h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Being from a comprehensive school I've always been rather proud of my lack of classical education. My school didn't do Classics, it did woodwork, and I rather enjoyed woodwork, my teacher said that it was a 'crying shame' that I was going to do it at A Level. I like making out that we didn't have to learn pointless things at school, and the fact that I didn't do latin was no disadvantage whatsoever.

What possible use could Latin be anyway? Why would anyone gain anything useful from teaching children a dead language? Ok people should still learn it, but why teach children Latin? Why not Linear B, or Sandskrit?

I'm starting to think there might be something in this classical education thing might have been worth having.

I'm starting to get interested in classical literature, and the ancient world. I've been reading about philosophy and ethics and so much of it draws on the Greeks. It would be an interesting thing to read. (Incidentally http://www.mariannetalbot.co.uk/podcasts/a-romp-through-ethics-for-complete-beginners/ is an excellent podcast that I highly recommend.). If I'm getting into philosophy then I really need to read the classics.

Then there's the matter of art, I have to admit I'm a bit of a dinosaur, I like figurative art, and a lot of it is illustrating classical stories, it would all be a lot easier if I'd read the stories.

I may have more to say later

In Austria you need Latin to be allowed to study medicine and some other stuff. I chose French instead of Latin, it wasn't really any better. And I had philosophy and psychology at school. But I can't remember much.

I went to a rather posh boarding school, and they'd stopped teaching Latin before I got there (1986). I was very upset they didn't do metal work as I'd been good at that. Well, I enjoyed it at least. All that bashing things with hammers.

They have done rather good translations-into-English of most of the Classics, you know

I did Latin at high school; it was so nice and straightforward and logical, I enjoyed it immensely and was very annoyed that I couldn't finish the course. (Nobody else wanted to do Latin in the last two years of school and they weren't going to give me a private tutor, so that was that.) It's been useful for reading history, and for learning Spanish.

Oh, and I suck at woodwork.

Agapanthus, I think the lack of classic education made me dismiss all the classics as irrelevant, I may have to set out to read them in translation now.



Ivan. Is latin really logical? I found Mandarin really logical as well, I should go back to studying that when I next have a spare minute (2015)

Intensely so, I believe. Someone told me once Latin was his favourite subject because it was the closest one to a game of chess. Ok, slightly pretentious, but still.

Latin is just as logical as Mandarin. The patterns are different, the rhythm is different, but the logic is just as strong. Latin has suffixes and conjugations and declinations, Mandarin gets by without all of that, but you still know exactly where you are in either language - which is more than can be said for English with its irregular verbs and dysfunctional spelling.

Similarly to Z, I didn't go to Grammar School, but I went to Secondary Modern. Here, as well as the ordinary academic subjects (English, Maths, History, Geog, R.E., Science, P.E....) we also did woodwork, metalwork and 'technical drawing'. The latter was really practical mathematics (Applied Maths) where we had to make 'engineering drawings' of various interesting 3-D shapes, construct the locus of a point on a circle as it travels along a line etc, etc. These are all skills that a GCSE Maths student is not taught nowadays. I'm nt sure that they even cover it at A Level.
However, I digress. Being 2-ary Modern, we were not taught Classics like Latin or Greek (which they did do at Grammar School. However, I was a later developer and went on to study Chemistry at university, and Biology to an equally high level. Here it is quite interesting/informative/entertaining to have had a classical education (I had tro learn aspects of Latin later).

For example, the old-fashioned name for 'alkanes' is 'paraffin hydrocarbons'. The word 'paraffin' comes from the Latin, parum affinum' meaning 'little reactivity' and, of course, the alkanes are noted for their lack of chemical reactivity. They are insoluble in water and burn to give carbon dioxide and water, but that's about all.

I also remember my chemistry lecturer at college teaching us about systematic (IUPAC) nomenclature. He said there were 3 acids which, from their names (capric, caproic and caprylic acids) one would think they have sme aspect of strucure in common. "Not a bit of it", he said. "They have these names because they all have the smell of a goat!" (L. caper = 'goat') >rofl>

I have a SamsungGalaxyS2 phone app the translates voice to text, one of the languages is Latin

my life is complete

I did Latin up to GCSE (and was briefly considering doing it to A Level) and I found it really helped me with my Spanish, French and even a bit of German. I also learned a lot about the Roman world which was really interesting and helped with my interest in philosophy. Plus the Caecillius stories (the Cambridge Latin Course) was really well-written and worked as an interesting story/bit of history.

I even did 6 months of ancient Greek - I like my dead languages.