In a decision that surprises no one who has been paying attention, the British Government has decided to phase out Latin in state schools. According to the BBC: “The £4m, four-year project was introduced by the Conservative government in 2022, but that was ditched by Labour in February with immediate effect.” The public justification is money, and that might be reasonable if billions of the education budget were not already wasted or stolen. Behind the public justification, though, I can hear the chorus of approval. Latin is “elitist.” “Latin is irrelevant.” Latin is “not useful in the modern world.” This is, of course, is as great a lie as the excuse of money.
The real reason is a shared hatred of the Classics by two factions that, in normal circumstances, are at war. There are the utilitarians, who want everyone to be trained as interchangeable economic units, capable of servicing AI systems and filling out compliance forms. There are the leftists, who want children indoctrinated in identity politics and taught to despise their own civilisation. Normally, they would be too busy sneering at each other’s values to cooperate. But they have found common ground in their hatred of the Classics.
For the utilitarians, Latin is a waste of time. It does not “directly” prepare students for a job in estate agency or social media marketing. The idea that education might be about more than getting a salary is beyond them. If something does not have an obvious economic utility, it is to be discarded. Learning Latin? How does that boost GDP? It does not, and so it must go.
For the leftists, the argument is different but leads to the same conclusion. The Classics are a reminder that Western civilisation has a past worth studying, a past filled with greatness and beauty. Worse still for them, the Classics teach timeless values—duty, honour, excellence, hierarchy—all of which are unacceptable in the progressive utopia. Vergil’s Aeneid is about a man sacrificing personal happiness for the good of his people. The modern education system, by contrast, encourages students to cry on TikTok about their mental health. The two are incompatible.
So, the unlikely coalition was formed. The utilitarians argue Latin is useless. The leftists argue Latin is oppressive. Between them, they have secured another victory in their war against everything good and beautiful.
The truth is that the Classics are more than just old texts—they are an immersion in the greatest civilisation the world has ever known. Rome—and, through Rome, Greece—has been the model for everything that came after it: its law, its philosophy, its literature, its engineering, its military genius. Latin is not just another language; it is a window into a world where people thought rigorously and understood that life was more than maximising consumption.
Latin trains the mind. It forces precision and clarity of thought. A student who masters Latin is prepared for a lifetime of serious intellectual engagement, whether in philosophy, law, or even science. That is why it was the foundation of education for centuries. That is why the people who built the modern world studied it.
There was a time when Britain led the world. It was the greatest empire in history and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. How did this happen? Was it because Britain produced generations of citizens trained in STEM subjects? Was it because the education system focused on “21st-century skills”? No. The ruling class of that era studied Latin—and very little else.
They did not learn Latin for “employability.” They learned it because it was the heart of a serious education, and a serious education produces serious people. The classics shaped the minds that built railways, ruled colonies, wrote the laws, and advanced science. The Principia Mathematica was written in Latin. The education system that created men like Locke, Newton, Adam Smith and Darwin was built on Latin.
Now, Britain produces politicians who can barely write a coherent sentence, let alone a treatise on natural philosophy. And we are supposed to believe that removing Latin will somehow improve things?
The slow-motion collapse of British education has been a progress of decades. Standards have been lowered. Examinations have been debased. Genuine intellectual achievement has been replaced with mindless credentialism. The removal of Latin is just another stage in the process.
The goal is not “modernisation.” The goal is mediocrity. A population that has studied the Classics might start thinking about the past—and comparing it to the present. It might start asking uncomfortable questions about why Britain has gone from a nation of statesmen and scholars to a nation of bureaucrats and TikTok influencers. It might start wondering whether the people in charge actually know what they are doing.
Better, then, to get rid of Latin. Better to ensure that state-educated children never read Cicero, never translate Tacitus, never encounter a world where words had weight and actions had consequences. Let them study “global citizenship” instead. Let them learn that Britain’s past was nothing but oppression, that their own culture is unworthy of study, that there is no higher purpose beyond obeying the latest government directive.
The future is clear: a Britain where the ruling class sends its children to private schools to study Latin, while everyone else is taught “skills for the modern workforce.” As reported by the BBC: “A British Society study in 2020 found that while only 3% of state schools offered Latin at Key Stage 3, that figure rose to 49% in the fee-paying sector.” The great tradition of British intellectual excellence will not be abolished entirely—just made the preserve of the few, while the rest are fed the gruel of progressive mediocrity.
This is not progress. It is sabotage. It is the deliberate destruction of everything that once made Britain great. And the worst part? Those responsible will congratulate themselves for their “inclusivity” and “modernisation,” while presiding over yet another step in the managed decline of the country.
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I agree of course. There is a concept on the Right of a “cultured thug”, said to be a Byronic ideal, as Byron wrote poetry and also fought for Greece as a soldier. Ancient Rome was even more of an exemplar of this – Caesar was a man of letters as well as a general. The ideal was to be both manly and martial on one hand, and intellectual and accomplished on the other, and this ideal would be imbibed by studying the Classics. By contrast, if you are cultured but not capable of martial prowess, you risk being simply effete. The West claims to be civilised, but opposes the death penalty and doing anything that would upset criminals and interfere with their rights – that is effeteness on stilts. At the other end of the spectrum, you can be thuggish with no culture – a bit like Somalis or Gypsies – just a thug. Rome became great because it married cultural accomplishment with military glory.
In English, it is of course Virgil, not Vergil, even though the Latin is Vergilius.