France has announced plans to boost the teaching of the classics in schools in an initiative that supporters say will counter wokeism and reinforce the European Union, reports The Times.
Jean-Michel Blanquer, the education minister, was joined by his counterparts from Italy, Greece and Cyprus in signing a charter pledging a “global and international strategy for the promotion and development of Latin and ancient Greek”.
Blanquer said that Latin and Greek would be introduced in professional lycées, where sixth-formers study vocational courses to train them for jobs in places such as restaurants, factories, beauty parlours and garages.
He said he wanted these pupils to “develop their culture” by reading authors such as Sophocles.
Blanquer said that his aim was to underline and to strengthen Latin and Greek at a time when they were under attack from American leftwingers denouncing them as the fount of racism.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, associate professor of classics at Princeton University, argues that the discipline has been used for 2,000 years as a justification for slavery, colonialism and fascism. He has said he hopes it will disappear.