The schoolboy’s choice: classics or science?

The celebrated scientist Professor H.B. Baker has said that modern education must now focus on the study of science and that less focus needs to be placed on a classical education.

Prof. Baker said, ‘Latin and Greek ought to be regarded as luxuries, not as essentials, in education. It is to be hoped that in the near future there will be an organised revolt of British parents who will demand that their boys should be taught what would be of use to them after school - modern languages, science and mathematics.’

These views were rejected by Sir Frederick Kenyon, Director of the British Museum: ‘Far from being a narrow cult of little practical value, classical education rightly understood is the widest and most liberal form of preparation for the needs of everyday life. A man would be a better man of business, a better lawyer, a better merchant, a better stockbroker, a less hidebound politician, if he kept alive in his soul the love of literature.’