§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ryder.]
10.47 pm§ Mr. Michael Fallon (Darlington)I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the important subject of the teaching of Latin in our schools.
At once I must report to hon. Members the extremely sad fact that Latin is under threat. It is not under threat from any lack of interest. My hon. Friends may be surprised to know that the numbers studying Latin are keeping up well since the days when they studied it. However, it is perfectly true that the numbers are not quite what they were.
Latin is no longer compulsory for entry to Oxford or Cambridge. There are the competing pressures of the technical and vocational education initiative and the continuing encouragement of the Department of Education and Science for subjects that it deems to be relevant and useful. However, some 20,000 pupils take Latin at O-level every year. The numbers studying classical subjects at A-level has increased by some 20 per cent. over the past seven years and at any one time some 6,500 undergraduates are studying classics at our universities—over half of those go on with their degree into commerce.
Perhaps more surprising still, Latin survives well within our state education system. There are still more than 1,000 state schools offering Latin despite the onslaught against Latin in some Labour-controlled education authorities, in particular, the Inner London education authority. Latin continues to be taught. The threat comes not from any lack of interest——
§ Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn)What does the hon. Gentleman mean by an onslaught by Labour authorities on Latin? I know of no such onslaught.
§ Mr. FallonI shall be turning to the evidence, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me.
The threat comes not from any lack of interest on the part of the schools. I am sad to say that it comes from my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department of Education and Science in their proposals for a national curriculum. This curriculum lists 10 foundation subjects, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has assured us would occupy some 80 to 90 per cent. of the school's time. That means that the remaining subjects must compete for the remaining 20 per cent.—for example, a third science, a second foreign language, business studies, home economics and classics. If 90 per cent. of the school week is to be occupied by the foundation subjects of the national curriculum, that will demand 36 of the available 40 periods. If we take one for religious education, we are left with three periods for all the remaining core subjects. If 80 per cent. is the figure that my right hon. Friend wishes to prescribe, we are left with eight periods. If we take one for religious education, there are a mere seven periods for all the non-core subjects.
I contend that it is impossible for a pupil to achieve an O-level in Latin in the short time that will be available to him, even if all of it is allocated to Latin. However, the prospects for Latin are somewhat worse than that. There 758 is no upper limit on the time that may be devoted by schools to the national curriculum as it is proposed by my right hon. and hon. Friends. Schools could concentrate almost entirely on the foundation subjects, and with the requirement to test at the ages of seven, 11 and 14, there may be every incentive to do so in the schools that wish to continue attracting pupils under the more competitive open enrolment system.
There will not be any extra resources forthcoming when the national curriculum is put into place. Classics teachers, those who have been teaching Latin on demand within the state system, may find themselves transferred by their heads to teach other languages, English, history or whatever. I contend that Latin will not merely decline; it will disappear, and do so almost overnight as the new curriculum is introduced
My evidence is threefold. The Schools Curriculum Development Committee in its evidence on the national curriculum has said:
The demands of the subjects of the national curriculum on time will inevitably reduce the number of pupils who can study Latin or a second modern language below the sixth form.The National Association of Schoolmasters said:Important elements, minority subjects such as classics, now enjoying something of a resurgence, will be squeezed out of the curriculum.Most interesting of all, those who teach classics in our schools—I quote Mr. Adrian Spooner, the head of classics at Parkfield comprehensive at Chester-le-Street, County Durham, who has collected the evidence—have shown overwhelmingly that many Labour-controlled authorities are planning already to discard Latin. Labour and Conservative-controlled authorities are planning to do so once the national curriculum is introduced. The authorities include the Inner London education authority, Northampton, Tyne and Wear and Durham.That is the evidence, expert and accredited, of those who teach Latin. Where is the evidence of my right hon. and hon. Friends that that will not be the outcome? understand that the Department has not carried out a survey, and it is of no comfort to those who are concerned about the survival of Latin for the Secretary of State to come to the conference at Blackpool and say "Nil despérandum." I shall complete the line for him, which is
Nil despérandum Teucro duce, et auspĭce Teucro.There is no need to despair under Trojan leadership, my right hon. Friend tells us. In the absence of such safeguards and surveys, it is of no comfort for me to tell the House that the only comfort that we have received from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and from my hon. Friend the Minister are the words that classics will still have an important role to play. Latinists will respond to my right hon. Friend's promise of Trojan leadership: "Equo ne credite, Teucri."Latin needs no defence or apologia from me. It stands in its own right as a vigorous, intellectual discipline that encourages clarity of thought and expression, develops powers of logic, judgment and imagination, and demands and rewards attention, application and memory. Indeed, it may do slightly more than that. Those who would argue for Latin argue also that it broadens horizons and develops early on an understanding of the more humanistic elements in civilisation. It also presents the opportunity to learn skills that are transferable—not only to the study of other languages, but to the study of other subjects also. Latin also affords us a corpus of 759 literature, influenced by common artistic principles developed by common stylistic canons and a culture that is complete in itself—with a history, a legal system and a philosophy. All those things are bound up in the study of a language.
