To say that teaching Latin is racist puzzles me, says French minister leading “war on waking up”

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Emmanuel Macron’s education minister defended Latin and ancient Greek after “bewildering” suggestions from American universities that pushing for the study of classical languages ​​could foster institutional racism.

Jean-Michel Blanquer, who led the French president’s “war on waking up”, made the comments as he prepared to launch a joint project with his Italian, Greek and Cypriot counterparts on Monday to promote languages.

Ancient languages ​​have recently come under criticism in the United States, where Princeton University caused a stir this summer by announcing that it was removing Greek and Latin requirements for classical majors in an effort to combat what ‘she considered discrimination.

The university’s department of classical studies said it was removing the requirement to learn Latin or ancient Greek to give more students from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to specialize in the discipline.

The department also said it would take into account how the Greek and Roman cultures “were instrumentalized and were complicit in various forms of exclusion, including slavery, segregation, white supremacy, manifest destiny and cultural genocide ”.

Mr Blanquer said: “I have read and heard these reviews, some of which went so far as to claim that they found in Homer an excuse for slavery.”

“I find such interpretations absolutely mind-boggling,” he told Le Point.

“To glue categories and a vision of the contemporary world to writings dating back two millennia is an abysmal absurdity”.

He added: “What these civilizations have brought us is precisely the openness and the search for the universal.

“The glue that unites Europe”

Mr Blanquer said ancient languages ​​were the glue that held many European countries together.

Creating a “common linguistic fund” would make it possible to disseminate “common values”, namely “humanism, the culture of truth and beauty, the demand for logos (language as a tool of reason), which s ‘is revealed so necessary in our time. where the absence of reason spreads like wildfire ”.

The French Ministry of Education last month launched a think tank dedicated to the fight against the “Anglo-Saxon importation” of wokeism, a hot topic in the run-up to the presidential elections next April.

The Laboratory of the Republic seeks to fight against the cancellation of culture, especially among young people.

It also focuses on the defense of secularism, the mixture of secularism of France, which transcends race, gender and religion to defend the universal values ​​of the Republic.

Critics of the concept argue that French secularism is a smokescreen to promote white and Christian ideals that reinforce discrimination against minorities.

This week, he announced that Latin and Ancient Greek would be open to technical high school graduates and make it an option for 11-year-olds.

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