I took my GCSE Latin paper today (Language 1). Not particularly hard at all, and the time allocated was ridiculous - one-and-a-half-hours for three questions. I took one look at the previous O-Level papers and went mad. My Ltin is nowhere near as good as that.

Angela Sheard, London, England

Being due to take the absurdly easy "Momentum Test" in 2 hours, I feel obliged to point out that, although not obliged to do them as Set Tets, my school at least has had a reasonable amount of adultery and the like. Our set texts both involve adulterous women (Cicero's attack on Clodia and Sallust's sketch of Sempronia), and in addition we have looked at Ovid's Amores as a preparation for AS.

Whilst some papers may be easy, it doesn't mean that there's no fun left

Josephus, Moor Park,

I'm taking the GCSE Latin Language exam tomorrow, and I've got to say, from looking at past papers, I expect it to be mind-bogglingly easy. However, being incredibly lazy, I would prefer it if the grade boundaries were lowered for Latin. I think they're high, because only clever kids (geeks/neeks) take it, so the highest-achievers out of us lot get ridiculously high marks, making it harder for the still clever, but slightly lazier band underneath them to achieve A*. Having chosen Latin, a 'neeky' subject by anyone's standards, I believe its unfair that many should be penalised by being pit against the top of the top, which wouldn't happen in any other subject because there are complete morons who bring down the grade boundaries.

Roman McLatin, London,

i'm sitting in a GCSE latin lesson now. In most subjects i am an A* student but in latin due to the absurd grade boundaries i am not of the standard that i have come to expect from myself. It is these boundaries, and not my supposed lack of intelligence that makes me detest latin and wish i was at home bashing my head against a wall instead of working on my virgil.

Janet Smith, London, England

Yet another article which confuses the grading of the test papers with the content of the course. When will this dumbing down of journalism end?

In recent years the Year 11 population has been rising and the number of students starting Latin has been increasing. However, the number of students taking Latin GCSE has been falling. Why? Ask yourself how many intelligent students are going to follow a course which sets the most demanding material while awarding the lowest grades. The problem is not one of course content, it is one of a mismatch between the achievement of the students and the grades they are awarded. Students who achieve A*s in all their other subjects will, on average, be awarded only an A in Latin. A student who achieves Bs across the board will be awarded a D in Latin.

At a time when more students than ever are starting Latin, it is the grade boundaries, not the course content, that are killing the subject.

Harry, London,

I entirely agree with the opinion of your columnist and the comments I have read. To many Latin may, superficially, appear to be of little practical use in the modern world other than to improve spelling etc. But more importantly it explains the mechanics of expression and structure ultimately providing a format for our own thought processes; something I consider to be of vital importance in a world obsessed with neologism and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Simon, Rutland,

Greek and Latin, which had to be learned before math and science, had always been the sort of education in antiquity that defined Europe. In the era of global convergence, these ancient languages hold the key to the identity and fate of Europe as well.

Costanzia, La la land,

GCSE's certainly shouldn't be made easier. I was lucky enough to attend an excellent school, where the teachers frequently had to teach us things far beyond the syllabus (at both GCSE and A-Level) in order to prevent us from getting bored to tears!
One of the reasons that children struggle with languages is that we are not taught the basics of English properly at school. Both my Latin and German teachers probably had to spend nearly as much time explaining English grammar to us as they did teaching us the subject we were meant to be studying!
More people should be given the chance to study Latin, I loved it and it improved my English and my spelling.

Laura, Reading,

The fault appears to lie with the system that the English use, when teaching a foreign language. I have been fortunate enough to to be able to take my children abroad since they were very young. Whichever country we went to, I never made any attempt to teach them the language, even when I did speak the language. They, however seemed to absorb it. They would bring new Italian, French, Spanish etc. friends home and, through sign language and one helping the other, they conversed and enjoyed each others company. However, they were not bored stiff by hours of grammatical correction. Would someone, please, explain to me why no child has one grammar lesson, when learning his/her mother tongue and yet the British impose it upon a child, endlessly, when learning another language? British children do not go to school being unable to speak but, in general, they learn English grammar at school. Learn to speak the language first. The grammar can wait until a little while later.

