Revered and reviled. An outline of the public debate regarding classical language education

Abstract

The value of classical language education is subject to a fierce dispute, waged continuously and internationally. While some dismiss Classics as useless or elitist, others herald its extraordinary formative value and the many benefits that await pupils. This article aims to give a novel overview of the public debate regarding classical language education, which is defined as follows: the controversy about the instruction of Latin and/or Ancient Greek at the secondary educational level, as it emerges from Western traditional media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The reader is provided with historical insight into this debate that many classicists find themselves in the middle of, as well as with a logical and coherent framework of the various arguments pro and contra. The arguments are embedded in the history of classical language education, classified into categories, analysed and discussed at length. The classification of arguments hinges on the two main lines of criticism towards the study of classical languages, which are inspired by egalitarianism and utilitarianism respectively. As a backdrop to the analysis, we rely on the sociolinguistic theory of language ideology. The general conclusions of this paper are that the value of classical language education is indeed a highly ideologically charged matter, and that the surrounding public debate has known a remarkably high level of continuity.