Well, it is Michaelmas. I should have got a goose in.
The Portuguese Wikipedia page on Saint Augustine of Hippo, the Father of Western Theology, joins that in Slovenian, and possibly others besides, in linking to this site. Perhaps I was not such a bad theologian after all?
But my grasp of Doctor Gratiae, among so very many other things, has always been loosened by my want of any formal knowledge of Latin.
We are an odd lot, the state-educated middle classes. But there are an awful lot of us. Our sense of dispossession by and under this Government is very profound indeed.
Especially among those of us aged between 35 and 55, who see our own quite clearly inferior contemporaries in and around office. Something more than similar applies across a wide range of economic, social and cultural spheres.
Especially among those of us aged between 35 and 55, who see our own quite clearly inferior contemporaries in and around office. Something more than similar applies across a wide range of economic, social and cultural spheres.
Entirely reasonable and mild-mannered people react particularly badly when the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg start speaking a language that, only two generations ago, they themselves would have been able to use at least as well as Rees-Mogg, who is an historian rather than a Classicist.
No, this has nothing to do with bringing back grammar schools. Many comprehensives continued to offer Latin until the late 1980s, when the teachers retired and were not replaced due to the Baker Act, the National Curriculum, and the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs. Thank you, Margaret Thatcher.
This is no more about the loss of the grammar schools than the rise of unpaid internships is. What good would grammar schools be against that? But their partisans are like the SNP or UKIP, with a single answer to every question. They had no interest in it before their own economic ideology priced them, as parents, out of commercial schools.
No, this has nothing to do with bringing back grammar schools. Many comprehensives continued to offer Latin until the late 1980s, when the teachers retired and were not replaced due to the Baker Act, the National Curriculum, and the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs. Thank you, Margaret Thatcher.
This is no more about the loss of the grammar schools than the rise of unpaid internships is. What good would grammar schools be against that? But their partisans are like the SNP or UKIP, with a single answer to every question. They had no interest in it before their own economic ideology priced them, as parents, out of commercial schools.
The schools that continue to teach Latin are always going to do so. The only way to remove its very newfound status as an instant class indicator is to restore its teaching in the state sector. Not everyone would take it. Not everyone takes Art, or Chemistry. But the kind of people who always used to take Latin, would again.
From where would the curriculum time be found? The curriculum time seems to found for any and everything under a vague "PSHE" or "Citizenship" rubric, despite what is now the extreme shortness of the school day, although the holidays are as long as they ever were.
Teach Latin instead, or at least as well. Somewhere else will always be doing so.
Wonderful!
ReplyDeleteThe devaluation of exams in general, including A-Levels under the last Government, is driven by the state's need hide the failure of the comprehensive experiment. Testing 21st century British children as rigorously as the 60's generation would show how utterly disastrous comprehensive schools have been.
ReplyDeleteWhat does this have to do with grammar schools? Even someone who'd never been to school could answer that question.
Before comprehensive schools, we had the academic GCE O Level for grammar pupils and the CSE for secondary-modern pupils.
You can't successfully something like Latin unless you sift the academically-able from those who are not.
The Left knew the tests would show up the failure of the experiment. So it's best to abolish the tests.
But their partisans are like the SNP or UKIP, with a single answer to every question. They had no interest in it before their own economic ideology priced them, as parents, out of commercial schools.
Delete