Sorry but Compulsory Latin for 11-14 year olds, it's already far beyond the required age to start teaching a language compulsory and as complex as Latin.

Secondary you would think Chinese might be a bit more useful, I did Rhetorical Language as part of my dissertation at University and it's the only time I've come near Latin in my whole schooling. This may put out some but I see such topics as rather redunate and unimportant. The Western World or the future eastern economies will not be talking Latin so what dare I say is the bloody point.

Oh sorry it "sounds" highbrow. These people are literally playing with their kids future but of course being rich and famous they can pay when little Johnny and Jennifer start falling behind in Maths, Science and English and keep the fallacy that Latin and The Classics are somewhat a valuable future resource.

I started Latin at 12 and had no problems at all- got to O level A grade standard for the language within 3 years. It's not too late to start.

It was extremely useful to me but I have no desire to force anyone else to do it. Had I done Media Studies aged 12 I might have cottoned on to some really important stuff about 15 years before I did.

Can't we just offer Young's lot an itinerant Latin teacher in a local school if they drop all this rubbish?

sigh...

What could have been an interesting comment about the differences in parenting in influential countries has been ruined with meaningless buzzwords by only the second paragraph.

Oh well...

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'Because we've reached the limits of what rectal probing can teach us'

Young, who did not learn Latin himself, claims that it should be taught because it helps children to learn logic. I did do Latin at school and accept that there are good reasons for teaching it, but one thing it absolutely does not do is teach logic. There is nothing logical about a language with numerous declensions, conjugations and exceptions to virtually every rule, let alone one that includes the vocative for nouns such as "table".

It hasn't bothered with vocatives since 1973, I think, when the Cambridge Latin Course came out.

Elsewhere in the book/article referred to here, Chua admits to having threatened to set fire to cuddly toys, to give away a doll's house to charity, and other shit. She's now claiming the good stuff has been missed out. Death threats have come her way.
You can see why such stuff would lead to Young doing this "on the one hand, on the other hand" article, can't you?

Total pile of hypocritical, self-serving economical-with-the-truth shite here - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... ill-school

Funnily enough, Young is holding the copy of the last Latin book (to my knowledge) to have the vocative case listed in it.

Nice sighting of the "X went to an elite school, how can they oppose more elite schools?" bollocks. Funnily enough, Young doesn't think people like the cabinet who got grants and now want tuition fees scrapped are hypocrites.



These applications later turned out to be people asking for information, didn't it?



The head didn't keep the threatening emails? Really? And the school became outstanding under the control of local bureaucrats and the unions, didn't it? Why change that?



Yeah, nothing to do with the rich keeping more and more of the wealth or anything.



So you set up a school that creams off the middle class, and you think it's surprising people want to go there?



China has free schools, does it? Does young know that it's Shanghai that gets the results he foams at?

She's a mate of yours, and I wasn't aware you denied it previously. I think if Bob Crow had been doing that (and put away tons of coke) you might have mentioned it.

Why would the council have been liable for the libel in a document someone gave to them?

Anyway, I'll give Young this as being a bit sharp. Not much of a hate campaign, is it? They organised some events. They don't get their own newspaper columns, Toby.

Here's an interesting article:

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/01/28/is-toby-young-really-the-right-person-to-run-a-school/

Already had the man down as totally unsuitable to run a school. Now I can see that he is also a tosser.

Isn't he just.

He's not running the school, he's setting it up with a bunch of other people. They'll contract someone else to run it. It really isn't very difficult to do what he's doing. The point is the unnecessary costs to the taxpayer and the lack of accountability.

This doesn't seem like a particularly well-advised article. Apart from the bit about the council kicking out the charities. Are we to believe that Tory council hadn't thought of kicking the out so that the Tory-led coalition could get one of its flagship policies underway?

Actually, forget that. He's a twat, and I enjoyed the article.

Won't he be the chair of governors or overseers or whatever they'll be called?

I don't think know. He's so far just leading the steering group. Anyway, if he's kicked off, that doesn't mean a great deal. The other parents would probably rather he wasn't getting them all the bad publicity, and I'm sure they'd be able to do it without him.

I went to a recording of a Radio 4 program (well three of them actually as they tape a bunch at once) early last summer, and he was on the panel. Total tool. He actually brought out his laptop and was furiously searching because I guess he disagree with something that the host said about one of his guesses.

He's always repulsed me a bit, and it seemed that I wasn't the only one. I think a woman sitting next to us mumbled something when he was introduced. Of course this was all before the free school crap.

God he's a cunt


http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/03/13/in-defence-of-lgbt-history-month-a-reply-to-toby-young/#more-22655


And I don't know what Stewart Cowan (comment no 7) is doing on there - he could be a star at the Mail.

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MY COMMENTS ARE FROM THE HORSES MOUTH AND ARE ALL FACTS