Why do children study geography but not architecture? Why do they learn algebra but not tax returns? Why is Shakespeare considered essential while countless other writers are ignored? And why have I spent my career sharing knowledge of a language that nobody speaks any more?
The more time one spends in education, the stranger the school syllabus begins to appear. Most of us can remember questioning at least one subject during our own school days. We all sat wondering when exactly we might ever need trigonometry, struggled through poetry we did not understand or questioned the value of learning about oxbow lakes and the savannah. Yet beneath these familiar complaints lies a more interesting question. Why do schools teach the subjects that they teach? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is history.
It is easy to assume that the modern curriculum is the result of careful planning by education experts. While it contents certainly are debated endlessly and frequently revised, many of the subjects that dominate the school timetable owe their current existence less to educational theory and more to historical accident, social change and centuries-old ideas about what an educated person ought to know. Few examples illustrate this better than Latin.
For much of British history, Latin was not a niche subject on the curriculum of a handful of schools. It was the curriculum in all schools. From the medieval period through to the 19th century, grammar schools existed primarily to teach Latin. The clue is hidden in the name. The “grammar” being taught was not English grammar but Latin grammar. Boys — and it was, overwhelmingly, boys — spent years memorising declensions, translating texts and mastering the language of scholarship, religion, law and government. Ancient Greek followed for the most academically successful.
By modern standards, this is downright peculiar. Why on earth did the system devote so much time to a language that was no longer spoken? Yet for centuries, Latin functioned as the language of educated Europe. Universities taught through it. Scholars published in it. Lawyers, clergymen and statesmen were expected to understand it. Mastering Latin was not an intellectual luxury; it was an essential qualification for participation in educated society.
Even after Latin began to lose its practical utility, it retained cultural prestige. Throughout the 19th century, proficiency in Latin and Greek remained one of the principal gateways to higher education and many professions. Even to this day, I meet people who remain firmly convinced that Latin is compulsory for entry into medicine or the law, when in fact this has not been the case for many, many decades. Classical education has retained its association with intellectual rigour, social status and membership of the elite, but in terms of its universality, the 20th century changed everything.
As education expanded beyond a relatively small privileged class, questions began to emerge about what schools were for. Were they intended to preserve the traditional academic culture? Or were they there to prepare young people for life in a rapidly changing industrial society? The answer increasingly favoured the latter. Science grew in importance, modern languages expanded, technical and vocational subjects gained ground. Latin was in retreat. This period of change is illustrated beautifully in The Browning Version, a play written in the late 1940s and turned into a film starring Michael Redgrave in 1951. In 1994, it was remade again in a version starring Albert Finney as the unpopular Latin teacher of ever-diminishing relevance. It is a deeply, quite agonisingly moving portrayal of a man reflecting upon a life of failure.
Today, Classics as a subject remains highly respected in the schools that teach it, yet only around 2% of state schools offer Latin and still fewer offer ancient Greek. What was once the backbone of the curriculum has become a rare specialist subject, offered to a vanishingly small minority of students. Whether one celebrates or laments that transformation largely depends upon one’s view of what education is for. Most people expect me to wax lyrical about the benefits of my subject, but I feel no need to do so. Instead, I would merely say this: no subject is taught merely for its utility. Most students will not use their mathematics beyond what they are taught in primary school, yet we still consider the acquiring of a mathematics GCSE as essential for all. The vast majority of students will not require a knowledge of the English language beyond the very basics of communication, yet no one would argue that this subject should be discontinued at the secondary level. All subjects lack a practical utility for most of us, yet all of us deserve the opportunity to be exposed to them.
The story of Latin is merely one chapter in a much larger curriculum story. Almost every subject in the modern programme of study arrived there for historical reasons that are far from obvious. Take geography. Today, it is regarded as one of the standard academic disciplines, and is included on the Russell group’s traditional list of facilitating subjects. Yet its prominence owes much to Britain’s history as a maritime and imperial power. Understanding maps, trade routes, resources and distant territories was considered valuable knowledge for a nation whose influence extended across much of the globe. In the 19th century, geography was not merely a subject about rivers and mountains; it was used to teach children about the British Empire and colonial administration. It was about understanding Britain’s place in the world. History followed a similar trajectory. For generations, the subject was often taught as a largely national story, designed in part to foster a sense of shared identity. Modern history teaching has become far broader and more critical (too critical for some), but its origins reveal how closely curriculum design is linked to wider social and political goals. The modern concern to teach our children about the sins of our forefathers is merely the latest iteration of this fact.
English literature offers another fascinating example., for the notion that all educated people should study literary works written in English is surprisingly recent. For centuries, the cultural prestige enjoyed by Latin texts far exceeded that granted to English authors. Shakespeare himself would probably be astonished to discover that generations of schoolchildren now analyse his plays in examination halls, something that we take as a given. The rise of English literature as an academic subject reflected the growing modernist belief that the nation’s culture could be explored through its own language and writers rather than exclusively through Classics.
Modern societies depend upon scientific knowledge and technological innovation, so the scientific curriculum has undergone profound changes in the classroom. Victorian students would scarcely recognise some aspects of today’s programmes of study, while many scientific ideas that were once regarded as essential have long since disappeared from classrooms. The same is true of mathematics. Although few school subjects seem more timeless, the mathematics taught in schools has changed repeatedly according to social and economic needs. Different eras have emphasised arithmetic, geometry, algebra, statistics and problem-solving in varying proportions. The question has never simply been how much mathematics children should learn but which mathematics they should learn.
Perhaps the most dramatic changes, however, can be found among practical subjects. Many readers will remember a time when boys and girls were routinely taught entirely different skills. Boys attended woodwork, metalwork or technical drawing. Girls learned needlework and “domestic science”. Such arrangements reflected assumptions about the adult life that these boys and girls would go on to lead, and now appear grotesquely segregated. When it came to teaching practical skills, schools were preparing children for highly gendered futures. The gradual disappearance of these distinctions, a process that was beginning even when I was at school, tells us a great deal about how society has changed. “Domestic science” evolved into “food technology” (an equally laughable title, in my humble opinion. Can’t we just call it cookery?) Craft subjects expanded into design and technology and children of both sexes learn technical drawing and draughtsmanship. Increasingly, schools have moved away from preparing boys and girls for separate roles and towards providing all students with access to a broader range of knowledge and skills. Hurrah for that.
Even so, debates about practical subjects have never truly disappeared. Every few years somebody asks why schools teach Shakespeare but not personal finance, or why students learn about chemical equations but not mortgages. Such arguments usually generate considerable public support because they appeal to a common-sense view of education. Surely schools should teach things that people will actually use?
This question quickly becomes more complicated than it first appears. The purpose of education has never been simply to provide immediate practical utility. If that were the case, subjects such as history, literature, philosophy, music and art would be impossible to justify, leaving our curriculum grossly impoverished. Schools do not exist merely to prepare children for their first job or their first mortgage application. How depressing would that be? Schools are tasked with introducing the next generation to the accumulated knowledge, culture and intellectual achievements of human civilisation. Hurrah for that also.
The modern curriculum remains the product of countless historical decisions and is currently undergoing yet another review courtesy of our (relatively) new government. At whatever time you look at history, the school curriculum reflects the priorities, anxieties and aspirations of previous generations as much as it reflects the needs of the present one. By the same token, subjects that seem permanent today may not appear nearly so permanent in another hundred years. Perhaps that is the strangest thing about school subjects. We tend to treat them as though they emerged naturally, like mountains or rivers. In reality, every school timetable is a historical document. Every subject occupies its place because somebody, at some point, argued successfully that it mattered.
