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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Why the emphasis on Victorian Values?
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
This is slightly spinning out of the typing thread in Heaven, where we've started comparing teaching drills like typing to Victorian schools.
Now, because I think our impressions of Victorian schools are wrong and making the current curriculum change more draconian than they might be, have wandered off to check a few facts and figures:
Victorian schools were not made compulsory until the Education Act of 1880, followed by the Education Act of 1891 which made elementary education free. Before then there were schools provided by the Church or by industrialists to mind the children of their factory workers, but in 1835 the average duration of attendance at school was 1 year and by 1861 that only risen to 2 years.
Victorian children were only expected to attend until they were 11, and many schools were only for 6 to 12 year old children. Currently schooling starts for children the year they turn 5, so for my August born daughter she started primary school at 4 and 4 months. In the next county she would have started at 4 years and 2 weeks and children are now compulsorily in education and training until they are 18.
So looking back at the lovely school books of Victorian children, where the 11 year olds were expected to multiply in £sd we now have:
quote:
In the first year of school, pupils will be expected to read and write numbers up to 100, count in multiples of ones, twos, fives and tens and learn a series of simple sums using addition and subtraction off by heart.
Note: this is for 4 to 5 year olds - and actually, I did a lot of this with preschoolers, but I have taught students of 11 and 15 who do not understand that counting means adding one on. Neither am I denying that knowing number bonds to 10, 20 and 100 is really useful, and it's one I keep pushing. But let's just power on regardless whether they understand this or not.
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Children will also be introduced to basic fractions such as ½ and ¼ at the age of five – a subject currently left until pupils are aged seven to 11 – and algebra will be taught at the age of 10.
Not impossible for a bright child, we used to chant times tables on car journeys and walking to school when my daughter was 7 or 8. The schools do teach this and I've seen some brilliant ideas for teaching them, but there will be quite a few in the class who still do not get these ideas, but, hey, we'll teach them algebra anyway.
quote:
Further changes include the requirement to learn 12 times tables by nine rather than an expectation that pupils will master tables up to 10x10 by the time they leave primary school at 11.
The problem with the rote learning of one way to solve something is that there's no real understanding of how numbers work and how to find different ways to achieve the same sums. And the curriculum that is to be replaced was doing a lot of work on understanding numbers rather than doing sums by rote.
One of my mortifying memories was being tactless enough to show my astonishment when my grandmother, who was educated pre the 1940s Education Acts and who finished school at 11, asked me how to do long multiplication and long division because she didn't know how to do so with double digits, just single. In my defence I was only 12 or 13 myself.
So how good was Victorian schooling really and why do we think we should reintroduce those values now?
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
It sounds like Golden Age thinking. (Like there ever was a true "Golden Age" of anything. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) ) As you point out there was no Golden Age of Victorian education. And all this forcing kids beyond their developmental capacities is for the birds. Ideally, a child who reached the learning threshold of a certain subject sooner than their peers would be given the opportunity to run with it. Maybe home support? But expecting all children or even most to be at that point when studies show that they are not, well, phooey on that!
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
I thought it was about keeping up with the Japanese and the Shanghainese rather than going back to 'Victorian values'.
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
The use of 'Victorian Values' always makes me laugh: presumably those (not just politicians) who keep hankering after some mythical golden age aren't thinking of many of the most common facts of Victorian life:
Think high child mortality - approximately 15% under the age of 1 year and 10% under the age of 5. 12% of all people died before the age of 27.
In towns and cities most children had rickets and child prostitution was rife. Children born in the countryside were more fortunate in that they had fresh, clean air to breathe and they ate vegetables and fruit but they frequently had little meat or protein.
The majority of children only had 1 year of education pre 1890 - and if you were the oldest in a poor family you were unlikely to even get that since your time would be spent helping your parent with looking after younger siblings.
