A secret document sent to Government officials by the Dearing Languages Review, an influential inquiry into language teaching, reveals that Latin and Greek were excluded from the list of languages that schools will be encouraged to study because they are “dead languages” that contribute nothing to “intercultural understanding”.
Classics ‘harm language learning’ | Uk News | News | Telegraph.
Excuse me?!? The romantic languages of Europe; French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese all have Latin roots. If you understand that, you can deduce the general meaning of a word. I didn’t study Latin, but I have picked up bits and pieces over the years and that rudimentary understanding helps me get the gist of these languages.
Boris Johnson, the shadow higher education minister, described the assertion that Latin and Greek could undermine attempts to build up languages as the “most stupid thing I have ever heard”.
“I can pick up a newspaper in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Greece, Brazil and the whole of Latin America and understand the news, basically because I studied Latin,” he said.
Boris is quite right. So, why does the government hate us so much that it wants to stifle our education? Is it because it realises that an educated electorate would see it for what it is? Why am I reminded of Mao Tse Tung?