The more varied a selection you introduce children to, the more likely you are to find just that area given individuals are interested and adept in.

Introduce children to a varied selection of languages, crafts and sciences, historical as well as current .. the more the merrier really. Start this as early as possible; nursery and primary.

Sounds like we need a campaign to modernise the classics and demonstrate their relevance.

Rumbold, I would agree, some politicians need scapegoats. And yet as far as scapegoats go, if you’re proven right (hard to imagine in this case), needling of the privileged is hardly something to fret over.

Bella,

Education has not been served well in this country, and Thatcher’s commercialisation of education is the primary cause of what we have today.

I applaud the objective of opening up universities to the masses, but not what’s being offered to them.

I do not think we should sit and hope that vicious twerp Michael Gove will do better. He will advance his career on scapegoating, and imagine the consequences of that in schools, amongst the most impressionable.

I know. Twerps by nature are not vicious, but Gove is an exception.

To further clarify my point, I don’t think that those on the left are anti-learning. What I do think though ist that there are certain things people attack as a sop to a group they are courting (e.g. immigration and Daily Mail readers).

Wibble:

Education shouldn’t be narrowly vocational. Universities are a slightly different debate.

Jai:

I would like to see more teaching on Persian etc, or at least on Persian, Indian, etc culture and history.

Hebrew. Educated Elizabethans could not only read it, but could converse in it.

Would you want universities to, say, just rely upon student numbers, alumni charity, and other private sources to pay for these subjects?

Private universities in the US manage to do this, and many of them have excellent Classics departments. In fact, many of the best universities in the US receive no direct state funding. I don’t see why that couldn’t be done here.

we have such a narrow idea of utility in education these days that the chances of that kind of expansion are slim

Let us not forget that teachers are increasingly called upon to provide basic parenting duties, like proper sex education and a sense of social responsibility – making the idea of education for learning’s sake look like even more of a distant dream…

Although it has to be said that there is a very strong anti-intellectual tendency in British culture, that seems to have been around for a while and that I really don’t understand.

To be ‘clever’ and academically overachieving is not generally seen as an admirable thing. That only helps to fuel the obsession with usefulness.

I suspect you could have done without the Spectator on your side.

I could probably still do without the Spectator on my side! My point was that my defence of Latin against the depredations of Balls did get read and has possibly done some good. I doubt that would have happened if I’d limited myself to chastising faceless people whose offence has been one of omission.

are the classics, as we understand them today, a result of politics of the victorian era?

That, I do not know. Probably.

modernity and modern culture is a combination of contributions from a quite a few civilisations – roman, greek, arab being only three; and perhaps its time to reclassify the classics so its outward looking not eurocentric.

This I agree with, but I’d hesitate to use it as a justification for teaching these things. Again, it moves us into the ‘relevance’ territory. As I said about Arabic, the material has value on its own merits. If we study things only in terms of what they can teach us about our own society, or only in terms of what we can use them for to generate economic growth, we’re reducing everything down to two quite narrow ideas of value.

A lot of knowledge isn’t particularly ‘useful’ for anything other than pleasure and a sense of accomplishment, and many skills aren’t immediately or obviously marketable, but that doesn’t mean they’re valueless. Being able to read Latin, for example, is only one of the many valuable aspects of knowing the language. But even if that was the only one, it would still be worth doing.

I’m quite sensitive to the point being made about the classics being quite eurocentric these days, but hey. We understand ‘classics’ to mean the study of the ancient Greek and Roman world. At least we’re not calling it ‘greats’ any more! I think most students would love to study other languages and cultures too – the more different from ours, the better, really – but we have such a narrow idea of utility in education these days that the chances of that kind of expansion are slim.

Unless, of course, our education policies are directed by people who share that view. Which, I submit to you, Ed Culleolus does not.

Jai makes an interesting point which begs the question – are the classics, as we understand them today, a result of politics of the victorian era?

modernity and modern culture is a combination of contributions from a quite a few civilisations – roman, greek, arab being only three; and perhaps its time to reclassify the classics so its outward looking not eurocentric.

I agree with this, and would also add Persian, Sanskrit and Classical Chinese to the list of languages which it would be beneficial to teach. There is a wealth of international literature and history from the classical and medieval periods, and as Refresh has correctly said, a number of civilisations worldwide have been heavily involved in the progress of human history.

In fact, as I’ve previously mentioned myself, these civilisations weren’t necessarily anywhere near as isolated from each other as some people may assume (regardless of the Eurocentric legacy of Victorian colonial propaganda), and it would definitely be constructive to begin to understand “the big picture” in our own increasingly globalised and interconnected modern era.