If it is worth studying literature at all, it must be worth studying classical literature. How can one understand and appreciate fully the literature of Shakespeare, Dante, Racine and Shelley without some understanding of classical literature? If it is worth studying history, it must be worth understanding ancient history. How can one understand the forces that led to the birth of democracy, or understand the rule of law and the legal system that still underpins our own, unless one studies ancient history? If it is worth studying philosophy, it must be worth studying Plato and Aristotle, the fons et origo of moral philosophy, logic and metaphysics.
Above all, any study of Latin is, in the end, a study of one's own language. Half of all the vocabulary that we use is Latin-based. That does not matter simply for those who want to perfect their English, but for those who want to get on in life, and for job-seekers because one of the most hidden forms of discrimination in our society is not only that of sex or colour, but that of language—the so-called lexical bar through which those who lack competence, fluency and self-confidence in their own language cannot break. The study of Latin is, therefore, a means by which people can enrich their confidence and break through that form of hidden discrimination.
It may surprise my hon. Friends to know that in some of the inner-city areas of the United States, such as in Philadelphia, Washington and Indianapolis, Latin is now being taught to deprived black children. Results show that those children with Latin have educational achievements that are a year ahead of those without it.
My hon. Friends have an alternative. They can reconsider and save Latin—but not by making it a foundation subject; I know nobody who teaches classics who wants it to be made compulsory. Perhaps that was one of the causes of its decline. Latin can be saved by making it a viable option outside the core curriculum, but within the school week. That could be done by reducing the time that is allotted to the full curriculum, from the 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. about which my right hon. Friend talks, to 70 per cent., so that at least two non-core subjects can become viable and realistic options. Obviously, the remaining 30 per cent. must be devoted to subjects of proven academic worth that are likely to attract pupils of ability, but I believe that if Latin is thus available, many more will take it on through O-level to A-level and use it as a bridge to study further languages at university.
If my hon. Friends do not reconsider, Latin will not simply wither away; it will disappear entirely from the state system within two years. It may survive a few more years in the private, independent sector, but is that what we want? Do we want classical languages taught only in the private sector and classical literature available only in private libraries? What would be more elitist than to confine the classics to a fee-paying minority? That would be an act of cultural vandalism for three reasons. First, it is a peculiar form of linguistic censorship which seeks to censor the knowledge of one's language. It is a system which would prefer people not to know what lies at the root of our language. Secondly, it is a further application 760 of a somewhat mean-minded educational philosophy. We are beginning to understand now that, while our comprehensive system claimed to extend the curricular range of education, it is now seen to narrow that range. The attack we have seen in some education authorities is a peculiar form of anti-intellectualism, posing as egalitarianism.
The curious assumption, which my hon. Friend the Member. for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) correctly identified in his stirring speech to classicists earlier this year, was that a subject can be made more interesting simply by being made easier. Obviously, that is a false assumption. Obviously, it is wrong of us to deny pupils who find these non-foundation subjects outside the core interesting and attractive the freedom and room to develop their skills and abilities in pursuing those subjects. If we do that, we shall match the architectural barbarism of some of our new modern schools with a development of breeze-block minds, whereby pupils may well have been tested to standards and to various specifications, but whose minds are incapable of absorbing precisely that which might enrich.
Thirdly, if we proceed with this act of cultural vandalism, we shall be betraying a trust. Each successive generation has a general duty to hand on its wisdom and knowledge to the next generation, and to preserve, enrich and transmit it. To deny future generations of schoolchildren access to that inheritance is an attempt to deny that we are what the past has made us and to pretend that it is not necessary to study what we were in order to understand why we are what we are.