The 'golden age' which invented childhood was still capable of thinking it OK for children to be sent down mines, to work long shifts in factories: David Copperfield's experiences in the blacking factory were based on Dickens' own memories of such work. At the age of 12 a boy could join the army as a drummer boy and be shipped off to the farthest flung parts of empire - where he stood a high chance of dying of disease. The school year in the UK still reflects Victorian Values - we have the long break at the end of summer and beginning of autumn because that was for children to help with the harvest.
Victorian Values were a good thing if you were born into the upper or upper-middle class, preferably living in the country.
For most of the population life was hard and short, and such schooling as they received may have been thorough but was delivered in freezing cold, over-crowded classrooms as one of a class of up to 70 pupils.
Return to Victorian Values - never.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
The thing about "Victorian values" is that they were wonderful for some groups of people. Mainly, the wealthy. SO today, we see the wealthy want a return to the time when their type could make money easily.
The problem - and the other side of the coin - is that this wealth was made on the deaths of many workers, on the abuse of workers, on the dismissal of their rights to things like education.
Never mind that women were still considered property.
The Victorian era was good for some. A few. It was crap for most. My granddad died at the age of 55, probably due to the appalling working conditions in the paint factory. That is the price paid for the success of some.
In particular the schooling was not in general very good. For the majority, yes they would learn their lessons, because they would get then beaten into their behinds. For many, they would learn just enough. The wealthy could do better, but the education that the majority of people get today is to be applauded.
Of course, a poorly educated populace is exactly what manipulative politicians want. A return to the point where only the rich could get educated would suit them very well.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
And heaven forfend in Victorian times if you were not the whitest of white persons. I fail to see how any person of ethnicity, different sexual orientation, or gender could tolerate the idea for a moment. Victorian society was set up for white men of property, period. Everyone else was on the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
The unstated truth in the "Victorian Values" is that failure was rife. Illiteracy and innumeracy were common; if you didn't "take to the lessons" you'd just drop out of school and go into manual labour on a farm or in a factory. The curriculum can say what it wants, but if most children did not attain that level then why bother?
Nowadays we expect and demand universal basic literacy and numeracy and that changes everything.
And to give a Canadian example, Ontario enacted universal, free, compulsory schooling between 1850 and 1871. The 1850 Act implemented educational property taxes and free schools; the 1871 Act made primary education compulsory. But is started from a dreadfully low level:
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But Ryerson was fighting for free schools. He knew that thousands of children were growing up ignorant, especially in the large towns. He was able to show that in the city of Toronto, out of 4,450 children of school age in 1846, only 1,221 were on the common school registers and that the average attendance was scarcely one thousand. Even if it were granted that another thousand were in attendance at private and church schools, the fact remained that not more than half the children in Toronto were being educated.
Egerton Ryerson and Education in Ontario
Rev. Egerton Ryerson was the lion of 19th Century Canadian Methodism and he created Public Education in Ontario. He is thus one of the United Church of Canada's most esteemed and beloved fathers. Public Education and the United Church are tied at the hip in Canada.
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
In my experience, more people appear to long for the 1950s than the Victorian Era.
"In the 50s, there was no divorce and no one was shooting each other in our schools. In the 50s, everyone had a job and you can let your kids walk around town without a worry."
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
Yeah, but, there was in fact much more violent crime, child mortality, police brutality and corruption, sexual abuse - you just didn't hear about it.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
In the 1950s there were quotas for black people and Jews in almost every institution and profession. (None for Asians, because it was inconceivable that one would ever show up wanting a job or a degree.) Women (married ones) were fired when they became pregnant -- my mother lost her job that way before I was born. And don't even think about premarital sex, or homosexuality.
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Yeah, but, there was in fact much more violent crime, child mortality, police brutality and corruption, sexual abuse - you just didn't hear about it.
If you didn't hear about it, how do you know it was worse? I agree that the 1950's were worse in regard to civil rights issues and medical care, but I do think there was less crime. Even for groups like African Americans who have come such a long way as far as integrated schools and job opportunities, the young men in the 1950's weren't being shot in the streets the way they are now.
