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UNE preserves a proud tradition

November 03, 2004

A unique venture in Armidale is keeping alive the city’s tradition of teaching and learning Latin.

While Latin has dropped out of the curriculum in Armidale schools within the past decade, students of Latin at the University of New England are providing extra-curricular classes for primary and secondary students.

Final-year undergraduates in UNE’s Faculty of Arts are teaching the classes, enabling them to develop the skills required to carry on the teaching tradition. UNE has been a centre of Latin literacy and scholarship ever since its foundation as a University College in the 1930s.

About 20 students from Armidale High School, The Armidale School, PLC Armidale, and Armidale City Public School attend the weekly classes either at UNE or at one of the schools. Dr Charles Tesoriero, who lectures in Latin at UNE, coordinates the classes. He said his feedback from parents had indicated that, while they were disappointed that Latin was not available in their school’s curriculum, they were grateful for the opportunity UNE was offering their children. “They want their children to be exposed to languages in general and ancient languages in particular,” he said.

Feedback from the parents of Timothy Williamson, who is in Year 5 at Armidale City Public School, is typical. “Timothy enjoys it,” his father Dugald said. “He finds it informal and fun, it keeps his interest, and he can see he’s making progress.”

The UNE students teaching the classes are Tom Atkinson and Leah O’Hearn. Tom, who is considering the possibility of teaching Latin after he graduates, said his aim was to give the school students “a grounding in a language that has traditionally been seen as important, but whose relevance is no longer generally recognised”. “I think everyone should have the opportunity to learn it,” he said.

Dr Tesoriero said he believed the program was unique in Australia in providing Latin tuition for students whose schools did not offer it.

He pointed out that there was a national shortage of Latin and Classical Greek teachers, “largely because there is no teacher training in these subjects anywhere in the country”. The program at UNE was “an alternative way” of developing these teaching skills in undergraduates, he said.

UNE is one of only three NSW universities teaching a full program in Latin and Classical Greek. (The others are the Universities of Sydney and Newcastle.) Dr Tesoriero said the numbers of undergraduates studying Latin at UNE were increasing, with about 20 internal and 40 external students this year. “The retention rate is also improving,” he said, “with more students following the Latin program through to an Honours year”.

“Latin exposes them to the foundations of Western culture and language,” he concluded.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 3, 2004 05:04 PM