A fair defence. If I have read it correctly, you are saying that education should be about broadening of the mind. And I wholeheartedly agree, and if you scroll up you will see that is my starting point.

I only wish you had been around in the 80′s when academia was being driven out of its ivory tower, broken and coralled into another ‘productive’ sector of the economy.

I suspect you could have done without the Spectator on your side. Your argument was much better put in your last comment than the quote Rumbold selects.

By the way I believe it was Ed Balls who suggested arabic should be taught in schools. I proffered the suggestion, not out of mischief but to establish the point that modernity and modern culture is a combination of contributions from a quite a few civilisations – roman, greek, arab being only three; and perhaps its time to reclassify the classics so its outward looking not eurocentric.

I think you read more into what I say than is actually there. I haven’t attributed the decline of Latin to any education secretaries – I’m not even convinced it is in decline at all, at least as compared to twenty years ago. It’s certainly on the rise in state schools. But that won’t last if Ed Balls, the political voice of education in this country, continues to denigrate the subject as useless and boring. Quite apart from the matter of funding, there is the matter of influence. When a politician as prominent as Balls says something is useless, unfortunately there remain people who will take him at his word despite his manifest ignorance of the matter.

I’m not really painting it as a left-right issue either, as I would have had the same reaction if Michael Gove among others had said the same thing. Do you really think it’s in the best interests of education in general for the minister who oversees it to denigrate any kind of learning at all? Do you think it sensible for him to claim to the public that the only learning worth having is what will produce economic benefit to the country?

We force children to attend schools for eleven, soon to be thirteen, years of their life and give them little enough choice in what they study as it is. Some of them enjoy Latin; I could certainly name you a few. Is it right for Ed Balls to pronounce their pleasure useless because it doesn’t increase tax receipts or GDP? Some of them are good at Latin; is it right for Ed Balls to suggest their skill is worthless and their accomplishment meaningless? You may disagree, but I think no child should have to hear such things from the education minister.

You also mention relevance, as if that were in any way important when considering what a child learns. How do you define it? Oh, I know Latin isn’t spoken these days, nobody needs to read Ovid for their job, blah blah blah – but as with any language, it expands the mind. Who cares if a student will ever use it? Do most of them ever use what they learn about Ghanaian rivers in geography lessons, or how to take derivatives in calculus lessons? I never have, but I don’t begrudge the time spent learning those things. Education is not solely about economic utility.

You say Latin never brought you an advantage, but I wonder how you know that. What crystal ball have you looked into that shows what your life would have been like without it? What machine shows you how your brain would have developed without the analytical skills learning Latin gave you?

you should be ranting against all those who have in recent years not pushed the subject and let it dwindle, as clearly you want to

Well, I disagree. I can’t identify who isn’t pushing the subject, or who is allowing it to dwindle (if it is). I can’t rant against unknown people whose actions are a negative. Why should I rant against people who, by your own statement, aren’t doing anything, when the head of education policy in this country is actively speaking against the subject? I don’t know why you think he doesn’t deserve my attack, except that evidently you agree with him. That’s your privilege, of course, but I’m hardly going to take such biased advice.

There are a lot of people in this country working very hard to promote the study of Latin and classics in the face of accusations about uselessness and irrelevance. They don’t need to battle against the public face of the education sector as well.

As for Arabic – why include it in the classics? It’s valuable on its own terms.

I meant to also ask, should arabic be included in the classics?

Mr Lawrence would probably say yes.

‘Where, exactly, do you think my deficiencies lie? How have I not been ‘doing things for Latin lately’?’

Glad to see you here. I am not sure you have deficiencies other than those we would all share.

Given that this is my first exposure to your views and its portrayed as a rant, it should not surprise you to know that I think its unwarranted. If latin is on the decline then that surely is not the fault of the education secretary and not a left right issue. And if the Spectator has linked to your blog then the gripe is probably with them and with Rumbold. Who acknowledges upthread that he sees Ed Balls contribution as a political ploy.

I beleive you should be ranting against all those who have in recent years not pushed the subject and let it dwindle, as clearly you want to.

My experience is that the subject is/was taught in grammar schools, private schools and rarely in comprehensives. Which is probably where the question of elitism arose.

My own latin has long disappeared, but saw that the translation engine was pretty poor. And yet it needed you to point that out. And as a mini-experiment suggests latin is not as relevant as it could be.

I am still interested to know why only certain types of schools teach the subject and why its not broadened out. I have a view on this, and I believe there is elitism in the type of education offered and promoted.

As for the link between greek and arabic, my point really was about transfer of knowledge and thought as opposed to an ancient language.

As per my comment at #23 is this common ancestry taught?