The recent general election has exposed the danger inherent in vote-based democracies – that they inevitably entail large disaffected minorities being excluded from executive power. The ancient Greek inventors of democracy vigorously debated this issue, having painful historical experience of it (recorded by Thucydides) and theoretical solutions (discussed by Aristotle). Yet our state educational system almost completely deprives our secondary-school children of the opportunity to think about democracy afforded by the dazzling thought-world of the ancient Greeks. This is despite the availability of excellent translations of all their writings – free online – into modern English.

This research studies whether different types of motivation have an effect on students' attitudes towards their own ability and success. This is assessed through a comparison of process goals and performance goals within a series of lessons, terms which have been adapted from the research of Dweck & Leggett (1988), amongst others as cited in the literature review. A study of such research has revealed that generally intrinsic motivation as ‘doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable’ is preferable (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 55), and that this is encouraged through a focus on the process of an activity rather than an ultimate goal. The main issue here is whether students work more effectively if this goal is not made obvious to them during a lesson. The suggested benefit of focussing on process rather than performance is that students are encouraged to recognise enjoyment in each task, so that they spend time and effort improving their skills. In contrast a performance focus increases the chances of choosing an easy task or rushing through a piece of work in order to obtain the results expected (Dweck, 1999). Furthermore performance feedback seems more summative and less helpful for future work (Corpus & Lepper, 2007); comments such as “Well done you did it !” provide nothing useful, while process feedback reflects upon skills which can be applied repeatedly.

During my PGCE I had a class of eight students in Year 11 studying for the OCR GCSE in Latin who had to master knowledge of 475 words for their exams. Their recent unseen translations demonstrated weak performances due to poor vocabulary knowledge. On interviewing the students, most lacked a systematic approach to learning vocabulary. Since the end-goal of studying Latin today is more often the reading of ancient texts, the requirements for vocabulary learning differs from that of other languages. Composing sentences in Latin is an increasingly rare skill too. Thus by rarely needing to produce Latin, students have no means of actively practising the language. Whilst students often find learning vocabulary arduous, I found that with Latin students find it particularly difficult to retain knowledge. In the school the GCSE Latin lessons are teacher-led and mostly involve the dissemination of information for the students to record and process. The pressure of covering the exam syllabus and difficulty of integrating vocabulary activities into this class led me to the possible solution presented by Memrise.

Last autumn, Hereford Cathedral School began an after-school Greek Club open to state-school pupils from across Hereford. This article aims to provide some ideas about what works and how best to foster interest in Greek and Greek culture.

A second-order change took place in Latin Teaching in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, with effects reaching into the present day. This Change was a shift in attitude, values and methods which Forrest describes as, ‘curriculum change on an unprecedented scale’ (Forrest, 1996, p. 42) and the ‘transformation of Latin teaching’ (ibid, p. 146). This article explores the nature of this change and justifies categorising it as second-order. Secondly, it considers the process of how the change took place, looking also at changes within the wider social field and resistance to change within Latin teaching. Both a Bourdieusian theoretical framework and a metaphorical application of chaos and complexity theory are used to analyse this change and explain some of the conflicts and crises within and around the change period. The final section of the analysis considers issues affecting the communication of ideas and the effect of social capital within the system.

“There is a shortage of certified Latin teachers: Please spread the word!” This plea is the title of a recent article in Amphora, a publication of the Society for Classical Studies (Ancona & Durkin, 2015). Here the authors cite government statistics, reports from the placement service of the American Classical League, and personal experience to demonstrate that the demand for Latin teachers – whether or not certified – outstrips the supply. As they point out, this lack of teachers at the pre-collegiate level does not bode well for the health of our discipline.

In France, recent curriculum reforms have signalled the cull of Latin and Greek from the secondary school curriculum – a teacher who criticised the reforms was censured; his blog disappeared. Belgium – because of the strength of its Catholic education long a beacon for Classical education – is witnessing schools dropping ancient languages in favour of STEM subjects at an alarming rate, driven similarly by the government agenda. As I am writing this article, I notice an online piece on the deteriorating situation in Malta, too. Throughout Europe, the financial crisis is spurring on governments and schools to intensify their push for STEM subjects – hailed as an instant fix for the faltering global economy – while vilifying less immediately practical subjects. A conversation with a French colleague who was lamenting the oppressing regime made me realise how well the UK is doing in comparison with other countries in Europe. Numbers of (state) secondary schools offering Latin are increasing, and thanks to the Department for Education, primary schools can offer Latin and Greek at Key Stage 2. Of course we should not delude ourselves: the number of secondary schools offering Latin is still low, the teaching of Greek is particularly disheartening, and only about 2% of all primary schools so far have opted to teach Latin and none (to my knowledge) have chosen Greek. Nevertheless, in comparison to the rest of Europe, a government which (whatever else one may think of it) supports the teaching of Classical languages, a growing number of hubs which see all levels of education collaborating creatively, and flourishing outreach organisations which offer financial and logistical support, give the UK at least some cause for optimism.

At a time when the Classics offerings across the country are forced to dwindle, when many schools are unable to offer Greek or even Latin, one school has bucked the trend by offering a classical language new to the UK curriculum. Since their foundation 40 years ago, St James' Independent Schools have pioneered the teaching of Sanskrit in a Western environment. Sanskrit has been developed as an academic subject with resources that take complete beginners to IGCSE and beyond to AS and A level.

Development of the machine translator Blitz Latin between the years 2002 and 2015 is discussed. Key issues remain the ambiguity in meaning of Latin stems and inflections, and the word order of the Latin language. Attempts to improve machine translation of Latin are described by the programmer.

Apromenade lesson is when the learners get up and source, identify and evaluate information from materials attached to the walls of the classroom or a corridor or some other space in the school. The students have to walk around the ‘exhibits’ to find out something and note it down as they go. This activity can forms a part of a sequence of tasks in a lesson. It works well for any subject matter which is highly visual, such as images taken from Pompeian wall-paintings, for example, or even for enlarged text selections.