London mayor pushes for
Latin teaching in schools

London, 18 March 2010: The mayor of London Boris Johnson has thrown has his weight behind a campaign to extend the teaching of Latin to all state schools in the UK capital.  Johnson, a Classics scholar, caused a row earlier in the week when he said he wanted to “head-butt” the UK Schools Secretary Ed Balls over his “death-defyingly stupid” remarks that few parents wanted Latin reintroduced to schools.  The mayor is now lobbying the Conservative Party education team to overhaul the school curriculum if it wins the forthcoming general election, in order to find space for classical languages such as Latin.
 
The mayor is a noted enthusiast of the Classics and Roman history, presenting a number of television programmes on the subject and even introducing Greco-Roman names to some mayoral programmes such as his youth violence agenda Dedalus.  The mayor told a City Hall meeting on the subject that Latin provision in state schools had dropped to just 33 per cent offering it as an after school lesson.  The Labour government has long regarded the teaching of Latin, both at school and university, as a “dead language”.
 
The meeting coincided however with a motion passed by the London Assembly, slating the mayor’s lack of progress in meeting many of his manifesto commitments made during the last election.  One London MP remarked: “Perhaps if Boris Johnson cared as much the pressing needs of London as he does about Latin there would be lower bus fares, no cuts to police numbers, no cuts to tube ticket office staff and a much smaller list of broken manifesto commitments,”