Mary Beard on Latin 'too hard'.

Mary Beard's blog on the Times website.
Is Latin too hard?
Research at Durham University claims to show kids are put off taking Latin GCSE because it is too hard – about a grade harder than other supposedly “hard” subjects. That is to say, if you can get a grade C at Latin, you’d be in the [...]

Letter in The Times supporting 'hard' Latin

From The Times
Sir, Latin, we are told, is a grade harder than any other subject at GCSE level (“Latin loses out for being too difficult”, June 26). Classicists fear that this may be a further nail in the coffin, as pupils abandon it to get higher grades elsewhere.
This is false reasoning. University admissions tutors, frustrated [...]

My favourite lesson by James Essinger

My favourite lesson
Latin lover
Latin was a living thing for James Essinger
Interview by Alice Wignall
Tuesday June 27, 2006
The Guardian
I began learning Latin when I was in the third year, I think, of my grammar school in Leicester. It was great fun from the beginning. We had a very enthusiastic teacher called Mike Kinder and, cleverly, for [...]

Pupils told to avoid latin because it's too hard

From the Daily Mail

Pupils told to avoid latin because it's too hard
20:00pm 25th June 2006
Education experts raised fears over the future of Latin in schools, warning that teachers were telling their pupils to avoid the subject because it is too hard.
Academics at Durham University found that Latin is about a grade harder than any [...]

Peter Wiseman on Caesar's assassination and after

Peter Wiseman's review of three books in the TLS begins with this exercise in imagination, about what it was really like in the moments after Julius Caesar's death:
It was a run of more than 500 metres, with a steep little climb at the end of it, from the Senate-house in Pompey's Portico, where Julius Caesar [...]

Practical problems in staging a triumph

Mary Beard is writing a book on the Roman triumph. Today's blog entry (A Don's Life) reveals the practical problems involved in standing in a chariot and in the final ascent to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.
Interesting.

Latin at the Language Show

“It is, perhaps, a great irony that state-funded universities can and often do offer Latin (including ab initio classes), yet state-funded schools normally do not offer it. Perhaps some marketing whizz-kid could persuade more people to study it?”
This comment from the Scotsman reminds me that four Classical organisations, JACT, ARLT, Friends of Classics and Oxford [...]

Jordanhill has dropped its course in Classics

From the Scotsman
Training college axes Latin
ARTHUR MACMILLAN EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT
SCOTLAND'S largest teacher training college has dropped its course in Classics, claiming there is not enough interest from state schools.
Last night, teachers and opposition politicians claimed the decision to axe the course at the University of Strathclyde's Jordanhill campus would force Scottish schools to recruit Latin teachers [...]

Interview with Boris Johnson

Cafe Babel, a European magazine that I hadn't heard of, has an interview with Boris Johnson about his book on the Roman Empire and the EU.
Daniel Kramb – London – 24.6.2006
Boris Johnson, dreaming of Rome
British star politician Boris Johnson has just written a book on why the Roman Empire worked so well, and the [...]

Oyez, oyez! Classical Civ teachers have it made.

If you teach A level Classical Civilisation and use the AQA syllabus, then you are in clover from next year. Someone has actually published a coursebook for you and your students.
And it's a real good un, as far as I can judge.
Rather than read quickly through all that was on offer, I selected some topics [...]