Latin in Africa: The Cultural Point of View

Extract

As a teacher of Classics in West Africa I was often questioned about the value of ‘highly academic studies’ to people who had apparently only just emerged from their own primitive society and who had many other and more important things to learn. It is perhaps significant that no criticism of the teaching of Latin, at least, has been heard by me from Africans themselves, and certainly not from those most concerned, the pupils in secondary schools. This may, of course, be due to material reasons; young Africans have notoriously good memories, which are of considerable help in the lower reaches of Latin teaching and in the presentation of set books at examinations, and therefore Latin is considered a reasonably safe option at School Certificate level (or its equivalent). I do not, however, believe that this is the whole story; Latin, if competently taught, has a great deal more to offer to an African child, for there are considerable similarities between (early) Roman and African religious, social, and domestic customs—those, in fact, common to tribal societies.