Marc, St. Barths,

I too studied Latin at school, but 25 years ago so did O' levels. It not only helped me with other languages such as French and German, but also improved my English spelling considerably. Although the classical stories studied for exams were Ovid's Metamorphoses, we had everyday text books telling stories of family life to learn the basic subject.

Children learn differently these days and I'm sure if I had had the chance to have my school days made easier and the subjects less grueling I would have jumped at the chance! OK so we did "harder" exams covering everything learned in a 2 year period but this should not detract from the hard work that students now do. They have different pressures and expectations on them from friends and family that should not be ignored.

If making a subject "easier" makes it more accessible to students and helps them with other subjects then surely it can't be a bad thing?

Lesley, Kent,

Latin easier than PE? I did my O levels in the early 1980s and opted for Latin precisely because a timetable clash meant that I would get out of the far more demanding PE lessons.

Doing Latin, I found that having to break down sentences into units of meaning taught me to think in a structured way like no other subject did, and this undoubtedly gave me a headstart at uni.

If the standard of the Latin GCSE is lowered because it's deemed too hard, all the benefits of the subject instilling clear thinking will be diminished.

What about keeping Latin as it is, and raising the standard in other subjects instead? Apart from PE (hard enough as it is).

Marian Korzeniowski, Morecambe, Lancashire

I would have loved to have studied Latin. It's a language that fascinates me, and I maintain that having a Latin dictionary is totally cool! But my school didn't teach it, of course. Oh well. I doubt I would have been any good at it anyway.

Anna, Isle of Wight, UK

Sarah thanks. I'll tell my wife about the physiotherapy. I must say she found it very painful but I'm not arguing.

I don't mean to be offensive in any way, but isn't there a committee report just out which says that doctors salaries have increased substantially, GPs up to 100K average? Not grudging at all you understand just don;t see why youg people wouldnt be attracted on salary ground anyway

Gordon, Edinburgh,

Myst? MYST? Pah. I prefer Medieval Total War, myself. Maybe not English Lit, but definitely History!
I would have liked to have studied Latin at GCSE, but we only had the choice of French or Spanish (I chose french). I'm sure Latin would have been much more interesting.

Jack, Gosport, England

The way languages are taught in schools, especially at A level, gives the student not only an understanding of gramatical constructions and a wide vocabulary but also an education of hte history and cultures of the countries that speak the specific language.

The most effective way to make languages easier is to start the education of languges at a much younger age. This would not be hard to do and as Natalie Haynes mentioned, it would also help the child's understanding of their own language.

Elizabeth, Birmingham, England

Bravo Natalie! An interesting and humourous article. If Latin were taught with such appealing content I'm sure many more students would be clamouring to take the GCSE!

Kim, Pittsford, NY

I did both French and Spanish at GCSE and wanted to do one for A level. I was just as good (or bad) at both of them so the only way to choose between them was to look at the courses and the people teaching it. Language A levels are not just about the language. You learn about the culture of the countries that speak the language and the history of those countries. I was, and still am, pasionately interested in Hispanic culture so I chose Spanish and found myself not only learning verb construction and the like but also studying literature, cinema, history, not just briefly but in great depth - the literature essays we had to do were similar to the A level english literature essays. When I went travelling to Spain and latin America I found whta I learnt in the classroom really applicable in the real world, not only because I could verbally communicate with people but I could understand their way of life in a way that I wouldn't have been able to before.

Elizabeth, Leeds, UK

As a student completing my Latin A Level this year, I find the most valuable lessons being taught are those of grammar and syntax which help me with the quality of my English (and, as a consequence, make me stick out like a sore thumb in this "dumbed down" generation where my contemporaries cannot (or will not) tell the difference between "your" and "you're"), and give me a more logical brain which I am told will be to my advantage when seeking a job.

If we make certain GCSEs easier, surely the newspapers will broadcast the results in the summer with even greater emphasis on those who would have performed well in the current ones and therefore perform stupendously with little or no revision, and yet still ignore those who are at the bottom of the tables who gain C grades rather than E grades?

However, in response to those who (not altogether wrongly) suggest that those easier GCSEs should be made harder, has it not occured to them that perhaps they actually cannot be made harder?

