10 reasons to NOT teach Latin (reductio ad absurdum)
There’s often a tension in education between the traditional and the progressive. But when the traditional hauls us back 2000 years, we really do need to worry. So, whenever I hear ‘Latin’ recommended in curricular discussions, I want to reach for my pedagogic gun, as it’s invariably subliminal snobbery. The perfect example is the toady Toby Young, who wants Latin to be a compulsory subject in all secondary schools. Yes, a D-list celebrity, who’s made a living from writing about being feckless and hapless, wants us all to listen to his petty, inner-city, London, middle class concerns about the quality of schools in his area. His solution – learn Latin!
Now you have to have some pretty convincing argument to put Latin into your core curriculum, so here goes? I’ll be a devil and advocate.
1. Helps you learn other languages
Sorry, it doesn’t. The metastudy Research and the teaching of English by Sherwin, found that “the study of Latin does not necessarily increase the ability to learn another language… No consistent experimental evidence in support of this contention was found.” The argument runs along these lines, that the Romance languages have Latin roots, so knowing Latin helps one learn French, Spanish and Italian. Now there may be some marginal advantage to knowing Latin before you learn these languages, but only if your Latin is very extensive, and you do Latin before you try the other languages. Why scratch your ear by going over the top of your head? Learners have limited time and that time is clearly better spent on the target language itself. You don’t have to go out with the grandmother to help you understand your wife. This argument is simply a non-sequitur.
2. Cognitive skills
One could argue that Latin teaches one to think. But what does that mean? If it’s true of Latin it’s true of any language, so why not learn one that is at least useful? What special cognitive skill(s) does dead Latin confer over dozens of other living languages or dozens of other analytic subjects for that matter? Stephen Pinker, Harvard’s world renowned expert in psycholinguistics backs this up in The Language Instinct, “Latin declensional paradigms are not the best way to convey the inherent beauty of grammar”. He recommends computer programming and universal grammar on the grounds that they are “about living minds and not dead tongues”. reductio ad absurdum
3. Latin language mavens
Pinker also has a go at the Latin language mavens who want to pointlessly foist Latinate rules of grammar into English. As Pinker explains, this snobbery took root in 18th century London, when Latin was used as a mark of social class (still true today) and Latin grammar rules were crudely pasted into books on English grammar, for example, ‘don’t split infinitives’ and ‘don’t end a sentence with a preposition’. Latin simply doesn’t allow you to split an infinitive and to stupidly insist that it’s wrong in English, is as ad hoc as making us wear togas.
4. Latin is misleading
It can be argued that learning Latin grammar is simply misleading as there is no real transfer to the target languages, certainly not English, and similarly in modern Romance languages. Latin has three cases, five declensions in nouns and doesn’t have articles. Far from being useful it’s positively misleading. And in terms of vocabulary, one would be far better spending one’s time studying etymology, rather than only one root language.
5. Waste of time
Of course, the cardinal argument against learning Latin is the fact that there’s only so many hours in a day for learning and there’s dozens of other subjects that should take precedence. We have to make choices in learning and this one is irrational. So as we’ve seen, there’s no real argument for learning a dead language on the basis of utility (unless one wants to become an ancient history scholar) as no one speaks the damn thing. tempus fugit
6. Lingua franca of the world - English
Learning a language, to a reasonable level of competence, is as difficult a learning task as one can imagine. This is made all the more difficult in the UK by the fact that English has become the world’s unofficial, and in some fields official, lingua franca. The vast majority of children who take a second language in the UK fail to achieve any real level of competence because it has to be taught in classrooms with no contextual opportunities for practice. Many therefore argue that the global reach of English has greatly reduced the need to learn another language, let alone a dead one!
7. Romance is dead
And why this obsession with learning romance languages over say, German or Mandarin? You are far more likely to hear Punjabi, Bengali or Urdu (the top three minority languages spoken in the UK). I suspect that there’s more than a whiff of snobbery in our selection of languages at school? “Mum - I’m dropping French and taking Urdu”. “You’re what!”
