One hundred years ago
WE ,regret to see that Dr Willoughby Wade, in addressing the British Medical Association at its Birmingham meeting, on Tuesday, threw his influence rather against the teaching of classics in any form to lads who are to begin their professional training at seventeen. He 'found that the Birmingham Board School boy could, on an average, at the age of thirteen years and three or four months, pass half the medical prelimin- ary examination. That gave nearly four years for general preparation before his professional preparation began, and Dr Wade maintained that the great ques- tion was whether two years of that time should be devoted to Latin, as it must be, he thought, if Latin was to be in any real sense mastered, or whether a four years' training in modern languages and science would not open the lad's general mind more adequately. On the whole, Dr Wade evidently held the latter view. We confess we differ with him; for we hold that the practical command of at least one dead language which com- mands a great literature, contains a higher cultivating power in it than almost any fairly comparable amount of steeping in modern literature and mod- ern thought.
The Spectator, 2 August 1890
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