Fi, Reading, England

Making ancient language courses easier might not be a bad thing, and might actually encourage students to take them. My mother, studying Latin in the 60's, hated the subject because she found it too difficult. Back then the focus was on drilling grammar and reading Virgil come hell or high water, and it seemed to her the effort it took to master the language wasn’t worth it for something nobody even spoke anymore. When I studied Latin in highschool several years ago, I adored it, because my teacher was more concerned in instilling a love of the language in us than having us reading Caesar by Christmas. I came out of highschool barely able to stagger through a Catullus poem, but with a passion for Latin which hasn’t abated. Besides, I think it's better to have Latin offered at any level of difficulty than to not have it offered at all. I can count the number of schools in my home city which teach Latin on one hand, and it breaks my heart.

Victoria, Kingston, Canada

I am 18, I went to a private school that did and still does not offer any subject that would be considered vocational or easy. I did latin at GCSE and I have to say it was pathetically easy. The only reason I chose to do Latin was because it was easy, and now in hindsight it actually turned out to be the most enjoyable GCSE.

As the article states, much of the Latin text chosen for GCSE is obscenely vulgar and funny, and would certainly appeal to any teenager.

The benefits of latin and indeed any language are so widespread that "dumbing down" the syllabus produces no benefit whatsoever even to the clever kids with a future who would have achieved the top grade regardless.

I say, dispose of vocational and easy qualifications and let those that would chose easy subjects to fail at the traditional ones.

Horace, London,

I would say that there are two distinct camps of pupils: those who love learning and get bored by "dumbing down" any subject, and those who hate learning and want everything to be as easy as possible so they don't have to work. It seems to me that the old system of providing grammar schools and O-Levels for the first group and Secondary Moderns and CSE's (with a definitive practical and working-life bias) were a very sound way of achieving the best for everyone. Unfortunately the "one-size-fits-all" experiment does no-one any favours. The academic types are bored, the practical types are bored, the disruptive ones disrupt (when they ought to be in more disciplined institutions) and those with special needs get no special attention. Is it any wonder that all our young people are increasingly disaffected by the education system?

Caroline, Telford, UK

I was never very good at Latin, probably because I always have been averse to learning things that do not interest me by rote. Attempts to help people like me, such as printing different genders in the grammar book in different colors (it seemed a good idea at the time), were no assistance at all.

There must be a way to make Latin interesting but I never came across it even if I achieved a modest competence in Russian, French and German! I suppose the incentive was to visit the appropriate countries and speak and read modern news. Such things are obviously missing with Latin.

James Silverton, Potomac, MD, USA

"No one else gets to write about impotent adulterers in their GCSE."
You didn't do the English Lit GCSE I did! The 'Poetry of Persuasion' module was filthy - various early modern poems (including 'To His Coy Mistress') with more innuendo in them than a 15-year-old could scarcely credit. Classes were both hilarious and properly analytical.

Jay, London,

Don't trust the government with your children's education. You're on your own. Don't restrict your definition of intelligence too much either. My wife studies hairdressing with girls who you would think are thick as two short planks with academic subjects (hygiene and health regs), but they are geniuses when it comes to actual hairstyling.

Chie, Tokyo, Japan

Mr Micawber, making money in life may be important to you but many of the rest of us are more concerned with the quality of our lives. Perhaps if you had read Virgil or Homer in the original languages you might not be so bitter.

But, you have never voted? After so many people gave their lives for this freedom and priviledge? Perhaps history might have been a more suitable subject for you.

B Veale, Widnes, Cheshire

i do think the schools want a lazy way to play the league tables. I went to a grammar school which basically creamed off the most intelligent kids, put them through bog-standard GCSEs and A-Levels, then wrote endless newsletters slapping themslelves on the back for the latest rrecord-beaking results, despite all the terrible STRESS that both pupils and teachers had to endure. I wish we had been offered Latin! Instead, the most popular A-Level options there are PE and Business Studies. I think that when you have 90 intelligent, bright eyed and bushy tailed eleven year old overachievers, you need to strike when the iron is hot and give them something to sink their teeth into. The same idea can be applied to all schools regardless of intake - most eleven year olds aren't disaffected yet, so instead of navel-gazing and victim-culture and 'relevant' topics, we should open up new worlds to them; show them how much more there is to their world.

