THE TEACHING OF LATIN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17078, 29 January 1916, Page 14

THE TEACHING OF LATIN.

TO THE EDITOB. Sir —Tt was with great pleasure that ' I saw Mr G. M. Thomson's forcible letter to the Senate of the University of New Zealand, published m your columns. It so exactly expresses my own views on the matter, that there is hardlv anv need to write much about it, but, in the hope of eliciting the opinions of educated business men on the ouestion of relegating the teaching of classics in our schools to a less conspicuous place than it at present occupies 1 wish to say n little. .... Ju my young days. Greek and Latin were the "mental pabulum on which boys were to a very large extent ted. Wo learnt French and German as secondary and somewhat unimportant subjects, ms well as mathematics, gepgraphv and history; but the subjects to which we certainly devoted mosttime were Greek and Latin and of the two we spent more time at Latin than at Greek. In looking into my mind today to sec how much 1 remember of all i was taught, I find two things mainly impressed on it. The first is that "quum" takes the subjunctive attcr __ it, and the second is that the monster Polvpheme gouged out somebody's eye with a burnt .stick. Now, sir, I have | lived to be at least middle-aged, and 1 g have never found the very slightest | use for either of these pieces of mfor- U mation. "Quum" being followed by the | subjunctive has not enabled' me to make & two blades of grass grow where one S grew before, and Polypheme's exploits g have on.v out bad thoughts into my | mind of perhaps being able to do the | sajm to someone to whom 1 owe a | "nidge. There are certainly other | pieces of classical lore of which lam | conscious, but they have become uncer- | tain in the mists of disuse. But'even | now. as I think over it, Ido not feel | at all. sure whether it was Polyphonic ,| who gouged' out someone else's eye or I whether he himself it was who lost his § own. I incline rather to the latter | If, then, this is the condition of my | mind after practically spending from | right to tan vears at this subject, as | the most important of all the subjects | 1 had to studv, surely there must be § many others in. a state of similar ignor- | mice, and they are none the worse | men on that acceount. | Old ideas die very hardly, and newer | ones have a very turbulent early ex- | istenco. The old idea of a material p hell for altruistic purposes is still clung jj to with an almost pathetic fondness by | many even to-day. That is one of | those old ideas, and, whilst- the study | of Greek by every boy has disappeared, I yet the study of Latin as a subject for | every boy who hopes to claim a. liberal e education) still survives. Mr Thomson t puts the blame on the fact that it is i a compulsory subject for the Arts de- jj greo. It certainly is so, but there are I many schoolboys and relatively few I are students, and to urge (I | will not say compel) all boys | to take a ' subject because it | will bo necessary if ho takes an Arts | degree—a thing he may have no idea k whatever of doing—is utterly in-ong. | It *s the survival of an old idea, and | it is. to some extent due to the fact g that schoolmasters have learnt Latin in | their early days, and hand it on to g others as the principal ware they have E to sell, though this, perhaps, is a ra- | ther unpleasant way of putting it. | I d'o not wish to advocate the sub- | st.itution of any particular subject. | There are. numbers of such subjects | that would be of use in after life, and I these ought to replace it. lam not. I nor, T think, is Mr Thomson, advocat- 1 ing its total abolishment. What T ain jjj trying to say is that we are living in \t days of keen utilitarian competition, § both amongst ourselves and as one s nation amongst others. If we do not | fit our boys and girls to take their s part in that competition, then both | they themselves individually and we as i a nation will suffer for it.—l am, etc.. | C COLERIDGE FAKR. j