United Kingdom VII: Taking Pride in Your Success

[fishbowlhead]

Delta variant has been proved to spread even more virulently and among vaccinated, so were now not really vaccinated at all.

So thats good news.

[wheelaa]

Disgusting.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58024296

A stain on parasites, I mean politicians, of all flavours.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/30/covid-infections-rising-england-despite-fall-daily-reported-cases

ONS supports the growing notion that COVID cases are still rising, it's testing that is now failing as a system

[Neon Ignition]

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

New cases steady with 29,622 - number of tests conducted has dropped by nearly 1m in a week

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jul/31/latin-introduced-40-state-secondaries-england

How to help kids catch up with lost education?

Add learning Latin to the mix!

[MartyG]

https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...daries-england
How to help kids catch up with lost education?

Add learning Latin to the mix!

Might have been nice to get the perspective of an actual teacher in that article. My understanding was that the changes made by Gove lead to curriculum overload, but I don't know if that still holds true today, nor as to whether there are any real benefits trying to shoehorn this into it too - hence wanting perspect from the sharp end.

[briareos_kerensky]

I had to study Latin in high school, it's part of the curriculum in some types of Italian high schools...absolutely useless. Surely some specialised professions require a bit of knowledge of that language, but I would have traded it for any other foreign language or dedicate more hours to other subjects, like history.

[CMcK]

I did Latin for one year at secondary school. The top performing pupils in French class were offered a year of Latin or German so I picked Latin. Fook knows why I did that. Didn’t exactly come in handy. Why it’s being brought back in England is a bit of a mystery to me. Although I suspect it has something to do with Jacob Rees Mogg.

[charlesr]

I did Latin and Greek from around the age of 9.... It did make learning French quite easy. Can't see it as essential in any way.
We should be learning welding and farming and stuff for when the Internet breaks

[MartyG]

And carpentry for the boats we're going to need in a couple of decades.

[endo]

I've got an A-Level in Latin and I didn't go to a private school. It's been immeasurably beneficial to me, helped me truly understand English grammar and made other languages easier to learn. That said, I'm a linguist by profession and I can understand it won't be useful for everyone. It most certainly does have benefits though.

[kryss]

I would have done a GCSE if it had been an option, probably instead of German.

[Dogg Thang]

It's been immeasurably beneficial to me, helped me truly understand English grammar and made other languages easier to learn.

I can't really dispute that because I'm not a linguist and honestly know nowhere near enough about Latin to have any informed opinion but I do wonder when I hear things like this if it would have been of even more benefit to put the time into English grammar or another language that has similar roots but can actually be used. It's just, as an uninformed person, it's very difficult to understand how learning an entire dead language in order to help learn other things is more efficient than just putting some more time into learning those other things.

[cutmymilk]

Etymology should be taught as part of regular teaching. From that perspective latin is immensely beneficial.

[charlesr]

I've got an A-Level in Latin and I didn't go to a private school. It's been immeasurably beneficial to me, helped me truly understand English grammar and made other languages easier to learn. That said, I'm a linguist by profession and I can understand it won't be useful for everyone. It most certainly does have benefits though.

You must be insanely bored of this by now, but after managing to shoe-horn "... hand job.... " into a discussion in a facebook group last week, I'm on a roll. Are you a cunning linguist?