Monday, 10 December 2007

Latin Lessons Resurface In UK Primary Schools

News is that 20 London primary schools are trying Latin lessons, under the aegis of a "Project Iris", run by teacher Lorna Robinson. Something similar is happening in Oxfordshire, where the language is also being introduced to selected primary schools.

Learning Latin these days has probably never been more fun or easier. You can read Harry Potter in Latin, Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh (all available from Amazon), there are books of naughty words and silly slang, dictionaries of modern words (laptop computer, milk shake, etc, etc!), and even news broadcast over the Internet in Latin (try Nuntii Latini at

The fact is Latin is still highly regarded in many countries worldwide, especially outside the confines of the Anglo-Saxon Empire. There are more books written and available in Latin than many people will read in a lifetime, and plenty of excellent literature, history, philosophy, and drama. To call it a dead language is kind of to miss the point; more people speak it as a second language than speak many small countries' languages as a first, and in countries like Germany it's recently been announced that many employers look very favourably upon qualifications in Latin as they indicate inquiring and disciplined approaches to study.

Vivat lingua Latina! Let's reappropriate the Roman culture which lies at the roots of most of our "Greater European" identities from the dusty classrooms in which it has long been imprisoned! It is our shared heritage, from Iran and the Middle East to Britain and Northern Europen, to North Africa and the Mediterranean. The European Union is the single biggest attempt at political unity in Europe since the Roman Empire - it is only appropriate that we should at least consider our predecessors, and consider how they succeeded, and, most importantly, how they failed.

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