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
Sorry, I was unclear, you didn't hear about it at the time. The child mortality figures are matters of record, the big corruption cases started to get to court in the sixties. And of course the large scale abuse scandals have gone right back to the fifties.
The police issues eventually led to a royal comission of enquiry in 1960.
(In the UK)
[ 22. June 2014, 18:54: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I can only comment on Scottish Victorian education. Education became compulsory from 5 to 12 in 1872. Prior to that, approx 95% of children had some education, usually around age 8.
It varied a lot from place to place - when education became compulsory, Edinburgh already had enough school places for all 5-12 year olds (though some were in substandard buildings)and Aberdeen was similar. Glasgow fiddled the figures by having a de facto starting age of 6, until they had built enough new schools to take in 5 year olds as well. But Dundee hadn't anything like enough physical school places in 1872, and with a rising population to contend with, education was not achievably compulsory until the mid 1880s.
There were clearly defined standards of education. Arithmetic was taught to what would now seem a very high standard, because everyday life (e.g. buying 5 oz of oatmeal at 1 3/4d an oz) required it. But reading came slowly; most children wouldn't have much, if any reading material at home.
A Victorian 10 year old would be far better at arithmetic than a C21st 10 year old, but far, far, worse at reading.
One feature of (Scottish, but I assume elsewhere) teaching reading in Victorian times was the steady swinging back and forward between phonics and whole book reading. This was interspersed with occasional bampot reading schemes. My favourite daft scheme was the one in which children were taught the alphabet first, then all combinations of two letters. Once they had mastered "is" and "on" etc they moved onto three letter words - this is where "The cat sat on the mat" came from. This took to about age seven. Once they could read (I'm not making this up) "God has no joy in the way of man for the way of man is sin" they were allowed to venture onto four letter words. They finally reached words like "newspaper" at age 10.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Originally posted by Curiosity killed:
quote:
So how good was Victorian schooling really and why do we think we should reintroduce those values now?
I think it's fair to say that Victorian teachers (at least those who gave papers at conferences, or wrote letters to the teaching journals) were well aware of the limitations of rote learning, and were keen to move away from it. Educational theories were hotly debated, but pragmatism usually won out - rote learning was an efficient use of a trained, qualified teacher's time. It allowed the maximum number of children to be taught by the minimum number of teachers. Better quality education cost more, and this cost was borne by the ratepayers.
There was a constant tension between raising standards and keeping taxes down.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.
Bear in mind that crime, at least in North America, began to decrease in the early 1990s, and as far as I know has not gone back up(and is possibly still decreasing, I don't know).
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.
Actually, your experience is a common one. Most people today think we live in a very violent society, and would put rates of violent crime far higher than reality.
This is the effect of the media as a whole (including the prevalence of crime drama) which gives us a mistaken perception of reality.
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Blog
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.
Bear in mind that crime, at least in North America, began to decrease in the early 1990s, and as far as I know has not gone back up(and is possibly still decreasing, I don't know).
The same is true in the UK - IIRC the peak was around 1994.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
If you want to read the book that decisively proves the case, have a look at THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE by Stephen Pinker. His thesis is that yes, we are getting better. And he marshals tons of proof. One of those books which, after you close it, you immediately go and pray that he is right.
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Originally posted by l'organist:
quote:
The 'golden age' which invented childhood was still capable of thinking it OK for children to be sent down mines, to work long shifts in factories: David Copperfield's experiences in the blacking factory were based on Dickens' own memories of such work.
In fairness, both the real-life Dickens and the fictional David Copperfield were adults when Victoria came to the throne; Dickens was born in 1812 and so was 25 when the Victorian era started. His childhood can't be described as "Victorian."
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
quote:
we are getting better.
I think this was one of the good things about the Victorian Era - they believed that things could get better.
Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.
Democracy spread as increasing numbers of men (not women) got the vote. But women did campaign for Women's Rights, and those rights started to accrue; professional college training for female teachers from around 1850, the first female doctors, the Married Women's Property Act 1884 and the Universities (Scotland) Act 1892 which meant that women could attend any University in Scotland.
