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Claasics? Or Linguistics?

I am a parent not a student, but you may be able to help.

I have a child aged 13 who is very good with languages. French, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek and Mandarin, two of which are studied outside school at weekends.

She is getting A* in Mandarin mock GCSE tests after just 14 months of study and my family has no background of Chinese.

Her ability with other languages is similar and she is asking to learn Russian and maybe Arabic, she really wants to be challenged. She seriously understands the grammar and structure of these languages not just the ability to read and write them by memory, if that makes sense.

However, her passion is for Classics and all things connected with ancient Rome and Greece. She is a straight A* student and she wants to study Classics at university, in fact she has 'made her mind up' about this.

Whilst Classics is undoubtedly intellectually challenging, will it be of any real practical benefit in the outside world?

We are a working class family without great financial resources and I whilst want her to go on and be successful and personally fulfilled, I also want her to be financially secure.

So, should she be focusing more on modern languages and how will a Classics degree benefit her if she does take that route? She still has years before any critical decision will need to be made, but maybe I should be doing something now...

Thank you
B
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liquid394
10
I am doing classics atm at college, and i am finding it very intresting but it really depends on teachers and the exam boards, if for A-level the exam board is with OCR for classics i say go for it. The first year you do the society and constitution of sparta, its not as boring as the title tries to represent, it goes in to deph about all the big battles with the spartans e.g. you study The battle of Thermopylae and the 300 body guards of Leonidas, you also do abit on marathon and loads on the Pelopisian wars and then you do some of the laws that govern and control sparta (constitution). Then the second part is the plays which are quite good which i thought i would never say, it's mainly based on the iliad by homer, the plays include Ajax, Agammemon, Trojan Women, Hecabe- these are all the tradegies.
The exams are essay based, which is quite fun to write about providing you get intresting questions.

I do maths and Chemistry and Biology, if you want any advice with that.

Defiently let your child learn Arabic as its becoming a more bigger and widely used language. There is alot of important and good history behind the language and culture. E.g. be able to read things like the quran which is very good knowledge and that ect....


Classics is very higly apporved by Uni's especially Oxford and Cambridge :biggrin:
I've been living in the Middle East for 10 years now and I always wish I could speak arabic (although I'd never admit it to my mum). I feel like it's too late for me now and that it clashes with me learning french (not naturally a linguist). I'd get arabic lessons as soon as, as it's a very hard language to learn (basically 3 alphabets !) and many who learn it unfortunately lack oral skills, so focus both on colloquial and maybe syrian arabic so there can be a firm written and spoken base.
Cant comment on classics or uni courses in general but from my po I would say Modern Languages are a lot more necessary, i.e. arabic and mandarin. :smile:
Original post by t_parent
I am a parent not a student, but you may be able to help.

I have a child aged 13 who is very good with languages. French, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek and Mandarin, two of which are studied outside school at weekends.

She is getting A* in Mandarin mock GCSE tests after just 14 months of study and my family has no background of Chinese.

Her ability with other languages is similar and she is asking to learn Russian and maybe Arabic, she really wants to be challenged. She seriously understands the grammar and structure of these languages not just the ability to read and write them by memory, if that makes sense.

However, her passion is for Classics and all things connected with ancient Rome and Greece. She is a straight A* student and she wants to study Classics at university, in fact she has 'made her mind up' about this.

Whilst Classics is undoubtedly intellectually challenging, will it be of any real practical benefit in the outside world?

We are a working class family without great financial resources and I whilst want her to go on and be successful and personally fulfilled, I also want her to be financially secure.

So, should she be focusing more on modern languages and how will a Classics degree benefit her if she does take that route? She still has years before any critical decision will need to be made, but maybe I should be doing something now...

Thank you
B


Hi and first of all welcome to TSR. I'm a current classics undergraduate at the moment and so hopefully I'll be able to answer some of the questions you may have. The first thing to note is always to be wary of the fact that they 'know' what they want to do. Anything can happen between now and university with regards to subjects and so classics may change to maths lets say in a few month's time. That said, if she is interested in classics then that's also great.

With regards to the practical benefits of classics, it's comparable in many to the question say 'what's the benefit of history? Or what's the benefit of studying geography?' If one doesn't intend to enter a life of academia or teaching, then it can appear as if a subject doesn't seem to have benefits, but it does. There's the transferable skills aspect such as being able to write confidently and at length, being able to research topics, being able to think clearly and logically about a problem and being able to work to a deadline. There are skills which employers will value and so, while on the surface it may appear to not have benefits, it does teach some skills.

With regards to what she should be focusing on, there's no right or wrong answer unfortunately. Classics can help many people to learn modern languages because it provides a strong, linguistic basis and so perhaps a balance of the two might be useful because there will be some benefit to that in terms of developing an all round knowledge of the languages and how they connect.

The other issue is with regards to what classics is. Classics is much more than simply being interested in Greece and Rome, it's about being interested in the culture and the languages and wondering what can we learn from those languages? What can we learn from the culture? Classics allows you to branch out into ancient drama (my field), ancient history, epic, military history, ancient philosophy. Really it's a huge field indeed and so, in some ways, it would help your daughter perhaps to become acquainted with not just Latin and Greek, but (and I'm not sure at the level at which she can read so possibly in translation) the culture as well. Perhaps she could read some texts in translation to better understand what the field of classics is about and how broad a field it is? Many local libraries will stock some classics books and you can buy copies of texts from Amazon from £0.01 plus £2.80 P&P. If she then likes the field of classics, then certainly she can go for it, but doing this will also help her to get a better flavour of classics and see that it isn't limited to the languages.

Perhaps try Homer's Iliad or Odyssey first. Both are fairly familiar texts to anyone starting out in classics, but I'm happy to make recommendations based on what your daughter is interested in.

Sorry for the essay, but hope the above helps and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have,

toronto353

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