Time in school is limited. Are we requiring the right kinds of math? Who even needs it? Charles Ungerleider is a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia who writes a blog on education and took two years of Latin in three years. SHARES In BC a student seeking undergraduate admissions to arts must have taken Pre-Calculus 11 or Foundations of Mathematics 12. Do the benefits add up? Photo via Shutterstock. When I was in Grade 8, I enrolled in Latin 1 “because,” my mother said, “you can’t get into university without Latin.” This view was corroborated by the school guidance counsellor and the parents of all my friends. Going to university was not a matter of discussion as far as my parents were concerned.