Want to create the next Mark Zuckerberg? Teach Latin!

I was disappointed to read an article in the Times about a new free school in Hammersmith being proposed by Ian Livingstone, one of the founders of the UK games industry. This isn’t because I’m worried about Livingstone’s school luring pupils away from the West London Free School, also in Hammersmith. I’m all in favour of competition. Rather, it’s because Livingstone’s ideas about education are so wrongheaded.

According to the Times, Livingstone believes children should learn through play rather than be subjected to ‘Victorian’ rote learning. In this way, they’ll discover how to ‘solve problems’ and be ‘creative’, instead of being forced to memorise ‘irrelevant’ facts that can be accessed ‘at the click of a mouse’. Exams are dismissed as ‘random memory tests’ and have ‘far more to do with league tables than learning’. On it goes, one cliché after another. Like most people who peddle this progressive snake oil, Livingstone labours under the impression that his ideas are bold and exciting, a radical departure from the status quo.