8. Illusion of utility
A GCSE in Latin barely enables you to decipher a few Roman inscriptions and numbers. It will certainly not allow you to interpret the works of Seneca and Cicero. Even at A-level you’d have to be exceptional to get as much from these texts, as you’d get from a good translation.
9. Why not Greek?
Wouldn’t you prefer the riches of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Plato’s Socratic Dialogues and works of Aristotle; a far richer literary and philosophical tradition that the Roman? If so, learn Greek. Our literary, philosophical and political traditions have far more to do with Greek texts than Latin. Graecum est; non legitur
10. Pomposity
The benefits of a ‘classical education’, they say. But is there anything more annoying than those who drop in Latin phrases and confuse erudition with pomposity? I saw that hideous snob Rees Mogg do precisely this on a documentary on class recently and it made me wretch. Enoch Powell was the last politician who felt the need to pepper his speeches with this nonsense. Latin remains the cold, dead language of exclusivity and exclusion. It’s a peacock’s tail, the luxury of being able to ignore utility for superfluous acquisition of a useless and purely academic exercise. It says, subliminally, to hell with vocational subjects, I’m not ‘trade’. The dirty truth of the matter is that Latin has long been used as a marketing device by largely private schools to advertise their posh pedigree and attract parents of a conservative bent to cough up the fees. quid pro quo
posted by Donald Clark at 12:42 PM
24 Comments:
And a hearty hortatur tribus. Yeah, I used GTranslate ;)
When I see some of the nonsense taught in schools now, I just find it bizarre to see anyone object to even the opportunity to study Latin. I studied it in a bog standard comprehensive decades ago and found it rewarding and intellectually stimulating.
It is probably worth addressing some of your actual arguments:
1) You are selectively quoting your (outdated) source. It does say learning one language is a good route to learning another.
2) There is little evidence of any such thing as generic "cognitive skills" so this is an argument against all possible subject content.
3) Not an argument against Latin.
4) Being different is the appeal. That said I doubt I'd have a clue about the grammatical structure of words such as "him" and "whom" if I hadn't studied Latin at school.
5) This is just an assertion with no evidence.
6), 7) Don't get what point you are making.
8) Even a few words of Latin can be useful. A lot of English words, particularly scholarly ones, have Latin roots.
9) Fair point. Greek would be even better.
10) This is just an ad hominem if you'll forgive me for using the phrase.
Quod erat demonstrandum,Don.
oldandrew - thanks for the counterarguments
1. It is very specific on Latin, which is why I quoted it precisely and I don't understand what 'outdated' means. Unless you have a more recent metastudy.
2. The 'cognitive skills' argument is used by the supporters of Latin teaching, not me. You've got this the wrong way round.
3. Simply saying 'not' is not an argument.
4. Being 'different' isn't surely an argument for being included in a curriculum. Being 'different' also applies to dozens of other more useful subjects and surely we don't need Latin to use the word 'him'.
5. OK you spend say 4 hours a week for four years learning Latin. That's weeks of your time that could have been spent studying other more useful subjects.
6. & 7. Read again?
8. You don't need to learn the language to now these commonly used phrases.
9. Agreed.
10. ad hominem it may be but I have no problem with attacking pomposity and snobbery.
The question that hides inside the concept of learning a language, any language, is "what do you mean by 'learn?'"
For some people, I suspect there's a goal of impressing others, and Latin somehow has more status that way than Greek. (Is it those funny letters that Greek clings to?) For those who like to impress through mastery of the obscure, Barbara Mertz, in one of her books on ancient Egypt, gives a kind of bluffer's guide to reading the formulaic language in inscriptions. It's sort of an Egyptologist's version of how to recognize in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritu Sancti...
If your goal is to read De Bello Gallico (or Winnie Ille Pu in the original, then you're got a performance measure for your learning this particular language.