One of the difficulties of describing "Victorian values" is the sheer length of Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901. Britain experienced huge changes in those 64 years, and so it's difficult to talk about "Victorian" without pinning it down further - early / mid / late Victorian etc. This applies to "Victorian education" too - you could support almost any educational argument by appealing back to "Victorian values."
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
The full post that made me irritated enough to bring it over here said:
quote:
Victorian schoolchildren were required to perform to a higher standard altogether in arithmetic, and from an early age were expected to master number systems based on other than the decimal system and be able to calculate fluently in them. They were expected to memorize a lot of things, as there would be fewer books and no e-resources to save them the bother of having to remember anything for themselves.
They were taught how to handwrite properly and neatly, a skill that is in decline these days. Spelling was considered essential, and these days if anything it ought to be more so because if you can't spell properly you'll struggle to do an accurate keyword search.
They were given an overview of history in chronological order - none of this experimentation with the syllabus that means that you might start the first three years of secondary school studying the period from the Romans to the Tudors, then discontinue the subject altogether unless you opted in to studying it for GSCE/O level, when you might find yourself doing something like 1919 to the present day, with no very clear idea of what happened in between, and then maybe at the next level, Charlemagne and his contemporaries.
Geography involved, amongst other things, learning where the other countries of the world were and identifying them on a map. There are children today who cannot do this and wouldn't be able to instantly locate Africa on a map.
Art and drawing were taught in a way that involved you looking closely and carefully at the subject you wanted to draw or paint, with the result that many could and did actually produce sketches and drawings that looked like the real thing. Many of today's children have never been taught how to do this and couldn't do a pencil sketch of even a simple, single object.
Technology is a useful thing but when it robs people of developing their own skills, of learning to rely on their own memories, makes them lazy and ignorant about the world they live in, it is not a good thing.
It starts with so many misunderstandings of what has been in the outgoing National Curriculum.
I commented on the maths claims in my OP as experience suggests that the Edwardian school pupils did not necessarily achieve that level in mathematics. Certainly, I had better maths than my grandmothers, both of them, by the end of primary school. Mental arithmetic is tested at KS2 and KS3 and has been since the advent of the National Curriculum in 1995. It wasn't unknown before then. (I used to have to calculate in imperial measurements in my mental arithmetic tests as an additional challenge to extend me - and know my times tables to 20. I've now forgotten the conversions for bushels, pecks, poles, rods and chains.)
In addition, the history claim above is dubious. The schools where the history syllabus is taught out of chronological order under the outgoing National Curriculum are the small country primary schools of two or three classes where the syllabus is taught on a rolling programme, not year by year. That's because each class, as in Victorian schools, have children of several age groups. So all the topics can be covered, for arbitrary example, Egyptians or Greeks, Romans, Tudors, Victorians, WW1 and WWII, if the child arrives in class 2 with the KS2 pupils, so ages 8, 9, 10 and 11, at the start of the programme they study history in chronological order, starting with Egyptians and Romans, but their classmate joining the class a year later will start on Tudors and Victorians and cover the first topics in their final year. This tends to be a bit more based on kings and queens than at secondary school. In classes where I've seen this happen there have been timelines around the walls with connections made explicitly.
The secondary curriculum for history has covered the Norman Conquest and feudalism, mediaeval Britain, Tudor politics and the growth of the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution and Slave Trade, Victorian changes into World War 1 and World War II. Political history rather than by royalty, and chronologically.
Geography tends to be physical rather than political. So pupils may not be able to tell you where a country is, but they can tell you where earthquakes and volcanoes are found and why, where the rain forests are and why, and the implications for the planet; about climate and weather patterns, how to read maps, with some contrasting studies between different areas, rivers and flooding, formation of geographical features, how settlements are formed. It's very different from the drilling on lists of countries and their exports.
Spelling drills have been part of the Literacy Hour compulsorily and National Curriculum for the last 17 or so years, but most schools have taught them continuously. However the complications of English does mean that ACE dictionaries are helpful tools for some students.
