On Latin in state schools

So, the UK education secretary has announced official government backing for a new initiative to introduce Latin into some state schools, in order to make the subject seem 'less élitist'. 

I am deeply suspicious of this, because it's the government and Gavin Williamson, and I am automatically deeply suspicious of both. Obviously, as a Classicist, I'm in favour of increasing the availability of Latin, though I am very much opposed to making it compulsory, or having it as a 'reward' for clever kids, because that leads to students being forced to study subjects they don't want to. 

I have a number of concerns here. One is that, like Grant Shapps' plan for the reopening of railway branch lines, not enough money had been allocated for more than a token gesture. Another is that the government may try to claim the great successes of Classics for All and the Iris Project in already getting Latin into state schools as their own. Undoubtedly, the government are going to be listening to the likes of Harry Mount, who want a return to the old days of grammar-heavy Latin teaching, and can't see how much that was a factor in Latin's downfall, though I am fully confident that those on the coal face of Latin teaching will resist such an approach. A big issue, and that Williamson probably hasn't bothered thinking about, is where all the Latin teachers are coming from. Like Johnson's 'levelling up' agenda, there's a sense of this being all vague big ideas, and no actual practical substance. 

But what really concerns me is the ideological motivation behind all of this. Michael Rosen has a very interesting and very well-judged Twitter thread that doesn't dunk on Latin, but asks 'Why now? Why Latin?' There is a definite sense that Latin is being presented as superior to other subjects. I happen to think that, for the right student, Latin is an excellent subject with which to nurture developing minds. But so, for the right student, is Classical Studies. So, for the right student, is Spanish. So, for the right student, is Mandarin Chinese. So is Media Studies. So is Equine Psychology. Why, then, Latin?

A persistent myth, still wheeled out by the Harry Mounts of this world, is that Classicists used to be recognised as very clever people, and this shows the superiority of the subject (when 'properly' taught) for developing young minds. What it actually shows is the power that Classics teachers had in schools, such that they were able to gather up the best students for their subject.

Behind Williamson's initiative is the idea, to which many Classicists have subscribed, that people who studied Latin at private schools are successful because they studied Latin. Whereas the reality is that people who studied Latin at private schools are successful because they went to private schools. Thus, through increasing the availability of Latin, the government can claim to have made the tools for success available to all, whilst not actually addressing the real structural inequalities in our education system, inequalities that they are all beneficiaries of.

Inevitably, as Classicists we are going to welcome the increased availability of our subject in schools. But we must not take out eyes of the real prize. In the practical world of limited school budgets, we risk being sucked into an either/or battle, in which Latin or other Classical subjects can only thrive at the expense of other subjects, and to do that, we are forced into making the argument that Latin is 'useful'. The utilitarian argument for Latin is dangerous. I am opposed to making students study subjects that they have no affinity for simply because the subjects are 'useful'. That, it seems to me, leads to a lot of students with poor results, who are going to find themselves at the back of the queue for any jobs that require the 'useful' qualifications. The real problem is the overall impoverishment of the school curriculum, and fighting for Latin's place within that is a distraction. 

 

Burns night and Martial

The 25th of January is the birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet. Since the early nineteenth century this has been celebrated by Burns suppers, at which Haggis is eaten (which is almost certainly much nicer than you imagine), whisky is drunk, and Burns' poetry is read. I am taking students through an older poet tonight, Ovid, so I shan't be partaking of haggis (though a single malt in the pub afterwards will be had). But I went to a Burns supper hosted by friends on Saturday night, and took to read the poems discussed in the following.

In 1782, James Elphinstone, described in the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen of 1856 as "a miscellaneous writer", published a poetic translation of the Roman epigrammatist and satirist Marcus Valerius Martialis, better-known in English as "Martial". Five years later, Burns published his response to The Epigrams of M. Val. Martial in Twelve Volumes. It's safe to say that he wasn't impressed.

On Elphinstone’s Translation of Martial’s Epigrams (1787)

O Thou whom Poetry abhors,
Whom Prose has turned out of doors,
Heard’st thou yon groan? – proceed no further,
’Twas laurel’d Martial calling murther.

(The last word may have more impact if you pronounce it after the fashion of STV's long-running crime drama series, Taggart.)

Not many people were impressed by Elphinstone. According to the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, the work was widely ridiculed. Fortunately, through the magic of Google Books, the work is available online, so we can find out what the fuss was about.

