| Here are some personal data points from Australia and The Netherlands: Australia: * My high school in Melbourne had one class (15 people) learning Latin to year 12 level. Funnily enough, almost all of us also studied advanced math, and more than half were left-handed. By the end, we were reading the Aeneid, Catullus and Cicero. * Why did I pick Latin? Well, at my school, two foreign languages were compulsory for years 7-10, and optional for years 11 and 12. In year 7 and 8, everyone had to do Latin, and either French or German. In year 9, around half switched from Latin to Mandarin. * Two of my friends also did Ancient Greek. They were taught by the school headmaster, who was a Classics scholar. * That year, in the whole state of Victoria, the total number of year 12 students taking Latin and Ancient Greek were 70 and 6 respectively. * At university, my engineering school required us to take one subject in a non-technical faculty. I chose Ancient Greek, to complement my Latin from high school. That class had around 60 students. 2/3 of them were of Greek descent and already spoke modern Greek. * The only Greek word I remember now is κῠβερνήτης (helmsman). You may recognise it as Kubernetes :) Netherlands: * My partner, who is Dutch, studied Latin at high school there. * His school was a "gymnasium", a category of very academic high schools which traditionally taught Latin and Greek. Check out [1] for the background to these gymnasium schools in the Netherlands and various countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(school) |
I first read the Illiad (Fagels) by torchlight, in a tent by a campfire in a muddy field, next to a cliff where I was risking my neck each day to impress the other boys in the university mountain club. As everyone should.