Amy Allen, Paris, France

Gordon, Edinburgh - the treatment for prolapsed disc is also physiotherapy.
Laura, London - soon any youngster will be able to train as a doctor thanks to the systematic destruction of medical training and the NHS which will result in medicine becoming an unattractive career to the cleverest young people. Still, there might be increased applications from the non professional classes, which will please the government. Certainly no doctor's child will apply, that's for certain.

sarah, york,

Why is this conversation about making Latin and other subjects easier? Surely just make PE and the rest harder, so that the grades are equal. In the same vein, with standardised marking schemes, there is no need to change the syllabus in order to reflect differences in difficulty, all that is needed is to change the grade boundaries (hopefully in this case, bringing those in easier subjects up).

As an aside, I sat GCSE Latin 6 years ago and reading 'A day in the life of Pliny the Elder' is without a doubt the least exciting thing I have ever done.

JG, Oxford,

@Al

Childreen choose certain subjects - media studies, PE, drama, home economics, etc - not because they are more interesting than maths science or languages, but because they are easier. I know this because they have told me.

You are right, however, to point out that the sciences, especially, could be made more interesting through greater practical experimenting and interactivity. Unfortunately, this country's H & S culture (driven by insurers and their lawyers) has rendered this aspect of curriculum virtulally obsolete.

Hedonist, London, UK

I don't know where those 'Chinese boys' studied or how they were taught (or not) but I am of the understanding that most of the Chinese boys attending our top private, and grammar schools are rather awfully good at Greek. And Latin, and English, and maths, and history, and geography, and in fact, all subjects. I am of the understanding too that they are pretty good at collecting music scholarships on top of other scholarships. And they are quite outstanding at chess. And that they sail through university doing very little work.

I too 'know it better than most' - I have more than once had to deal with the research in the area of 'the ethnics' and education.

Stavros Chen, Stirling, UK

"My query is - how come the government's so keen to listen to the voice of the people when it comes to the House of Lords, or foxhunting, or fuel taxes"

Eh? I don't exactly remember a public clamour for the House of Lords to be turned into a dumbed-down House of Commons, for an old rural tradition to be made illegal, or for motorists to be taxed to oblivion. Perhaps we know different people.

Julius Blumfeld, London,

Compared with Natalie Haynes' week, mine started quite pleasantly when I read her article, and found myself muttering Yes!, Yes!, Yes! to what she wrote. To me, the big lesson of the Classics is that everything in human experience is all there, followed by the equally important lesson that there isn't a quick fix for everything, and that destiny and fate still play a large part in all our lives. I had my appetite whetted for Latin when I was in transit through one of the many schools that I attended during the second world war, but I regret to this day that I never encountered Greek literature except through English translation. What we now need is - dare I say it? - a return to excellence, and the cultivation of learning for its own sake. Now there's a worthy goal for David Cameron.

Dr.Nicholas Lee, Windsor, England

Latin A level? Well I'm glad you found it interesting Suzanne (good luck finding a job though).
I sat and passed Politics and French at A level, because I thought they were interesting. Now, twenty years later, I wish more than anything else I had done something that would have helped me make some money in this life, like Business Studies and/or Economics.
All those years of education, and nobody once sat us down and explained what a mortgage was, and why it would have made better sense to take one out instead of renting. It would have helped to have known that at the start.
So how about a class on how to plan your life so you can stand a chance of being wealthy? I'd have signed up for that in an instant, but it seems that unfortunately our teachers didn't know anything about that subject either.
Sure education should be challenging, and invigorating, but it also needs to be of some use in life - I still haven't been to France, and I've never voted.

