[INDOLOGY] training in Sanskrit composition

[Antonia Ruppel]

I cannot give a comprehensive answer to your question, Dipak, but here's
what I know:

- In Germany, depending on the school, Latin may be the first, second or
third foreign language (my own experience in the 90s: Latin from 5th grade
(age 10/11), French from 7th, Ancient Greek from 9th; this was at a
so-called 'humanist' secondary school).

- In the UK, the situation is similar, I think - at the school I started
teaching at a year ago, Latin is offered from Year 7 (around age 11) and
some Greek from Year 8 (then introduced properly in Year 9); there are
schools that offer Latin from Year 9, when students then take it for three
years up to GCSE. A number of schools also offer it as morning, lunch-time
or after-school clubs: the Classical languages are mostly offered in
fee-paying schools, thus restricting access to them for many families. To
strive towards greater equality, many teachers at state schools thus make a
point to offer these 'privileged' subjects as much as they can.

And then there are places like St James Schools, who are involved in
bringing Sanskrit back to UK schools. (I started teaching at the boys'
school last summer; we're working hard to integrate Sanskrit into the
Classics department and teach Latin, Greek and Sanskrit in parallel. At the
boys' school, we start in Year 7 and offer Sanskrit all the way up to A
Level; the girls' school start in Year 6; and Sanskrit is taught all
throughout the Junior School (ages 5-10), mostly in the form of chanting
and calligraphy/writing, but with quite a bit of actual grammar and
vocabulary for all those who show an aptitude for it.)

- In the US, I believe, Latin is taught a) rarely pre-college (and Greek
hardly at all), and b) mostly only from 9th grade (i.e. in high school);
but I know e.g. Montessori schools that offer it earlier.

I hope this is helpful.

All the best,
      Antonia

On 1 September 2015 at 13:01, Dipak Bhattacharya <dipak.d2004 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> This makes quite a different situation from that in India. "Composition"
> meaning translation *into* Sanskrit *from* a diffrent language is in the
> Indian curricula from the secondary stage. I thank Professor Gombrich for
> the clarification.
>
> I point to a relevant topic. The position of Sanskrit in the Indian
> schools has now been touched upon in the List. This calls attention to the
> European Classical languages in the Western schools. Can it be expected
> that someone threw light on the position of the Classical languages in the
> European and American schools. As I knew indirectly French/English was the
> general preference as the second languaghe and Classical as the third. Is
> it still the preferred combination?
>
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 4:52 PM, richard gombrich <richardgombrich at mac.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I am afraid that what recent contributors have written about "Sanskrit
>> composition" in the Oxford final exams is a bit misleading. In this
>> context, "composition" meant translation from a set passage of English,
>> usually from a literary work by a well known author. This precisely
>> followed how Latin and Greek were taught in schools when I was young -- and
>> for centuries before that. No originality was involved.
>> Richard Gombrich
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-- 
 ANTONIA RUPPEL
 est modus in rebus


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