Elphinstone has messed around with his materials. His arrangement of Martial into twelve books doesn't match that commonly employed today, which has fifteen books plus On the Spectacles, Martial's collection of epigrams on the opening of the Colosseum. It appears as if Elphinstone has rearranged Martial's work on thematic grounds. This, of course, makes it hard to find the epigram one is looking for, as Elphinstone has only provided a one-way concordance. But it is possible to find what one is looking for with patience.

And so (partly because I'm familiar with it as it gets used for teaching), I lit on Epigram 3.51 (Elphinstone's 6.38) as a means of looking at what Elphinstone did. First, here is the Latin.

Cum faciem laudo, cum miror crura manusque,
dicere, Galla, soles "Nuda placebo magis",
et semper uitas communia balnea nobis.
Numquid, Galla, times ne tibi non placeam?

Galla is a name Martial uses a lot - she appears as an object of desire, as someone who is going through a string of intellectual husbands who turn out to be latent homosexuals and crap in bed, and as a prostitute. But the likelihood is that this is a generic name, and the various Gallas are not meant to be the same person.

And now, Elphinstone:

When, Galla, thy face, hands and legs I admire,
Thou say’st; I, when naked, more pleasing shall be.
Yet, one common bath, I full vainly require:
Dost fear that I shall not be pleasing to thee?

This is about as racy as Elphinstone gets. (Martial gets racier, but Elphinstone sanitizes him.) And, reading this aloud, I can understand why everyone objected so much to Elphinstone's translation.

Here, for something more prosaic (in the literal sense, but perhaps also taking some of the fun out of Martial), is D.R. Shackleton Bailey's 1993 Loeb translation):

When I praise your face and admire your legs and hands, Galla, you are apt to say: "You’ll like me better naked." And yet you always avoid taking a bath with me. Can it be, Galla, that you are afraid you may not like me?

And finally, here is a translation of it by me. Inspired by Roz Kaveney's recent translations of Catullus as Shakespearian sonnets (a few of which I published in the latest issue of CA News), I thought I would see if Martial could be adapted into limericks. I think it works quite well. It's a bit more vulgar than martial is in this poem, but given how vulgar he is elsewhere, I think he'd approve. (Since the etymological derivation of 'Galla' is 'a female Gaul', I have changed the addressee accordingly.)

To Frenchie

When I praise all your visible parts
You say "Nude, I’m a real work of art".
Share a bath to unwind?
That you always decline.
Are you scared that you won’t like my arse?

I have more Martialian limericks. You have been warned.

excitusque hilari die

I got married on the May Day weekend. I'm not sure that this is necessarily something that I'd discuss on this academic blog for its own sake. But I thought I would reproduce one of the readings, as it is relevant to the sort of material I have here. We decided on a couple of Classical-themed readings. My wife chose an excerpt from Ursula Le Guin's rewriting of Virgil, Lavinia, about which I've written before. I chose a poem of Catullus - not the wedding epithalamium from which I quote the title of this entry (Poem 61), but Poem 5. Being the sort of person that I am, I wasn't going to be satisfied with using any translation that I could find on my bookshelves or on the 'net (the poem has been much translated and imitated, by the likes of Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh, among others).

Instead, I decided to translate it myself. But I also decided not to do a plain prose translation, but to try to render the Latin verse into English verse. This was quite a challenge. I decided any sort of rhyming structure would be beyond me, but I wanted some sort of structure, rather than just free verse, which would make my translation little different from prose. In the end, the iambic tetrameter seemed the correct metre - a pentameter, more typical in English poetry, would make the lines too long to match the content of each Latin line, and so I would not have the line-for-line translation I wanted. So each thirteen-syllable Latin line is rendered, as best I can, into eight English syllables. Technically, not every line is strictly iambic - the third line certainly opens with a trochee (I evidently remember some Latin scansion!). But a pure iambic rendition would be very difficult, and I am told that part of the effect of English poetry comes from the clash between the stresses of the metrical feet and the natural stresses of the English lines.

There remain some bits, especially towards the end, that I'm not entirely happy with (indeed, I've changed the penultimate line from what was read on the day). But I showed it to my OU colleague Paula James, who knows Catullus far better than I do, and it passed muster with her. And some guests recognised the poem from past experience of it, and at least one thanked me for rescuing it from associations with dreadful school experiences.

So here it is, as read on the day by my dear friend Alison Freebairn, who, in the words of another guest, "gilded [the poem] with a gentle Scottish burr".

