Last week, Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson announced government plans to increase teaching of Latin in state schools. The new £4 million initiative is intended to make the language more accessible to young people and eliminate its ‘elitist’ status, with the secretary of state acknowledging that Latin teaching has often been reserved for the privately educated and ‘privileged few’.

The move has been welcomed by a range of public figures, including the classicist Dame Mary Beard, who has echoed the Secretary of State’s view that extending the subject will ‘bring so many benefits to young people.’ In certain quarters there has, however, been both scepticism and dismay at the government’s decision. Author and former children’s laureate Michael Rosen was one of many to take to Twitter last Saturday and express doubt about the Latin Excellence Programme, suggesting that it could merely perpetuate Latin’s elitist status and continue to marginalise teaching of modern foreign languages, which are deemed less ‘clever’. 

Any attempt to increase access to a subject, whether it be Latin or any other discipline, is commendable

There are shades of truth to both Beard’s and Rosen’s statements. Contrary to perhaps the prevailing view, I broadly agree with the government’s latest move. Extending Latin teaching to state schools, only 2.7% of which currently offer the subject (compared to almost half of all private schools), is in my opinion an unambiguously good and worthwhile decision. Any attempt to increase access to a subject, whether it be Latin or any other discipline, is commendable. I might echo Salma Shah, who in her recent article for The Independent argued that teaching Latin to children from normal and lower-class backgrounds could form part of a broader push to increase meritocracy in the British education system. Aside from its meritocratic advantages, increasing Latin teaching in state schools will expose more children to a wealth of linguistic as well as cultural, and historical knowledge that will only enrich their understanding of the world. In this respect, I concur with Beard, who has emphasised Latin’s ‘exciting’ and ‘challenging’ nature and argued that teaching of the subject ‘introduces children to a ‘whole range of worlds and literatures that are different from their own’. Though dissenters may decry the subject as arcane and worthless and accuse it of contributing little to students’ employment prospects, expanding the choice that children have in their education is unquestionably good. Investing in learning, even if just for learning’s sake, is never a wasted venture. 

Nevertheless, this move, however admirable, is on its own not enough. Rosen’s comments ring true when we consider that teaching Latin in state schools fails to address many, if any, of the pre-existing inequalities and inadequacies in language teaching in British schools. The teaching of modern foreign languages such as French, German, and Spanish, while far more widespread, has seemingly become increasingly neglected in recent years. This is especially the case in state secondary schools, where many languages departments have had to cease offering some subjects or close completely, either due to poor uptake among students or insufficient government funding.

Any endeavour to increase accessibility in education must be underpinned by a genuine concern for meritocracy and not merely symbolic

Though the move to increase Latin teaching is great, focusing efforts on sustaining and improving what language teaching already exists in state schools is of much greater import. In light of the government’s other recent announcement, in which it set out plans to cut funding for arts subjects in universities by fifty percent, the decision to extend the teaching of classical languages seems confused and its underlying motives dubious. Any endeavour to increase accessibility in education must be underpinned by a genuine concern for meritocracy and not merely symbolic. Opening up Latin teaching to lower-class children is just one component of this. 

Williamson and the rest of the government must address the dire state of modern languages teaching as a whole in British state schools and prioritise funding and similar initiatives in this area. As wonderful as Latin is as a source of study and cultural enrichment, modern foreign languages offer greater utility and relevance to both a modern and increasingly globalised society and the demands of employers. Compared to other European countries, where young people enjoy a significantly higher quality of language education and are much more likely to have reached bilingual proficiency by the time they leave school, our current system is deficient. The material benefits of levelling-up languages education as a whole outweigh those of concentrating efforts into a single, dead language. Correcting the imbalance in quality between private and state schools across languages education in general, rather than just coalescing around an initiative that could prove to be tokenistic, would be a far more prudent step on the government’s part.   

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