Latin
Makes Comeback
A
leading Victorian private school is to offer classes in Latin this year for the
first time since the 1960s, a move which could mirror trends in the United
States.
However, while Sacre
Coeur in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris has decided to reintroduce the
subject into its curriculum, there is little evidence of a wider revival in
Australia with a number of top public schools progressively dropping Latin over
the past few years.
According to The Australian newspaper, 15
Sacre Coeur students will take up Latin this year.
"The ‘highly academic’ Sacre Coeur
presented Latin as a subject option in a recent newsletter and this was met with
widespread enthusiasm, according to the report.
The Catholic school is offering several
other new fringe subjects this year including robotics, ‘eco-tourism’ and
‘music technology’.
One possible incentive for students taking on Latin is
the fact that the subject attracts more bonus points than any other subject for
university hopefuls.
However, in the United States there has been a genuine
Latin revival and graduates in the classics are considered excellent prospective
employees by leading corporations.
A US classics website recently had more than 200 job
vacancies for Latin teachers.
Sacre Coeur student Philippa Noakes, aged 14, said it
was her love of language and history which attracted her to Latin, not the bonus
points.
"People say it is a dead language, but that’s
what intrigued me to take it,’’ she told the Australian.
Another student, 13-year-old Nicole Hill, said:
"It’s quite beautiful when you start learning it.”
Sacre Coeur’s new Latin teacher Kevin Cooper,
recruited from another private school which dropped the subject, said Latin
provided a structure through which students could better understand English.
There may not be a wholesale revival of Latin, but it
appears to becoming fashionable. There is even a Latin chatroom or locutorium on
the internet.
The Italian site, at www.cirlapa.org
is an entertaining mix of ancient and modern.
The brightly coloured panels include Eventa (events),
Epistulae (letters), Libri Selecti (selected books) and, of course, homepage –
Pagina Domestica.