Art really does teach drawing to most children. I've seen (and written) so many different curricula that start with basic drawing skills. Observational drawing is part of the primary curriculum.
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Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Victorian schoolchildren were required to perform to a higher standard altogether in arithmetic, and from an early age were expected to master number systems based on other than the decimal system and be able to calculate fluently in them. They were expected to memorize a lot of things, as there would be fewer books and no e-resources to save them the bother of having to remember anything for themselves.
I would agree with this, but bear in mind that fractions are actually easier in a number system based on twelve, which divides neatly by 2, 3, and 4. Plus simply running errands to the shops gave children practical experience of "number systems based on other than the decimal system" so their ability to do so wasn't gained solely from school.
quote:
They were taught how to handwrite properly and neatly, a skill that is in decline these days. Spelling was considered essential, and these days if anything it ought to be more so because if you can't spell properly you'll struggle to do an accurate keyword search.
Paper was expensive. First "writing" was done in with fingers in sand boxes and then on slates with slate pencils. Children started writing in lead pencil and then pen and ink much later than children in school today. I think children are more proficient today, though probably less neat.
quote:
They were given an overview of history in chronological order - none of this experimentation with the syllabus that means that you might start the first three years of secondary school studying the period from the Romans to the Tudors, then discontinue the subject altogether unless you opted in to studying it for GSCE/O level, when you might find yourself doing something like 1919 to the present day, with no very clear idea of what happened in between, and then maybe at the next level, Charlemagne and his contemporaries.
History may have been chronological in the Victorian classroom, but it was facile and anecdotal. Every child was taught about Alfred burning the cakes, Canute trying to stop the waves, Harold getting an arrow in his eye. "Chronological" was probably the only good thing to be said for it.
I'm no apologist for today's teaching of history, but it is far, far better.
quote:
Geography involved, amongst other things, learning where the other countries of the world were and identifying them on a map. There are children today who cannot do this and wouldn't be able to instantly locate Africa on a map.
True, but one set of maps pinned to wall would have been the entire Geography teaching resource; it's no wonder that that one resource was taught exhaustively. Today schools have far more resources, far more flexibility, and children's geographical knowledge isn't focussed on knowing three maps.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Would this be a good moment to bring up the focus on reading and writing Latin and Greek? Apparently this was the main goal of upper-school education. As a badge of upper-class status it was as good as any, I would think. But not -practical-.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
More practical than you might think in a world where Latin was the widely known language of church, scholarship, government, and science, and therefore usable for communication almost anywhere in the Western world. Find an educated person and it doesn't matter what their vernacular is(was); you're good to go.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Exactly. It was the Sekrit Langwidge, and if you weren't in on it you were forever locked out.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Not much Sekrit about a language that anybody could learn by picking up a book! Heck, I learnt quite a bit without ever picking up a book at all, just by the bits and pieces scattered around English texts.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Not much Sekrit about a language that anybody could learn by picking up a book! Heck, I learnt quite a bit without ever picking up a book at all, just by the bits and pieces scattered around English texts.
Most people had never been taught to read. And books were so expensive you might as well say "picking up a Ferrari". And Latin's not that easy to just "pick up from a book". You could have a Latin text and be given a glossary of the meaning of every word in it and still not get more than the barest gist; it works so differently to English.
Believe me, I was made to study it for four years at school but that's not enough to be able to translate more than the simplest of texts. Learning it to a level where you could actually converse in it would require devoting most of the curriculum time to it.
[ 25. June 2014, 06:57: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
(realised we're talking about a later time than I was originally thinking about wrt illiteracy and price of books. Nevertheless, other points stand. It's also worth pointing out that whilst the middle and upper classes did indeed study Latin and Greek, they were not, and have not been for centuries, taught as spoken languages. I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
My Dad knew Latin really well. I couldn't count the times when I asked the meaning of a word and he said "It's from the Latin ..."
Very useful imo.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Have a look at your hymn books and look at the names of the translators of hymns. In Victorian times, the emphasis on boys learning Greek and Latin meant that most men didn't have a modern second language.