Catullus, Poems 5, ad Lesbiam

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

Let’s live, my darling, and let’s love.
And let’s not give a monkey’s for
Gossip of mis’rable old men.
The sun sets but can rise again.
But when our brief light fades from view,
We must sleep through an endless night.
Kiss a thousand times, a hundred,
Another thousand, a hundred,
Then yet more thousands, more hundreds.
Then when we’ve kissed many thousands
Of times, let’s lose count, so we won’t
Know how often we’ve kissed, and no
One can harm us with that knowledge.

An open letter to Ed Balls

Rt Hon Ed Balls MP
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
London
sw1p 3bt

Dear Mr Balls

I am writing concerning your comments on BBC Radio concerning the teaching of Latin. Unfortunately I did not hear these when broadcast, and am only able to judge them as reported in the media. But I gather that you stated that few businesses are asking for Latin, and that you have never been shown an inspiring Latin class, whereas you have been shown inspiring classes in dance, technology or sport.

I am not surprised that businesses are not asking for Latin, but I doubt many are asking for sport or dance either. In any case, our educational needs should not be geared solely to the needs of business. To do so would reduce our educational establishment to business schools and technology colleges, with only English and foreign languages surviving from the humanities (and even then clearly only for commercial use, and not for reading Voltaire or Tolstoy in the original). Of course we need business schools and technology colleges, but a nation that had nothing else would be intellectually and culturally impoverished.

It does not surprise me that you have never been shown an inspirational Latin lesson. But it is illogical to assume that, because you have not seen any, they do not exist. There is no subject so inherently dull that it cannot be presented to a class in an inspiring fashion by an enthusiastic and motivated teacher. Many, if not most, students able to study Latin will recognise that inspirational Latin lessons certainly exist.

I would suggest two reasons why you have not been shown any. First, the vast majority of state schools, due a number of factors, of which lack of government support is one of the more important, have dropped Latin from the syllabus. So they are not in a positio0n to show you an inspiring Latin lesson, even if they wanted to.

The second reason is that when a government minister comes to visit, a school wants to make a good impression, and so will gear what they present around what they think will contribute to that. For at least twenty years, education ministers from both parties have given the impression, explicitly or implicitly, that they do not look with favour upon Latin as a subject. Hence the school will show the minister a lesson in a subject (such as dance, technology or sport) that the minister does look upon with favour. In other words, you are not shown inspirational Latin lessons because you and most of your predecessors have given the impression that you do not want to be shown inspirational Latin lessons.

So, Mr Balls, I offer you a challenge. Next time you are in a school where Latin is taught, ask to see a Latin lesson. I think you may be surprised.

May I borrow your teacup please? I have a storm.

The Daily Telegraph reports that certain councils are banning the use of certain Latin phrases, such as ad hoc or ex officio in official documents (it's also been reported in the Daily Mail, but since (a) their article plagiarizes the Telegraph, and (b) it's the Mail, I shan't provide a link). Mary Beard describes such a policy as "ethnic cleansing applied to language."

It may surprise some of you that I'm on the side of the councils. Yes, of course, Latin enriches the English language, and it is true, as Harry Mount says, that these Latin tags express certain concepts far more neatly than equivalent English circumlocutions. But, crucially, only if the reader already knows the meaning of the phrase. If not, then use of such terms becomes a bar to communication. Peter Jones complains that "This sort of thing sends out the message that language is about nothing more than the communication of very basic information." But communicating basic information is precisely what council documents are supposed to do. They don't have literary aspirations, and need to be written in a language comprehensible to their readership. Terms like ad hoc or ex officio may be part of the common vocabulary of educated middle-class people who read the Telegraph or take Classical subjects in prestigious universities. But they're not part of the language of EastEnders, and that is the language council documents must be written in. Yes, of course it's a good thing to encourage immigrants to aspire to a vocabulary that includes Latinisms. But you don't do that by including them in basic council documents.

We all adjust our language according to the audience. I would happily use terms like this in documents for the Open University. But in my day job, I produce process documentation. I would never put terms like ad hoc or ex officio in those, because the readers wouldn't know what they meant. All the councils have done is suggest that certain terms be avoided (not, incidentally 'banning' them).

This doesn't, of course, mean that I or the councils are advocating the expunging of all Latin derivations from English, or those derived from other languages. Words like 'virtue' or 'cul-de-sac' are commonly understood, so there is no need to find alternatives. To move the argument onto such vocabulary is setting up a straw man, unrelated to what the councils are actually doing. Referring to "ethnic cleansing" seems a bit silly.

