Classics ‘harm language learning’ by Julie Henry Sunday Telegraph-Lessons in Latin and Ancient Greek have been deemed detrimental to the learning of foreign languages in schools. A secret document sent to Government officials by the Dearing Languages Review, an influential inquiry into language teaching, reveals that Latin and Greek were excluded from the list of languages that schools will be encouraged to study because they are “dead languages” that contribute nothing to “intercultural understanding”. The document adds that “important as they can be, their inclusion on the same footing as modern languages could actually undermine our attempts to build up national capacity in languages”. The revelation that Latin and Greek were intentionally excluded by the review comes only days after news that the Ancient History A-level is to be scrapped by the OCR exam board. The review was ordered by the Government last year in response to a steep decline in the number of pupils studying languages for GCSE. Boris Johnson, the shadow higher education minister, described the assertion that Latin and Greek could undermine attempts to build up languages as the “most stupid thing I have ever heard”. “I can pick up a newspaper in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Greece, Brazil and the whole of Latin America and understand the news, basically because I studied Latin,” he said.

Learning ancient languages is not harmful in any way. The grammatical structures are usually rather complex, for example Latin’s noun cases. When you learn modern languages the grammar will be easy. Further the vocabulary for ancient languages like Latin or Ancient Greek service as a base for most modern European languages.  My friends that studied Latin learned other modern complex languages much easier, such as Polish and Ukrainian.  People who study ancient languages usually just have a passion for languages. I would love to study Latin and ancient Aramaic.

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