Girls were taught modern languages as being "easier" than Latin and Greek; hence most hymns etc which were translated from French, German etc were translated by women.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
My Dad knew Latin really well. I couldn't count the times when I asked the meaning of a word and he said "It's from the Latin ..."
Very useful imo.
I can do that. It's not as useful as you might think. It's just as easy to learn the meanings of the English words as learning the Latin and then guessing (not necessarily correctly) the English. It's a strange way to learn your own language's vocabulary ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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betjemaniac
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# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Not much Sekrit about a language that anybody could learn by picking up a book! Heck, I learnt quite a bit without ever picking up a book at all, just by the bits and pieces scattered around English texts.
You'd be surprised - I've got no idea where I picked this up from, but will try and find a reference (unless someone else knows what I'm talking about and beats me to it) but towards the end of the 19th century/early 20th at one of the international congresses (1st Geneva? the one at the end of the Fashoda incident?), the British delegation were not only fluent enough to discuss their aims and objectives amongst themselves in Latin, but the pronunciation taught at the public schools was so ideosyncratic compared to the rest of the world that they were able to use it as a secret language to hide their thoughts from the other nations. And did so.
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Originally posted by Karl, Liberal Backslider:
quote:
It's also worth pointing out that whilst the middle and upper classes did indeed study Latin and Greek, they were not, and have not been for centuries, taught as spoken languages.
Latin was a requirement for University admission (in Scotland and I assume elsewhere) and so working class boys with hopes of University had to study it as well.
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ExclamationMark
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# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.
Agreed - but few such improvements were hardly altruistic in intention.
Most simply aimed to increase living standards in order to provide a workforce to maintain the position and wealth of the "better orders." Little hope of the working classes sharing in that wealth, then other than by extension and scraps from the table.
I suppose from that POV we are returning to Victorian Values with the wealth gap in the UK continuing to increase. Thanks Dave!
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
Karl: quote:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule.
I'm not so sure. I am not an expert on education history, but I do remember reading a Charlotte M. Yonge (late Victorian) story in which the hero was expected to compose original verses in Latin as part of his schoolwork; presumably this was a fairly common task given to advanced students. M. R. James has the (late Victorian/Edwardian) Latin master in 'A School Story' getting his pupils to make up Latin sentences themselves to check they've learned how to use a new verb properly. I think it's highly unlikely that anyone could spend seven years or so learning Latin at school without speaking it at all.
Knowing Latin is quite useful if you are studying one of its modern dialects ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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betjemaniac
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# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.
Agreed - but few such improvements were hardly altruistic in intention.
Most simply aimed to increase living standards in order to provide a workforce to maintain the position and wealth of the "better orders." Little hope of the working classes sharing in that wealth, then other than by extension and scraps from the table.
I'm not sure that's true - the 19th century in the UK was in many ways the last time that genuine altruism and economic dynamism existed alongside each other. An exception could be made for 1945 to about the late 50s, but that's slightly different as by this time the altruism was manifesting as a general agreement that the state should be doing x,y,z, whereas in the 19th C it was more about private philanthropy.
Now, there's a whole different argument to be had (not in this thread) about Victorian attitudes to deserving and undeserving poor, and unenlightened attitudes to a whole host of things, but they did change/shape/create the UK that we live in by and large.
I don't think anyone now would bracket (more's the pity) as the Victorians did, arts manufacture and commerce into the same institution - nor has (IMO) the country ever been more genuinely P/progressive than it was between the Great Exhibition and the Great War. OK, it started from a low base, but that 60 odd years was transformational.
And I don't think it's good enough to reduce it all to a utilitarian* argument about producing the optimum labour force - there were enough people that genuinely cared about what they were doing.
//Tangent// I've always thought it rather sad about the Benthamites that their utilitarianism was supposed to promote happiness, yet led to John Stuart Mill being brought up, as he admitted, to be a "dessicated calculating machine" - weighing everything up and actually becoming very dry. It's to his credit that he took the good bits from Bentham and his father and then moved on.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Karl: quote:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule.
