Rejoinder to a Self-Appointed Policeman of Privilege

Strapline: LATIN FOR IDIOTS

This week saw the publication in the Spectator of a splenetic piece of propaganda by one James Delingpole, who makes his living from peddling archly controversial far-right views on climate change and immigration. This time he dilates, with mind-blowing ignorance, on the topic of classical education. The single most serious problem affecting British education, apparently, and one which the Spectator believes it is worth giving airspace to someone of Delingpole’s lousy journalism skills to discuss, is that there are TOO MANY STATE-EDUCATED UNDERGRADUATES READING CLASSICS AT OXFORD.*

I quote: ‘Take, for example, the right-on enthusiasm for recruiting Greats candidates from schools that don’t do Latin or Greek. The theory goes that by the fourth year, these eager state-school kids will have attained the same proficiency as private-school ones who have been hothoused on classics since they were eight or nine. But I gather that only the Oxbridge classics tutors who have drunk the social justice Kool-Aid actually believe this has worked in practice. The rest are worried about declining long-term standards and are also a bit frustrated: if you’re an Oxbridge classics don, you want to teach Oxbridge–level classics — not catch-up for beginners.’

Is this the best Classical Edification  can offer the 21st Century?

As an ex-Oxford Classics don (1995-2001), I can confirm that the last sentence was, at least then, sadly, true. Amongst my former colleagues were too many who took applicants from the private sector in numbers wholly disproportionate to their status as only 7% of the school-leaver population. 

Things have certainly changed for the better since 2001. But this matters little if state-educated people think that Classics remains a snobbish subject, and are too scared to apply to Oxford anyway. This is hardly surprising when Oxford produces arrogant alumni with ropey cognitive skills like Delingpole, who boasts, ‘it really did shape my intellect in a way for which I’ll be eternally grateful.’ Enough said.

But Delingpole’s premise that a life-transforming Higher Education in Classics is only possible after training, from primary school, in Latin and Greek languages, is daft. Not only can people learn Latin and Greek to a dazzling standard fast, but the most precious aspects of the Greeks' and Romans' culture can be learned without any ancient language at all.

They had some bad ideas, including the inevitability of slavery and the inferiority of women. But they also conceived superb ideas, including democracy, freedom of speech, accountability of officials, the social contract, trial by jury, tolerance of a wide range of sexual relationships, rational science, philosophical logic, world-citizenship, cultural relativism, training in public speaking, and the profound responsibility of the makers of art and entertainment to society.

Jefferson

The failure to include classical subjects taught in translation—Classical Civilisation or Ancient history—in every secondary educational institution therefore deprives our future citizens of access to educational treasures which not only enthral, but fulfil what Jefferson argued in Notes on the State of Virginia (1782) was the true goal of education in a democracy—to enable us to defend our liberty. The past, he argued, is the subject which makes citizens so equipped. 

To stay free requires also comparison of constitutions, utopian reflection, fearlessness about innovation, critical, lateral and relativist thinking, advanced epistemological skills in source criticism and the ability to argue cogently. All these skills can be learned via English translations of the succinct, entertaining, original works produced by the lively minds of the authors of the classical past.

Delingpole has needlessly insulted every individual who has ever studied the ancient Mediterranean world wholly or even partially in translation—the thousands who take CC/AH qualifications in state schools, the majority of classics undergraduates in other British universities, not to mention adult learners, autodidacts, and everyone who has ever read a Penguin Classic. He has done so with puerile, ill-informed, oligarchic hauteur. If this has made you as cross as it did me, then please read this article in the Guardian and join my new campaign, ACE, to get classical subjects into every state school in the land. Now I’m off to the People’s History Museum in Manchester to research workers’ campaigns for access to Higher Education.

*I did have a photograph of Delingpole in bathing shorts here but have taken it down after someone quite rightly pointed out that I was stooping to 'body shaming'. I agree and apologise for any offence caused.