Ordo Barbaricae Ignorantiae

The David Parsons Award for the worst excesses of wilful ignorance about the Classics, awarded to people or institutions whose words or actions show an inexcusable ignorance of, or hostility to, the Classics. Created by David (aka arltblogger) on Thu 05 Aug 2004 17:59 BST
May I emphasise that this was a personal initiative, not part of ARLT policy.

 

Every now and then I come across an example of wilful ignorance about the Classics, or conduct likely to cause grievous harm to the cause of Classics. It struck me that there ought to be some recognition of these. Private Eye has its OBN - Order of the Brown Nose - for lickspittle behaviour, so I have instituted my own variation on the OBE, the OBI, Order of Barbaric Ignorance.

The first recipient was suggested by hearing Robin Birley at Vindolanda. Apparently the Birley family actually own the Vindolanda land, while English Heritage administers the excavated site of the fort. Robin Birley has shown himself an expert in making parts of Hadrian's Wall attractive to visitors, with the reconstructions of a turret from the turf Wall and one from the stone Wall, and the Roman Army Museum, and he suggested to English Heritage that information plaques at various points in and around the fort could well feature text in English, German, Spanish - and Latin. Apparently the local English Heritage people were all in favour of this, but some wonderful committee down in Londinium (sorry, London) came up with the remarkable decision that for a Roman site, Latin would not be appropriate.

Fortunately for the visiting public, the Trust took on the expense of producing the information plaques themselves, including the Latin version, produced by Professor Anthony Birley - it must be useful to have a Professor of Classics in the family. You can see photos of the result in the Vindolanda folder of photos here.

I wonder if the folk who thought this inappropriate had heard of Newcastle's excellent scheme for interesting tourists in the Roman heritage by putting public signs in Latin in the metro.

So, to the London committee, the award of the OBI.

I have at least one other award winner up my sleeve. If you want to suggest a worthy recipient, do let me know.

The Hall of Fame

1. The first recipient is English Heritage, for deciding that on the multi-lingual information boards at the Roman site of Vindolanda, it would be 'inappropriate' for one of the languages to be Latin.
2. The second recipient is AQA for abolishing their A level and GCSE exams in Latin and Greek. See the sordid details here and here.
3. Almost worthy of OBI (3rd class), Howard Davis head of LSE made a crass remark on Any Questions (Radio 4 on 17th September 2004), saying: "People do a lot of demeaning things like boxing and learning Latin."
4. The next recipient is Blackburn College for abolishing their Classical Civilisation courses and turning the Classics room into an extension of their hairdressing department.
5. The next recipient is University College Dublin for keeping their Chair of Late Latin and palaeography vacant for 12 years. Read (elsewhere on this page) the letter about this and other Irish failures.
6. The University of Alabama for planning to merge Classics with Languages. While I cannot assess the merits of this proposal, it called forth this stinging on-line post:"It is sad, but true, that the business model now employed by the UA administration does not recognize the historical legitimacy of the classics -- or of anything else. Of course they will eliminate Classics. It doesn't pay. And with its loss will go another core element in the liberal arts education. We will end up with an "education" that is constructed according to rigorous cost-accounting. And the liberal arts will simply cease to exist as anything other than a trite catch phrase or advertising gimmick. A university without a Classics department is a trade school."Prof. Charles Nuckolls balaji@ouraynet.com Professor Tuscaloosa
7. Dr Bob Critchley of Felixstowe for his letter in the Daily Telegraph saying that Churchill "'correctly' concluded that Latin was a waste of time." (Note Churchill's recommendation that clever students learn Latin as an honour and Greek as a treat.)
8. A further recipient is Bruton School for Girls, where the webmaster taught, for the head's decision to axe both Latin and Classical Civilisation at GCSE. And it used to be a good school, sending girls to read Classics at Oxford and Cambridge.
9. Bill Rammell, higher education minister, for this: A sharp fall in the number of university applicants wanting to study such "non-vocational" subjects as history, philosophy, classics and fine art was "no bad thing".
10. David Driscoll didriscoll@harwood.org for suspending a Latin teacher who used Pompeii graffiti in her teaching. See the blog entry.

http://arlt.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2004/8/5/119045.html

http://www.arlt.co.uk/dhtml/arlt_db.php?catID=54#obi