I'm not so sure. I am not an expert on education history, but I do remember reading a Charlotte M. Yonge (late Victorian) story in which the hero was expected to compose original verses in Latin as part of his schoolwork; presumably this was a fairly common task given to advanced students. M. R. James has the (late Victorian/Edwardian) Latin master in 'A School Story' getting his pupils to make up Latin sentences themselves to check they've learned how to use a new verb properly. I think it's highly unlikely that anyone could spend seven years or so learning Latin at school without speaking it at all.
Knowing Latin is quite useful if you are studying one of its modern dialects
There's a massive difference between composition in a foreign language and spontaneous speech. I did Latin, and I can (or could) compose in it, but attempting to speak it would have been halting, and comprehension very slow. The process, as traditionally taught, goes something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8
Seriously.
That it wasn't used spoken is evidenced by the fact that by this period the pronunciation of Latin in different European countries was so different that speakers from different countries wouldn't understand each other anyway. "Vicissim" would have been "Vie-sissim" in England, "Veechissim" in Italy and "Veesissim" in France. The Romans would, by the way, have said "Weekissim"
[ 25. June 2014, 08:37: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.
I don't know - I went to school in the 1990s and even then the Classic Sixth could converse pretty seamlessly in Latin and Greek (and switch between the 2 mid sentence). Of the 8 of them, at least 4 are now professors/university lecturers, and one a Fellow of All Souls.
In the early 20th century, the school debating society regularly conducted its debates in Greek and Latin - including interventions. Memoirs of various Old Boys make clear that this wasn't daunting either.
Now, you would be write in thinking even then that the numbers were miniscule, but at the same time probably high enough to include the upper echelons of the civil service/government, the universities, and the diplomatic corps.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.
I don't know - I went to school in the 1990s and even then the Classic Sixth could converse pretty seamlessly in Latin and Greek (and switch between the 2 mid sentence). Of the 8 of them, at least 4 are now professors/university lecturers, and one a Fellow of All Souls.
In the early 20th century, the school debating society regularly conducted its debates in Greek and Latin - including interventions. Memoirs of various Old Boys make clear that this wasn't daunting either.
Now, you would be write in thinking even then that the numbers were miniscule, but at the same time probably high enough to include the upper echelons of the civil service/government, the universities, and the diplomatic corps.
And yet no-one at my school, with a strong Classics tradition, could do so. I wonder what they were saying?
Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done. This was the late 70s-early 80s in my case.
[ 25. June 2014, 08:41: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
Sorry for the double post - I make no claims for my own facility with the language btw. Competent translator at best; I lived in awe of their ability to be given a song and sing it back in Latin (with reasonable scansion) pretty well immediately.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.
Agreed - but few such improvements were hardly altruistic in intention.
Most simply aimed to increase living standards in order to provide a workforce to maintain the position and wealth of the "better orders." Little hope of the working classes sharing in that wealth, then other than by extension and scraps from the table.
I suppose from that POV we are returning to Victorian Values with the wealth gap in the UK continuing to increase. Thanks Dave!
I don't agree. Some public health measures were motivated by self-preservation; typhus fever etc might start in the slums but it could spread, and the best way of keeping the affluent middle classes free of infectious disease was to attack it at source.
But there was a huge amount of selfless, altruistic work going on in Victorian times, with a proliferation of charities and church schemes of all types. Where people saw a need, I honestly believe they strove to meet that need. Some of those efforts might be misguided when seen through 21st eyes, but I do not believe that the Victorians were motivated simply by self-interest.
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
And I don't think it's good enough to reduce it all to a utilitarian* argument about producing the optimum labour force - there were enough people that genuinely cared about what they were doing.
Well Dickens recognised it in "Hard Times."
As for genuine caring well I wouldn't deny it but care for what (whose) ends? Who would it really benefit in the long run?