Latin is one of the keys to the stored wisdom of nearly 3,000 years of Western intellectual progress. Its very survival at the margins of our education system now depends on Parliament. I urge the House to reflect carefully before destroying such a tradition.
§ 11.2 pm
§ Mr. George Walden (Buckingham)I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) on his initiative in raising this subject for debate. I shall exercise a little classical restraint and speak for only three minutes.
I do not think that I want to mount a defence of the classics because if we have reached the point where that is necessary, we are done for indeed. We are not only discussing the classics, but we are talking about a wider fear of a certain coarsening in our educational values. It is often said that the Government have only one challenge in education and that is to raise vocational awareness; the reality is much more complex. We must raise economic awareness, but also the quality of humanistic studies. The philosophy of utilitarianism is dismal and I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State subscribes to it. Education should and must be a social adhesive. It would be wrong to move towards a position where an important aspect of education was available only in return for cash.
I want to make a rather obscure international point. It would be miserably ironic if we were to do away with this aspect of our culture at a time when even the Communist countries are rediscovering their past. Confucius is being republished in China, the Russians are rediscovering the importance of their history, and even East Germany is looking more closely at Luther. It would be horribly ironic if we were to look the other way now.
761 I believe that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science faces some practical problems in finding space for the classics. I draw his attention to one factor that is frequently overlooked. The length of the English school day does not overstrain the children's capacities. I suspect that there may be a little under-straining of their efforts. I realise that this is a very complicated question. However, we should recognise that our children are, if anything, underworked, and that is certainly true with regard to homework. I underline the comments my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington and I subscribe to most of the points that he made.
§ 11.5 pm
§ Mr. Andrew Hunter (Basingstoke)I am grateful for the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate. I accept that brevity is essential.
For 14 years before I was elected to the House it was my great privilege and, at times, extremely onerous duty to teach Latin. I therefore wished to take part in the debate and identify myself with the remarks of my hon. Friends the Members for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) and for Buckingham (Mr. Walden). I support their arguments.
Our civilisation and society have evolved from an amalgam of Christian religion and a classical tradition. If we sever ourselves from that cultural mooring, we will do ourselves great damage. In particular, one can argue that the national curriculum is weak in that it lacks flexibility and seeks to take up too much of the daily and weekly time of the school curriculum. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond positively to our observations.
§ 11.6 pm
§ The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Angela Rumbold)I am advised by my colleagues who are wiser than I that I should start my response to the debate with a little Latin. I thought I would start by saying:
In principio, Mulier est hominis confusio—Madame, the sentence of this Latyn is, 'Womman is mannes joye and al his blis.'I am sure that that will not be lost on my hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon). I have enjoyed the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington together with my hon. Friends the Members for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) and for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) emphasised their case with great authority. I am certain that my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington would attribute much of the clarity and logic of his argument to his classical training. Possibly his alma mater of St. Andrews would be proud of him. Indeed, I am certain that my hon. Friend's colleagues who also went to St. Andrews will be proud of him.My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington will be aware that he is not alone in his concern. In October alone, we received 119 letters from hon. Members enclosing constituents' letters about the place of classics in the national curriculum. As we have all noted, there has also been a lively debate in the newspaper correspondence columns. Indeed, the leader writers are every bit as exercised on this subject as are the educators.
As I was pondering how to reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington on the subject of teaching Latin and the classics in schools and the future of the classics in the national curriculum, I decided, as he did, to set my 762 remarks firmly in the context of what is happening now. If I may, I will follow my hon. Friend's lead and talk about what is being done.
I have discovered that in the maintained schools some form of classics is taught in about 30 per cent. of comprehensive schools and about 50 per cent. of our grammar schools. In the independent sector, classics are taught in about 90 per cent. of the schools in membership of the Headmasters' Conference, Girls' School Association, and the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools, the registered and recognised bodies.
In 1985, there were nearly 33,000 entries for CSE or O-level in classical subjects—0.5 per cent. of entries in all subjects. At A-level, there were more than 6,000 entries in classical subjects—about 1 per cent. of the total. Although I warm to the notion that nothing should be done further to reduce the teaching of classics, I think that those figures show that classics are not on offer to all pupils and may reflect some schools' judgment on whether it is appropriate to offer the subjects at all. The figures also demonstrate the extraordinary variation between the curriculum of one school and the next.
