If you take the following sentences alone, you will think that Simon J is attacking Latin. In fact they are part of an article furiously attacking the decision of OCR to reduce the syllabus of Latin and Greek at GCSE:

'I studied classics to A level. I found them enjoyable, irrelevant and a dreadful cost to my wider education, which I have struggled to rectify ever since.'

You will find the article here, available for a few days. After that you will have to pay to read it. It is a bit of knockabout journalism by someone who doesn't have to make policy or take responsibility for decisions, so just enjoy it. SJ does not mention that this move by OCR is a response to AQA's dropping of Latin and Greek, which effectively made it impossible for state schools to enter candidates for these languages. AQA had the pared-down syllabus which state schools found possible to teach, and OCR was favoured by independent schools as being more demanding.

Let me quote SJ's closing paragraphs. At least his 'irrelevant' Classics A levels seem to have fitted him to write entertaingly.

"These regulators are like Great War generals, swilling port in the château far from the trenches, sharing jokes with their staff officers and watching figures on maps. They lead not by inspiration but by numbers. How many gerunds did we send over the top today? Were they fully supported by past participles? Let’s switch a hundred irregular verbs to the vocative and shoot all ablative absolutes on sight. The Latins and Greeks are weakening. Cut their numbers to give them room for manoeuvre.

"This is how standards decline. Why learn 470 Latin words if Ms Kelly will make Oxford admit you with just 450? Why read Greek literature when the Government will give you an A* for learning 365 words? Why bother to be an inspiring teacher, when Ms Kelly pays you only to count words and tick boxes? Why throw your heart and soul into running a school when higher authority has no trust in your professionalism? Come to that, why be a teacher at all when idiots like this are in charge?"