I've spent long enough listening to the stories of the rural poor (and being part of some of those stories) to know that the gap between academic theory, contemporary reporting (hardly unbiased) and the reality of existence, was enormous. I saw the remnants of this "benevolent altruism" into the 1970's.
It was all about the exercise of power. We (the rich) give you (the poor) just enough to stop you from starving and/or rioting.
[fixed code]
[ 25. June 2014, 08:45: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.
I don't know - I went to school in the 1990s and even then the Classic Sixth could converse pretty seamlessly in Latin and Greek (and switch between the 2 mid sentence). Of the 8 of them, at least 4 are now professors/university lecturers, and one a Fellow of All Souls.
In the early 20th century, the school debating society regularly conducted its debates in Greek and Latin - including interventions. Memoirs of various Old Boys make clear that this wasn't daunting either.
Now, you would be write in thinking even then that the numbers were miniscule, but at the same time probably high enough to include the upper echelons of the civil service/government, the universities, and the diplomatic corps.
And yet no-one at my school, with a strong Classics tradition, could do so. I wonder what they were saying?
Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done. This was the late 70s-early 80s in my case.
Well, presumably you'd get to it in the same way you do with other languages - I do remember even as a first former having to speak latin in latin lessons in the same way as French in French lessons. We had a strange old chap as our classics master who used to fire out random questions in latin to quailing 12 year olds, alongside reading about whatever it was that Caecilius was up to... I suppose, that after 7 years of that, those who had progressed to A Level and were reading it for fun, may get to that stage.
Admittedly, my school was like a high octane combination of The History Boys and if..., but the fact that people were sitting around doing this in their own time in the sixth form (while the more normal of us were out on the cricket field) didn't ever seem that strange.
I suppose that's why I find it easier to believe that 19th century classics teaching, when it was good, could be very good indeed.
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Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
When... - I think the way the LoB clip resonates with everyone I know who learnt Latin indicates it may not always be taught well. I think your experience might be quite unusual; most folk I've talked to recall lessons entirely in English with Latin read, written and translated, but never spoken. Noses to the grindstone learning principle parts, but never spontaneously firing the gerund of Scribo in anger.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
never spontaneously firing the gerund of Scribo in anger.
"A gerund it is a - it is a verbal substantive, molesworth, declined like neuters of the second declension any fule knos that"
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
One of the engines of Victorian altruism, IMO, was the existence of middle class women who needed something to do. Servants took care of the housework, and paid work was an anathema. And so they got together in groups large and small, meeting in drawing rooms and church halls, from whence they sallied forth into the hospitals and orphanages and slums.
No corner of society was safe from these determined, capable women - prostitute rescue, publishing "handy hints for hard up households" sewing new underwear for families hit by infectious diseases so that the old underwear could be burned, campaigning for the provision of fire-guards to keep babies from falling into fires, bulk buying soap and selling it at cost price, campaigning against vivisection, against the Contagious Diseases Acts, campaigning for old age pensions, for franchise extension and for female doctors. Not to mention fund raising - bazaars, tombolas, sales of work. They went to lectures, they learned first aid. Nothing daunted them.
Their efforts may have bee piecemeal, they may have been misguided; but they believed they were changing the world for the better.
And I believe (YMMV) that many of them did change the world for the better.
[ 25. June 2014, 09:08: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done.
While I agree that we weren't taught it like that, one of my Latin teachers could speak fluently in Latin. (We couldn't understand him, but I think it's harder to fake speaking a nonsense language than you might suppose.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done.
While I agree that we weren't taught it like that, one of my Latin teachers could speak fluently in Latin. (We couldn't understand him, but I think it's harder to fake speaking a nonsense language than you might suppose.)
Yeah, I've just found a bloke on Youtube who does it, and teaches it that way, with proper reconstructed Classical pronunciation as well I'm glad to say. But my point was that the vast majority of Latin learners come, and came, out of the system with the ability to translate and read, and compose, but with limited ability to use Latin spontaneously as a means of conversation, and I imagine it would have been similar 150 years ago.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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