If we consider what is on offer in schools, we find that maths and English are common features, but, beyond that, there is tremendous variety which leads, all to often, to an unbalanced curricular offering. I quite accept that in many schools there will have been thoughtful and innovative curricular development without the basic elements of the curriculum having been disturbed, but unfortunately odd subjects have been allowed to proliferate in others.
In a publication of some two or three years ago, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington and f shared authorship, we wrote of the choice for parents, especially for the majority of parents in state education. We wrote:
This means that state education need not treat parents as customers to be satisfied. It can concentrate on providing what the producers, the teachers and officials, want to put forward, and know that the parents have no choice but take it. This is one reason why standards of tough and rigorous subjects decline, and more nebulous and fashionable notions replace them. This is why children are now 'taught' such things as social awareness where they were once taught to read and write.It is a reason why such bogus subjects as 'peace studies' and 'anti-racism' take time away from the teaching of history, geography, languages and mathematics.That is strong language, and not entirely without foundation. It is good reason for the Government to focus more sharply on subject matter and demand rigour.Where does that leave us with the classics? I believe that there is sufficient flexibility in our proposals for Latin to continue to be taught in schools that want to offer it. I have heard many examples recently of classics teachers' commitment to their subject, and I know that they will press hard for its continuation. In secondary schools, there will be scope for non-foundation subjects such as Latin and Greek. They will be available to all pupils in the first: three years, and especially at the options stage of years four and five. This will not represent too great a change from what pertains even now in maintained schools. I also believe that schools will have regard to the claims of the classics when planning their non-foundation provision.
Perhaps I may offer my hon. Friends some reassurance about the amount of time that is to be allocated to the foundation subjects. It will not be laid down in statute. The amount of time suggested in the consultation document for the foundation subjects was simply the amount of time 763 that our professional advisers found was spent in schools where there was good practice. That amount of time, if adopted, would be 80 per cent. of the week, which would leave the equivalent of a whole school day per week for non-foundation subjects. That calculation applies to the average school and the average pupil. More able pupils will be able to cover the foundation subjects programme of study and attainment targets more quickly and therefore have more time for non-foundation subjects. I think that my hon. Friend will find that that is a means by which Latin and Greek can be taught to many pupils.
It has been suggested in the newspapers that Latin or Greek should, if the school so wishes, replace a modern foreign language in the list of foundation subjects. I want to take issue with that suggestion. The study of a modern foreign language serves both individual needs and the needs of the country. Worthwhile skills in such a language are an asset which can be developed and put to use by people at work or in their personal lives, at home and abroad. Compared with many major trading nations, ours has a damagingly small proportion of people who understand and speak a modern foreign language. Knowledge of a potential customer's language can be a deciding factor in securing and maintaining exports.
At present too many pupils, especially boys, give up their foreign language studies at the end of the third year of secondary school. Therefore, one of the main messages of the Government's draft policy statement "Foreign Languages in the School Curriculum", issued for consultation last year, was that the majority of pupils should continue with the study of a modern foreign language throughout the period of compulsory secondary schooling. That draft policy statement was, in general, warmly received.
764 I am also aware that a number of people—my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington mentioned this—believe strongly that the basic grammatical rules acquired through a study of Latin can be of great assistance to some people in mastering the complexities of the English language, and to others through its intellectual rigour and background of an ancient civilisation. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham talked about that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has appointed a committee chaired by Sir John Kingman to advise him on what pupils should know about language. I believe that the evidence on the beneficial effect of studying Latin has been put to that committee, which will report early next year. The English working group will then build on the report of the Kingman committee in its work on attainment targets and programmes of study. Obviously, I do not know what view the committee will take of the evidence put to it. I believe, however, that any subject, properly taught, can develop in pupils the habits of intellectual rigour, and that all knowledge combines to produce what might be termed a civilised person. Of course, Latin plays its part; but it has no monopoly here.
My hon. Friend talked of hidden discrimination, due to the lack of knowledge of Latin. I leave him with the thought of one, Winston Churchill, who wrote in his recollections of his early years:
By being so long in the lowest form I gained immense advantage over the cleverer boys—I got into my head the essential matter of the normal British sentence which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour and Greek as a treat.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at Seventeen minutes past Eleven o'clock.