They were thought to be dead, but they are still moving. To everyone’s surprise, the French Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, announced last week that he intended to relaunch the learning of Latin and Greek in college and high school. When the pronoun “iel” enters The Robert and where the supporters of so-called “inclusive” writing want to upset grammar and spelling, France wants on the contrary to allow as many people as possible to reconnect with the very sources of the French language.
Unlike Princeton University, which decided last June that classics students would no longer be required to study Greek and Latin, Jean-Michel Blanquer admits wanting to take the opposite view of those who reduce Antiquity slavery and racism. The Hellenist Jacqueline de Romily saw it as the place which had “invented history, democracy, the meaning of the tragic and of beauty, philosophy and justice”.
After having signed a joint forum with the Quebec Minister of Education Jean-François Roberge against this culture of the gag otherwise called ” cancel culture “, Blanquer recurrence. With his Greek, Italian and Cypriot counterparts, he signed a declaration intended to “promote an Antiquity which illuminates and nourishes the present”.
A renewed teaching
Unlike Quebec, where it has practically disappeared even in private schools, Latin is offered as an option from the second year in most French secondary schools. It is also offered in high school (CEGEP). While Ancient Greek attracts only 2% of students, it is estimated that around 18% have done at least one year of Latin. The proportion is even higher in Germany. According to the ministry, the number of these students would have increased by 11% between 2016 and 2018. This teaching is also an initiation into all the Greco-Latin culture.
The Minister proposes in particular to create new sections associating the study of Greek or Latin with that of foreign languages. One could, for example, he said, study Latin, Italian and Occitan. He also intends to open this option to technological high schools.
“Far from being the dusty subject that some people decry, the teaching of ancient languages has undergone a profound change in France,” explains Augustin d’Humières, professor of classical letters at the Lycée Jean Vilar, in the suburbs of Meaux. This associate founded the Mêtis association in 2003, which promotes old letters in suburban high schools where a large proportion of immigrants are found.
“Learning Latin or Greek is a wonderful asset for these students who often lack French,” he says. It allows them to catch up in grammar and vocabulary, by studying etymology for example, but also by strengthening their general knowledge. When he tours high schools with former students who are now graduates, Augustin d’Humières is always astonished by the enthusiasm aroused by these subjects.
Once considered a pension, ancient letters arouse curiosity, he says. “People come there by all means, whether it is to discover the mythology from which television and cinema continue to draw or to study medicine, since 80% of the names of drugs come from Greek. “
It was the linguist Henriette Walter who affirmed that the disappearance of Latin and Greek made French speakers vulnerable to English whenever it was a question of making new words. Thus, failing to know that in Latin “homo” means “same”, according to The Great Robert, the neologism “homophobic” was coined in the 1970s, an “ambiguous and ill-formed word in French, which should designate those who“ fear the same ”. Its creators had probably never studied Latin.
Wishful thinking?
On the announcements of the Minister of Education, Augustin d’Humières nevertheless remains cautious and fears that we will be left with wishful thinking. Jean-Michel Blanquer, he said, has still not restored the CAPES (certificate of aptitude for the teaching staff of secondary education) of classical letters, abolished by the socialist government in 2013, as he had yet hinted at in 2017. Since then, the number of classics teachers has continued to decline. Last year, there were only 8116 left in all of France. Some of those who retire are not replaced. Editor-in-chief of the Pedagogical Café, a site devoted to education, François Jarraud suspects the minister of Emmanuel Macron of wanting to “seduce a certain public” five months before the presidential elections.
Fortunately, the future of ancient languages is not decided only in ministerial offices, says Augustin d’Humières. This enthusiast, who has been teaching since 1995, admits all the same to be overthrown by the wind of protest against classical studies which is blowing in American universities and which could soon reach France.
“The ancient texts have so much to teach us. If we sacrifice Homer because he lived in a time when slavery was normal, who tells us that one day we will not censor today’s literature because, in our streets, extreme poverty rubs shoulders with wealth? equally outrageous? We cannot judge all of the literature with today’s criteria. Such narrow ideas can only survive in the inter-self of small circles at Princeton or Science Po. Real life is elsewhere … “
Augustin d’Humières is deeply convinced that Latin and Greek are not dead languages, even if, he says, it is an effort to be constantly renewed. He endorses these words of Jacqueline de Romily: “By teaching these two languages, we give young people the means to think and to feel. A whole vocabulary of the mind. Suspend this teaching and you cut off the young people of the past. “