If you want to converse with others who fluently speak a language, much depends on where they are and how you'll interact with them. You can find folks who hold conversations in Latin, Esperanto, and even Klingon, though most people would not find the search justified.
All of this is to say that "learning" is inextricably linked to application. To put it into a living though not widespread language:
An uair a bhios sinn ri òrach
Bidheadhmaid ri òrach;
'S nuair a bhios sinn ri maorach
Bidheadhmaid ri maorach.
(When we're looking for gold,
let's look for gold;
and when we're looking for bait,
let's look for bait.)
Oh dear. Although few in number, your spelling mistakes and grammatical errors rather tend to support the argument for Latin rather than against it.
Nice points Dave.
John Norman - you haven't just ended a sentence with the word 'it'! You sound exactly like every 'spelling' and 'grammar' pedant I've ever known.
Quid Dices Govey!
Mirabile dictu. When I studied Latin, in Paris of all places, I remember arguing with my teacher that we should be studying linguistics instead of a dead language.
When was I going to use the plu-perfect periphrastic in real life?
He agreed but admitted he was powerless to change the situation. Or even the lesson plan.
Thanks for another salvo, Donald. Fortes fortuna adiuvat
You are quite right of course, although I feel certain that had you studied Latin you would have spelt "non sequitur" correctly. :-)
(Apologies for pedantry - it was too hard to resist.)
I've never really understood the argument that learning Latin is good because it helps you learn French, Spanish or Italian. Why not just learn French, Spanish or Italian? Once you've learnt one of those languages, the others are easier.
I've just read the Toby Young article (www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6669953/forget-mandarin-latin-is-the-key-to-success.thtml) and it doesn't seem very convincing. One odd statement in particular: "Spoken Latin emphasises clear pronunciation, particularly of the endings of words, a useful corrective for many children born in inner cities." I suppose every day children brought up in the inner city must curse their inability to speak like David Cameron and George Osborne.
Having said all that, I studied Latin to O-level and the one advantage I think it did give me was the ability to recognise the meanings of many unfamiliar English words by their roots. Difficult to say whether it did anything else for me. Young says that Mark Zuckerberg "quoted lines from the Aeneid during a Facebook product conference and now regards Latin as one of the keys to his success." Hmm. I think someone ought to teach Young (and Zuckerberg) the difference between correlation and causation.
A bit off topic, but have you got the figures for the numbers of Urdu and Bengali speakers in the UK? I found Punjabi (1.5m) but couldn't find figures for the other two. I thought Welsh, at half a million speakers, might be up there somewhere.
Kim - the Toby Young article betrays his petty, inner-London snobbery.
BishopHill - true, then again, Latin never had the letter U in its alphabet.
It's a shame about Toby Young, because his father, in founding the Open University, made a genuinely useful contribution to education.
Everybody has an opinion about what's wrong with the education system, and the most common mistake people make is to generalise from their own experience. I believe Toby Young went to a mediocre comp, where he did badly, and then to a posh grammar, where he flourished. So now he thinks everyone should be entitled to a grammar school education. But that style of teaching can only be successful (if it is) with a selective intake. There's no point in trying to impose it on the broad spectrum of children who make up the modern comprehensive school.
Yesterday I was reading about Jamie Oliver's "dream school", which aims to take disaffected 16-year olds, expose them to brilliant, inspirational teachers (like, er, Andrew Motion) and, hey presto, you suddenly have a group of motivated learners. Except in practice it doesn't work like that, as Oliver found. Of course, if he'd bothered to ask anybody who knew anything at all about modern schooling, they could have told him that, but it's so easy to assume, when you know nothing about a subject, that you've found the silver bullet that solves all the problems.
Gove is the same. Don't get me started...
Oh, English Speakers and their little, little, little ("I'm the centre of the world") world!
Kim: Agree totally. A small group of d-list celebs (Toby Young) and wanabee celebs (Katherine Birlesingh) and chefs (Oliver) seem to be hijacking education with their inner-London, middle-class fears and snobbery. They rely on anecdote and personal experience only. The Toby Young article was the perfect example. I found the easyjet (passengers speaking to each other in Latin) plain laughable.
