GERALDINE O NEILL (MA),
Sir, - As graduates of, and current research students in, the School of Classics and Ancient History at Queen's University Belfast, we feel compelled to express our disgust at the university's decision to end the teaching of Greek, Latin and Classical Studies and at Prof McCormac's feeble attempt to justify that decision (July 1st).His claim that "there is absolutely no demand" is strangely at odds with the student numbers for the year 2001/2.
It seems impossible that Prof McCormac has not been informed of the correct numbers registered for these subjects. He may not also be aware that the School of Classics and Ancient history organises an annual conference for young classicists which attracts students from schools north and south of the Border. The conferences in 2001 and 2002 have shown a marked increase in the numbers taking part with over 200 each year. This conference is a unique event among the universities of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
He also lays the blame for a lack of demand with schools saying they "no longer produce a supply of young people" to study these subjects. Unfortunately it is true that schools are under pressure to concentrate on certain subjects to the detriment of others. However, this is no excuse for Queen's University to refuse to offer such subjects.
In fact, it is even more important in that it gives students the opportunity to take them up at university since they have been denied that opportunity at school. University is meant to broaden a student's experience of learning, to offer a breadth of vision, not simply more of the same. It is very sad that this city's university possesses such a limited vision for education.
The action of Queen's University in removing all traces of classical subjects will finally put paid to whatever vestiges remained of the reputation which Belfast at one time enjoyed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as "a second Athens" or "the Northern Athens", a reputation based on the city's esteem for classical learning and quest for knowledge. Surely this is one tradition worth preserving. Nor will the university's decision do anything to enhance Belfast's bid to be named European capital of Culture 2008. What will our European neighbours think of a city whose university (which incidentally no longer offers Italian in the School of Languages, Literature and Art) has decided tha t the languages and culture of ancient Greece and Rome are no longer worth teaching? - Yours, etc.,
GERALDINE Ó NÉILL (MA), ADAM MARSHALL (M.Phil), North Circular Road, Belfast 15.