Latin by video link

Andrew Brown wrote in the Guardian about language teaching, as he, and now his daughter, have experienced it. The comparison between then and now, and between French and Latin (the Cambridge Course evidently), is interesting. Here's an excerpt:

One of my French teachers at prep school was a retired major, keen on discipline but to all intents and purposes deaf. This didn't seem to hinder our acquisition of written language, but it made the language feel as dead as Latin, and possibly more boring since hardly anyone got killed in it.

That need never happen today. Audiovisual technology lets anyone hear how native speakers talk. The web could let anyone interact with them. Latin can be taught in schools where there is little demand using a video link. Better understanding of psychology has helped even more. The Latin course that is delivered down a video link is hugely superior to the way that I was taught. The grammar and vocabulary are all there, but embedded into a story that is interesting for its own sake and instructive about the texture of Roman life. Children learn more, better and faster than I ever did.

Parent power to bring Latin to a "bog-standard" primary

In an article by Norman Johnson in the Guardian - it's about bringing back streaming – I read the following, and rejoiced:

As a governor of the local primary, I've seen, first hand, some of the amazing work done by teachers who, though they may not personally have the imagination and flair to fulfil the needs of some of the brighter kids, have been more than ready to work with the constructive input of involved parents. It was after a few of us put our heads together and came up with a plan for a special assistant for the more achieving youngsters, teaching them in a special Gifted Hut equipped with broadband and a visiting Latin tutor, that no fewer than four of the kids in Norma's year won scholarships to Westminster. So I know that – provided middle-class parents are prepared to get their hands dirty, or just offer a gîte for the auction of promises – a “bog-standard” primary can offer the very best academically, at the same time that your kid gains life-enhancing experience of a rainbow of ethnic and social backgrounds that all the little Conrads and Arabellas on the St Cake's playing fields can only dream of.

No Latin for toddlers? Shame!

The government has announced that children in day nurseries must be taught a kind of infant National Curriculum.

You may think this is madness. I could not possibly comment.

At any rate, the Guardian reports:

The Pre-School Learning Alliance also played down concerns, saying it did not believe children would be “rote learning Latin by two-and-a-half”.

Maybe not. It is true, however, that rote learning is easy and fun to children of two and a half, and some Latin learned by rote at an early age makes the rest of one's career as a Latinist a whole lot easier. That's my experience, anyhow.

So my word to the Pre-School Learning Alliance is “Don't knock it!”