Apart from a couple of things (Latin has 3 genders and 6 cases).
But otherwise, you are right. All the arguments for learning Latin are rubbish. There are two reasons for a person to learn Latin 1) it's fun, 2) he or she is a Classicist or medieval historian.
There is a point I am itching to make. The teaching of all languages (including Latin) is appalling. Pouring over grammar does not help you order a cup of coffee in Paris, which is, let's face it, the sort of thing that language is for.
Whoever wrote this obviously never studied Latin. Latin taught me to understand the world, it's not just language skills, it's learning about history, culture, literature, and geography! I studied Latin in a state school and think this was a unique and fantastic experience. Latin undoubtedly enhanced my performance in the other subjects which I studied and was the subject at school which I have the fondest memories of.
Only the narrow-minded call Latin a dead language.
There is no valid reason NOT to study Latin.
I could not disagree more.
An argument against Latin is an argument against education itself.
It is generally a recourse to the kind of class resent, mediocrity and parochialism which has crippled the education system in this country.
As an intellectual exercise, Latin prose composition (translating English into Latin) is far more rigorous a test than any other I have experienced.
Formulating Latin sentences - or, indeed, translating them into English - requires one to pinpoint exactly what one is saying or what is being said, grasping factors like number, case, gender, voice, mood and sequence of events.
Every language requires these skills, but very few in quite the same way as Latin.
These exercises enable the student to understand how best to communicate meaning in a structured, organised way, banishing irrelevancy and incorporating all-important subtelties of tone.
There is Ancient Greek, as you say - but I assume you would be equally averse to that as a "dead language".
Does anyone seriously thinks public schools waste years teaching subjects simply in order to look down on everybody else or pander to the snobbishness of their patrons?
Teaching Latin is integral to delivering all-round excellence in intellectual training.
The tragedy of the state system's rejection of Classics is that it entrenches the division between those who can pay for the best education and those who cannot.
This kind of decision ultimately robs millions of opportunities and allows the wealthy to perpetuate their hegemony in the best universities and the best jobs.
My views are based on the evidence in this post http://bit.ly/keQrMc which shows that the claims made for Latin do not stand up.
Sounds like someone is extremely bitter about failing Latin at school :P I personally feel privileged to be learning Latin. not only has it helped but it has greatly improved my understanding of both Spanish and English. It is not a sign of snobbery, merely a wish to learn something out of the ordinary and a truly beautiful language. it wouldn't still be taught if there was no point to it. just to ram home my point, approximately 52.5% of words in the English language are from a Latin origin
Anonymous - obviously Latin has not improved your ability to reason.
1) I did not do Latin at school.
2) I've read the research on Latin and it's ability to help wiut other languages such as Spanish - and blogged the results Spanish.http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/search?q=latin+german
3)English is a Germanic language and your stat on Latin in English is way out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_influence_in_English#Word_origins
4) Why remain anonymous (that comes from the Greek by the way)?
As a high school student taking Latin right now, I can vouch for its usefulness- and if not, at least the joy it brings to some of those studying it! I'm a proud member of the Junior Classical League, a (surprisingly large) youth organization dedicated to Latin and some Greek appreciation [njcl.org]. Not having followed up on the studies you cited, the statistics on how it has not benefited other students may be true. But for all my fellow "Classy Classicists", I know that at least our Latin education is relevant, helpful, and fun- and that justifies its presence enough for me.
Vindex
One of the things Latin does not seem to have taught you is the difference between argument and anecdote. Individuals may find all sorts of subjects interesting and useful, this does not mean that they have to be taught in schools or be seen as part of the core curriculum. Just saying that something is 'useful' is not an argument.
I wish you well in your Latin studies but see no reason to teach a dead language in schools when there are so many more useful living languages to learn. The arguments, which I have presented in this and other blogs, show that the justifications for learning Latin in schools are, as you'd say - ad hoc.
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