Mr Micawber, Hong Kong,

Like so many of these "my subject's more difficult than yours" arguments, this is too superficial. Is PE really a grade easier than Latin for the overweight, short-sighted brainbox who gets teased when he goes anywhere near the PE department. Performance in most subjects relies almost as much on confidence and enthusiasm to participate as it does on intelligence. There's a related myth about the relative difficulty of the sciences at GCSE level. They are actually very boring, not difficult. They are boring because the majority of children hardly ever conduct an experiment, and so are denied an insight into what the individual contributes to the discipline. If children can't see any scope for individual expression, they inevitably opt for the "softer" subjects where this is obvious.

al, london,

I really, really don't understand why it has to be easier or more difficult to achieve a particular grade in one subject or another. Why can't the grade boundaries be adjusted so that all subjects are of equal difficulty? Achieving A* grades in any subjects should be equally prestigious. Then subjects which are 'marketable' in the employment field, like sciences and maths might have greater uptake and the whole future economy might benefit.

PR, Cornwall,

My query is - how come the government's so keen to listen to the voice of the people when it comes to the House of Lords, or foxhunting, or fuel taxes, but when it comes to providing the future adults of this country with a decent education, millions of complaining voices go unheard?

Carolyn Ten Holter, Oxford,

I'd bet the Chinese boys were at least good at distinguishing the non-aspirated kappa, pi, and tau, from the the aspirated chi, phi, and theta, and at using the Greek pitch accent. Assuming, on the subject of dumbing down, these characteristics were not overlooked.

Helen O'File, Athens, GA, USA

Yes, if kids get inspired by an idea their powers of concentration and comprehension are amazing. I had a friend who taught himself astronomy!

And of course they are inspired by different aspects of subjects. Some find beauty in the logic of things - from maths to latin to engineering; others in the sheer detail of the natural world or the contrasts among cultures.

The important thing is surely not to deny them the chance to try out subjects like latin. There will be some like me who just can'y get enough of it!

Nev, Rudkøbing, Denmark

Good point about doctors, (.Laura earlier). My consultant, early forties, complained recently that medical students now are required not to know things so well but only where to look them up! That maybe explains why my wife was given excruciating physiotherapy for diagnosed chronic arthritis by a young GP when her true condiditon turned out to be a prolapsed disc. (Second opinions often advisable, I think).

Gordon, Edinburgh,

I have been an examiner and moderator for years and the standard has consistently fallen by the exam boards. I have said so at meetings and have been told, in no uncertain terms, 'well it's a different world, now'.
I now do not examine, as of this year, my standards are too high, i.e. I failed too many students.
Does 'different world' mean we should just make it possible for every youngster to be a doctor, by lowering the standard of the examinations they take? That is what will happen. That is what is happening.

Laura, London, England

Thank you, thank you, Natalie!
For the last 20 years I have complained about the dumbing down of subjects because of the need for schools to show how wonderful they are purely by virtue of their pupils' pass rates.
I am currently in France for an extended house sit; and despite never having lived here before, am finding my 'O' Level French; taken in 1964 enables me to communicate albeit on a simple level. We leant things in school, we were not merely being childminded! My daughters were so bored at their Comprehensive,. I'm not surprised Tony Blair et al fight to get their offspring into 'decent ' schools where they might be able to be taught instead of having lessons disrupted by elements who need to be inspired to learn. Teaching is a vocation, lessons must be interesting and subjects need to have depth....and finally, scrap the stupid League tables! Oh, and bring back Trade schools for the less academic but practically minded student.

Jan, Toulouse, France

If we are to have a functioning, competitive, civilized society, some FACTS are important. It is not always possible to make them easier or more interesting - that doesn't make them optional. We need more kids taught hard sciences, mathematics, and the basic facts of history. They can learn to develop a point of view when they have some facts about which to develop one.

Nick, Seattle, USA

I found Latin to be one of the easier subjects at GCSE when I took it in 2004. The Latin A level was considerably more challenging, but also far more interesting and invigorating; we concentrated more on original texts and examined them in a similar manner to English literature. The combination of arts, language and logic is rarely found in other subjects, and as such is almost unique in the skills it gives to its students. I am therefore horrified at the idea of 'dumbing down' a subject at GCSE which, in my opinion, already lacks the complexity and depth of the A level.

Languages, whether dead or modern, should not be discarded for being too difficult. They should be praised and encouraged for the practical benefits and the indirect skills acquired by their students.

Suzanne, London,