Among the evergreen jokes of the British comedy troupe Monty Python is a grammar gag in their 1979 film Life of Brian. Caught daubing graffiti on the walls of Pontius Pilate’s palace by a Roman centurion, the hapless wannabe activist Brian is held at daggerpoint, not for vandalism or insurrection but for getting the Latin for “Romans go home” wrong. Brian’s punishment is to write the sentence out correctly 100 times before sunrise. The joke’s appeal depends partly on its silly-ass slide from totalitarian horror into a fear of traditional language teaching, and partly on the communal sheepishness that so often accompanies Britons holidaying abroad as they try to navigate the local lingo.
Decades on, extraordinarily, the skit has lost none of its touchstones. Learning by rote and punishment by writing lines have featured in Tory prescriptions for a cure to educational ills, while command of languages at school level has taken a triple hit: harder exams, a critical, resource-driven staffing crisis, and a reported post-Brexit reluctance among some students – and their parents – to commit time and effort to the languages of a Europe to which they no longer belong.
