
There is, he adds, a lesson from the Romans here. Schools must be animis opibusque parati: prepared in spirit and resources.
OLYMPIC VALUES: Free tickets
Boris Johnson has called for all schools to register for the chance to get free 2012 Olympics tickets.
Speaking to pupils this week, Mr Johnson reminded them that 125,000 free tickets are available to them through the Get Set scheme. So far, around 78 per cent of eligible schools have signed up.
To qualify, schools must register by 16 December. They must show their commitment to incorporating the values of the Olympics and Paralympics into their daily curriculum.
The London mayor said: “I urge schoolkids, teachers and parents to make sure that their school doesn’t miss the boat.”
Comment (10)
I must say that when ever this buffoon of a man lifts his head above the parapet and speaks he manages to stick his foot right in it. Again he forgets that as one of the most privileged in society the rest of us did not get a silver spoon, in fact we did not even get to lick the spoon, even once!
A man whose experience of life came from private school, oxford, a week as a management consultant, then sacked from the times for falsifying a quotation, the dubious journalistic career followed by being sacked from every job in a Tory Cabinet.
Then making London mayor on the back of bad feeling for the Labour Party, not Ken and having a £250,000 job as a columnist as well, not sure why he needed to be mayor at all.
Maybe shall we just stop cutting the essential services that real pupils need and stop harping on about your own very closed little world. Get the message we don’t understand and we don’t have access to your social circle or wealth. Latin has nothing to do with anything for most people and since half of all British school children cannot read and write to the easy level of a “C” at GCSE maybe lets think of those subjects first!
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20:50
10 July, 2011
Orion
I was taught Latin from 2nd year (Yr 8) at a state comprehensive with a catchment covering several areas of significant deprivation in the late 1980s.
It wasn't a universal subject and was only offered to the top class of a 6-form entry, but it meant that those of us who did take it were learning 3 languages - French, which we started in year 7, and German and Latin from year 8. I have found my small knowledge of Latin to be very useful in life in general; in spelling, in understanding word families, in learning about grammar and, of, course gardening and sciences. I also feel that my introduction to Latin has meant I am not afraid of discussing things with those who have had a classical education. In short, it was much more useful than the German and infinitely more useful than the 'Record of Achievement' classes the top set had to miss to fit it in! Why did I get this chance? Because my state comp had been a grammar school, and had always offered it and didn't wish to make the remaining Latin teacher redundant. Sadly, it's not a subject that is still taught in the school, which has lost its grammar ethos and no longer offers able pupils from deprived areas a chance to be introduced concepts they would be unlikely to meet otherwise.
I say, quite right Boris.
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11:59
11 July, 2011
mrsmummy
Boris is absolutely correct! Ignore the pitiful cries of the so called "under priviledged". Latin provides a backbone to life itself; for career aspirants and for barbeques !
The reintroduction of Latin would kick our education system in its sad ol' curriculae.
Hurrah for Boris ! Edepol, fautor tuus maximus sum !!!
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16:36
11 July, 2011
bollerbash
I agree. I went to the local comprehensive school which had been a grammar school, and hated compulsory Latin for the first 3 years, taught by our horrible witch of a headmistress. But it definitely helped with English grammar and spelling and French, even with German because I understood the rules that it broke. I ended up doing Latin A level, in a class of 6. The teacher was terminally boring!
Later I spent 6 years in Holland, and learnt Dutch rapidly because I had a handle on languages. I also taught English as a foreign language, which I wouldn't have grasped otherwise, and have spent the past 15 years very successfully teaching children of all abilities and backgrounds to read and write.
I have 3 teenagers of my own, none of whom enjoy foreign languages. I've been really disappointed in the methods now used to teach them - picking things up as you go along, rather than a safety net of patterns and rules, accompanied by a gaggle of exceptions.
I'm even thinking about re-training to teach Latin!
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22:09
11 July, 2011
12jude07
Orion, is that a chip I see on your shoulder? I am a working-class lad who was fortunate enough to have been offered Latin at my Grammar School and it has improved my life immeasurably. Maybe if you had studied Latin you might be able to construct a gramatically-correct sentence. Also, given your seeming revulsion towards a classical education, I am surpised you have chosen such a nom-de-plume - or did you get from an episode of Star Trek?
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8:43
12 July, 2011
nonfictional1
Sorry. The last part of that sentence should read '-or did you get it from an episode of Star Trek?' In the white heat of fury, I forgot to proofread my own work. What a poor example!
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8:54
12 July, 2011
nonfictional1
I think that really we need to get back to the real world that is all. I am not advocating that everyone does not speak Latin but maybe to have a dose of reality. Boris and others it seems are suggesting quite strongly that this will solve the problems in our systems. If you actually took the time to look around our schools and see the problems that most schools have then this is not the nut to crack.
Maybe Boris should talk to all the schools who had their BSF cancelled this year and their schools are in ruins, but hey maybe that is the idea....from the ruins of Troy......Rome....etc... we can rise again!
adepto a queritor Boris!
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11:48
12 July, 2011
Orion
I find it quite offensive that Latin has become an elitist subject-not of the academic but, de facto, of the financial elite as there is so little provision in state schools. When I ran an outreach course in a comprehensive in a town which features the lowest achieving schools in the county, there were pupils who once they had been introduced to the language and the culture result wished to continue Latin rather than a modern language. I cannot help but think they might have got more from Latin than the Media GCSE which was forced on them because they were in the top set.
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19:04
12 July, 2011
fb.harrington
All those agreeing with Boris and decrying the loss of Latin from state schools need to remember which government it was that introduced the original national curriculum. It was this which insisted on so many subjects being compulsory to age 16 that it forced many of those state schools still teaching classics to drop the subjects. I attended a comprehensive that was a former grammar school and which still taught Greek and Latin, until the NC killed off these subjects.
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14:37
13 July, 2011
Middlemarch
Yes this is the issue MIddlemarch. A Tory Gov without a plan and they just have people coming up with crackpot ideas which never really address the issues and just damage things further.
As I said I am not against Latin just the portrayal that it will solve all the issues as the NC was also portrayed (at the time)
Another great example is SATs, now gone schools are still doing the stupid tests and pupils are not learning stuff properly just a very stunted way of expressing themselves. I got a test given to me for Y7 which only seems to include link or label and 1 mark questions, crazy!
Why not give us a Secretary of State for Education who actually understands schools. M Gove is being held up as a guru but what does he know apart from attending one of the best private ones?
Why not let teachers work it out for themselves. Not sure how Gove and his cronies can understand how the working class mind in an inner city can be moulded. Maybe ask the teachers who have worked there for the last 30 years. Not sure they are asking for Latin? (although I have nothing against latin)
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9:48
14 July, 2011
Orion