Austrian pupils will soon study ChatGPT more than Cicero in upper secondary schools throughout the country.
On January 29, education minister Christoph Wiederkehr confirmed reports that his ministry was planning to cut Latin lessons by a third – from 12 hours per week over the four years of upper secondary school down to eight hours.
This would mean at humanities-focused schools, Latin lessons would be reduced from three hours per week (over four years) down to two – starting in the 2027 fall semester.
The freed-up time will be used to teach youngsters how to better understand Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deal with it critically. Moreover, Wiederkehr wants to introduce a new subject called “media and democracy”.
“I care about Latin as part of the humanistic basic education, but other topics have become more important in the last decades”, Wiederkehr told state broadcaster ORF on January 29.
Beate Meinl-Reisinger – Austria’s foreign minister and leader of Wiederkehr’s small liberal Neos party – seconded her colleague’s plans, writing on X: “I really enjoyed studying Latin in school, but the world is turning faster with new technologies. And it does not wait for Austria. It’s high time to arrive in the 21st century.”
Wiederkehr also received praise from UN agency UNICEF, which rejoiced that the new subject “media and democracy” would help young people “to be autonomous and safe online”. UNICEF spokesperson Klara Kgrovic-Baroian added: “Every kid needs to know about fake news, cyber-mobbing and grooming as well as the safe us of AI tools.”
Others were more critical.
Herbert Weiss, representative of the influential Secondary School Teachers Union, called Wiederkehr’s plans an “attack on schools”, adding that it was wrong to cut back on teaching language skills in times of globalisation.
He added: “The promotion of digital and democratic education should not be at the expense of those subjects that enable critical thinking, textual competence, argumentation skills and democratic understanding in the first place.”
The Austrian Professors’ Union, a teachers’ association, warned the move might “weaken general education”.
Philologist Nina Aringer from Vienna University told ORF: “I am a big fan of this content [AI and media and democracy] but integrating it into all subjects seems to me to make much more sense than creating a new school subject from scratch where there is still no curriculum and no adequate training.”
Hermann Brückl, education spokesman for the opposition Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) called Wiederkehr’s plans “a step backwards”, adding: “He does not tackle the real issues but chooses symbolic measures which undermine basic education standards.”
Brückl also praised how Latin learning can help shape analytical thinking: “Latin is not a ‘dead language’ but, rather, a central foundation for language comprehension, logic, systematic thinking and rule-based structures.
“It is precisely these skills that are indispensable today for programming, algorithms and the critical use of AI. Anyone who seriously believes that artificial intelligence can be understood without teaching solid linguistic and analytical foundations misunderstands the nature of modern technology – or is deliberately pursuing a policy of levelling down,” he said.
Austria has a wide variety of upper secondary schools – which include humanities-focused schools as well as more technically or economically oriented institutions. Those pupils who opt for a humanities-focused school usually do so because of the increased focus on “classic education” including more lessons in Latin, history and philosophy.
