While reviewing the “Educated Romania” university education bill, I noticed that Latin is again excluded from the exam national bachelor’s degree Latin will be an ideal exam for those completing a philological profile. What could be more defining for the very concept of philology than the study of classical languages? And yet, the law provides dry, I quote “for the humanitarian profile, philology major, from the theoretical stream, a written test on the Romanian language and literature and the language and literature of the language being studied, with an emphasis on the skills developed within the framework of this specialization.” In the formulation “language of international circulation” I have no illusions that it also includes the language that represented the first possible specialization in all European and North American universities, including the University of Bucharest, nor the main connecting element that unites our old Western civilization.

But just as the study of Latin and Greek signified the foundations of European education and culture, the gradual disappearance of these languages ​​from the curriculum, tacitly accepted as a necessity for progress even by the nostalgic, suggests the slow destruction of all this. was built on their backs. The first, most noticeable example is the Romanian language and literature itself – for some time it has been reduced to “communication”, textbooks for grades I-VIII are already full of translations from other literatures, and now the spread of the subject of study is already emerging in the joint bachelor’s exam in “mathematics, natural sciences, history and geography of Romania and Europe, and social and humanitarian sciences”. In this way, the Romanian language and literature will be recontextualized and revised in relation to the sciences (a false cult of the time) and, of course, to the new directions imposed by the social-human “sciences”. The rest of the Romanian language and literature will be preserved only in isolation in the optional exam of the philological profile. The usefulness (?) of a discipline, in the mirror of the “real” usefulness and “significant” relevance of other disciplines, will force it to take an even more humble place at the table of learning objects necessary to create an ideal graduate. for integration “in the labor market”. Where the Latin alphabet goes, there goes the Romanian.

A friend tells me that, however, look, something good is on the horizon: Romanian grammar will be studied in high school! The entrance exam for law and literature, Romanian grammar could only be mastered through meditation. Here, high school students are given the opportunity to prepare for these faculties in lessons. The broad direction in which the discipline of Romanian language and literature is taking, unfortunately, allows us only one interpretation of the ministerial generosity: the introduction of grammar in secondary school is mainly motivated by the failure of its teaching in primary and secondary schools. The minister noted the disastrous grades in the grammar section of the final exam and decided on the need for remedial classes in high school. This, perhaps, even more justifies the “ease” of the gymnasium course if it is still studied in high school…

This year, for the first time, I had the experience of teaching Latin in the Faculty of Literature, where every teacher has the privilege of meeting mostly young people who are passionate not only about the language, but also about Romanian literature. I remember their expressions of amazement at each new thing they learned – before them was an old, dead, but still living language, present in every corner of the Romanian language, a language that explained and greatly complemented everything they had studied before that time. It seemed as if they had discovered an invisible continent ten inches below them that they had never been told about. In this way, they learned why the Romanian genitive article agrees with the preceding noun and not with the genitive noun, they finally understood the meaning of the cases and why Romanian formally only has two cases (if you exclude the vocative), they found out where the plural comes from from Romanian and Italian, unlike French, English, Spanish. The connection between such words as sun and solstice, woman and family, heart and animation, word and convention suddenly became clear to them. And much, much more, squeezed into only fourteen weeks of classes, one semester. With this one semester, in which I barely managed to cover half of Latin grammar, they will be allowed to teach two semesters of 7th grade Latin. It is right? Can we expect outstanding results from these future teachers? Or a perverted hope that they will not do their job and then justify the complete liquidation of this inconvenient case? The strategy of abandoned historical buildings is mentioned to explain the necessity of their demolition.

But if the root of our identity is cut, the sap from which we draw our strength will dry up. All twigs, branches and branches will also wither in turn. A minor but telling example was the refusal in the fall of 2021 due to the pandemic (?) of the diploma thesis on the Latin language in the philological profile of the senior school. In any case, the dissertation there became an anomaly: on the philological profile, one hour of Latin, and two hours of physics, two hours of mathematics, and two hours of logic. Not much passed (a few months?) and the ministry decided to reject ALL theses. Did you notice the direction?

Historically speaking, the highly civilized countries we used to admire attached great importance to the study of ancient languages ​​- they knew the secret all too well: extensive study of Latin and Greek, languages ​​that came to dominate the cultures of great nations. diversity for thousands of years, thanks to its multifacetedness, it will turn the vernaculars, they will help them become standardized languages, as they say in linguistics, imperial and colonizing languages, or at least survive in the face of the onslaught of other, stronger languages. Of course, to a greater or lesser extent, today the decline of these classical languages ​​has been generalized throughout the West, against the impulse of sociology, politics or communication studies. But let’s see the extent of the disaster: a country like Canada, with a population of 38 million inhabitants, mostly immigrants, has no less than forty-five “Classics” university departments. In Romania, I say magnanimously, there are FIVE. I think I’ve said enough.

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