At worst, the councils have been overzealous in the terms they have excluded. Most people probably understand 'etc.' or 'N.B.' (which are terms I've used in process documentation). But even the most obvious terms aren't always as broadly understood as you might expect - I've lost count of the number of reasonably intelligent and educated OU students I've had who don't know the difference between 'e.g.' and 'i.e.', so I can see the argument for using 'for example' and 'that is' instead.

The bottom line is that councils have a responsibility to communicate clearly to all people likely to be using their documents. It may be regrettable that this means many Latin phrases are no longer appropriate for use. But it's unfair to blame councils for acknowledging reality.

Latin - opens the doors?

In Tuesday's Independent there was an article about the increase in state secondary schools in the UK teaching Latin - 459, as against 200 four years ago. Good news, of course, but I find some of the comments made by Harry Mount, author of Amo, Amas, Amat ... and All That, a trifle disturbing. The specific remark is this:

If children learn ethnic studies, in ten years they will earn absolutely nothing from it. The ones who learn Latin will be the ones who will be able to go on to jobs in the City, or as lawyers, or journalists. I think it's deeply patronising for people to suggest that pupils in ethnically mixed state schools should not learn the subject that is going to get them into the best paid jobs.

This isn't an uncommon idea for Classicists to promote. It is true that there are a fair number of people in top jobs who have some sort of Classical study in their educational background. But I wonder whether this isn't a case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc* logical fallacy.

To help explain, let me turn to the history of the Roman empire. In the Open University course I teach, the students are about to embark upon study of the Second Sophistic, an intellectual movement that flourished in the first to third centuries AD in the eastern, Greek-speaking provinces of the empire. The chief historian of this movement was a man called Philostratus, who presents in his Lives of the Sophists a picture where the leaders of this movement were movers and shakers in their local communities, and in the wider empire. The clear implication is that they were influential because they were sophists.

For a long time, in the positivistic way that Classicists used to (and still often do) approach ancient evidence, this was accepted as they way it was, and is enshrined in Glen Bowersock's 1969 study Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. But E.L. Bowie's 1982 article 'The importance of sophists' (Yale Classical Studies 27, pp. 29-59), for me, comprehensively demolishes such a view. Bowie shows that the sophists came almost exclusively from the political and economic elite of the Greek cities, and that their influence arose as a result of that elite status, not directly from their activities as sophists, which were almost incidental.

Which brings us back to Latin in modern Britain. Yes, many people in top jobs went to elite** schools where they were taught Latin (often compulsorily). But did they get to the top because of their Latin study? Or because they went to elite schools, where they mixed with other children of the British social and political elite, and through that had opportunities they would not have had in comprehensives? I rather think it's the latter.

I have nothing but respect for what Lorna Robinson*** is doing with the iris Project, and have contributed to the next issue of the magazine. I'm all for getting more people to learn about the classical world, because (a) it will help them understand their own world better, (b) as Boris Johnson says in the Indy piece, it's socially unjust not to give opportunities to everyone to study the subject, and (c) Classics is cool. But if we as Classicists tell the kids Robinson teaches in Hackney (and I should stress that I've no reason to believe that Robinson herself says anything of the sort) that Latin alone will allow them free entry into the social, political or economic elites of this country, then I think we're selling them a pup.

And do we have to tear down other subjects to promote our own? This is again something often done by Classicists. Boris Johnson, in his mostly enjoyable The Dream of Rome, says that people studying Media Studies would be better off doing Latin. But I don't see why Media Studies should be any less rigorous than Latin. I know it's often presented as just watching television instead of working, but both are subjects that require critical study of texts (in the widest meaning of that term); the only fundamental difference between Classics and Media Studies is the nature of the texts studied. And someone who in ten years' time is working with their local community (and we will always need people in these jobs) might well find Ethnic Studies more useful than Classics.

The trouble with this sort of attitude is that associating Latin with top jobs, and asserting its superiority over other disciplines, gives Classics a snob value. Frankly, this sort of arrogant elitism has done Classics as a discipline no good at all over the years. It has, I suspect, provoked a reaction against the subject, which left Classics departments in schools and universities vulnerable to cuts. The recent resurgence of the subject has come partly as a result of discarding such attitudes, and being more inclusive. And that's right. I would never for a moment say that the study of Classics is for everyone. But I don't think social background should be a factor in deciding whether or not it's for you.

* "After this, therefore because of this".

** I'm using 'elite' because I can't think of a better word. I don't mean to imply that anything I describe as 'elite' is necessarily better than the non-elites.

*** That's Robinson, not 'Richardson' as the Indy seems to think.