Hello and welcome to Regional Classics, a podcast from the University of Oxford,
which reflects and celebrates the diverse voices of Oxford classicists past and present from different parts of the UK.
All the while creating thought provoking conversations,
breaking down barriers and showing that if you want to study the ancient world, any aspect of politics,
history, art, science, literature, culture and much more than you can observe,
classicists do not and need not come from only a narrow cross-section of society.
In this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by three Scottish classicists: Professor Bill Allan,
a fellow and tutor at University College, where he specialises in Greek literature.
Dr Arlene Holmes Henderson, a St Hilda's Classics alumna and now a senior research fellow in classics education,
and Jessica Curry, a third year classics undergraduate at St Hugh's College.
Thank you all very much for joining me today. So, Bill, I know that you're from Fife originally.
Can you remember when you first became aware of the study of the ancient world?
Yep, I grew up in a small village in Fife, Bowhill, a former coal mining area, and then went to high school in Glenrothes, Glenrothes High School.
And in those days, there was still the possibility of doing Latin and classical studies at the school.
That's no longer the case now because since my teacher retired, he hasn't been replaced by a classics teacher.
But at the time I was very lucky to get the chance to do Latin as well as classical studies.
And then I was sort of headhunted to do Greek as a kind of experiment.
And so I got to do Greek kind of off-curriculum. And I was further headhunted by the religious studies teacher to do classical Hebrew.
And so I did classical Hebrew A-level in the lunch hour. So although it was a state school, it was it was you know,
there were a few teachers there who were very academically oriented and they spotted a talent for languages and me and were very kind and supportive.
And as a result,
I became the first person in my family to go to university and and I'm able to pay the mortgage from teaching ancient Greek and Latin,
which is pretty cool. So on the whole, it's been a story with a pretty happy ending.
I'm very glad to hear it and fascinating, too, that you got that chance to study Hebrew as well.
And Arlene, how about you? Yeah, but pretty similar to Bill, actually.
And so I grew up in South Lanarkshire, which is near Glasgow.
So I come from a village about 20 miles south of Glasgow.
And I had absolutely no access to the study of the ancient world whatsoever until I got to high school.
And on my very first day of high school, I had Latin lesson and I opened up Ecce Romani, which was the course that was used.
That's a publication by the Scottish Classics Group, which was used a lot in Scottish high schools.
And I met Cornelia and Flavia and Marcus and I just loved Latin and I just read the first couple of sentences of this Latin text book and I got it.
I loved being able to spot some English words and the Latin words.
And unlike many of the people that I have spoken to since it had exposure to classical mythology in primary school,
having had absolutely none of that, I had my first way in as an 11 year old at high school.
And for me, that was a voyage of discovery into the classical world.
And I have never looked back. Fantastic. And Jess? sure.
So, yeah, I'm also from kind of near Glasgow, I'm from Inverclyde and I'm from a village there,
and my first exposure to classics was actually kind of similar.
Again, was also from getting to study it at high school.
And we had the choice of Latin or classical studies. I'm not sure if I should say on this.
I actually had the opposite experience. I think I was happier not doing Latin and I'd ask the tutor, the teacher,
if we could switch to classical studies because I didn't immediately connect with the language. But then it was halfway through my kind of national 5 course and we started studying Catullus.
And so we started being able to actually translate with the Latin that we were learning, and that was when I really got hooked on it.
So, yeah, that was great. I should say that I study at St Hugh's with someone who didn't do classical civilisations or Latin, however.
So I feel like we've all kind of come from different backgrounds of studying at the school.
But I know those people at Oxford to do either. Well, exactly.
And I mean, certainly at the moment, I think less than one percent of Scottish students do have access to classical subjects at school.
So it's something that is quite rare. Firstly, what are your thoughts on that and how that provision potentially could be improved?
But also, what would you say to those students that haven't got the opportunity to study to school right now,
but might still want to be able to access the ancient world in some way and find that passion for it that you've all found at various points?
Well, I think I mentioned earlier about my teacher retiring and not being replaced.
And as I understand it, the PGDE in Latin and in the classical studies has been reintroduced to Moray House in Edinburgh.
Is that really true - Arlene? You know more about this than I do. I think the hope is that it's going to be reintroduced.
I think it's up for consultation at the moment.
So there'll be a great step forward, because obviously when headmasters and headmistress see people retiring and they think,
oh, well, we'll have to play some of the classes, you need a stock of well qualified teachers there to fill the gaps.
So if we can produce more in Scotland and not not import them or rely on important classics teachers,
they'll certainly help maybe even increase the number of people teaching Latin or the classical studies, in Scottish high schools.
And I'd say to people who are thinking of or who are interested in classics and who haven't had a chance to
do it at school because not everybody is as lucky as we were to have Latin or Greek or classical studies.
At high school is read widely yourself, obviously study,
the subjects that you most enjoy at school that are available and then apply for classics just the same,
because every university has the equivalent of what we call course 2 in Oxford where you begin Latin or Greek from scratch.
And some of my best students, I've been a tutor for 17 years at Univ and in the 17 years some of my best students have been course 2 students.
You know, by the time they do the first public exams, after five terms,
they've caught up with and overtaken people who've been to Eton or Westminster.
They go on. I've even had a student who got the top first.
in Greats and she was a course 2 student. So, you know, with hard work and dedication and enthusiasm.
You can absolutely thrive in in any university in Britain.
I would say on this question of access to classics in Scotland, there's a real disconnect between policy ambition and policy delivery.
So I was involved with curriculum for excellence in the early stages when I was actually a high school teacher in Scotland in the mid 2000s.
And the fact of the matter is that Classics actually is considered a mainstream subject in curriculum for excellence.
So Latin is a language alongside modern languages in curriculum for excellence.
There is no distinction made for Latin.
And so we have a real possibility for Latin to be rolled out widely in Scottish schools because the policy support is there. in the same breath,
Classical studies is a social subject in curriculum for excellence alongside modern studies, history and other social subjects.
So at a policy level, there is absolutely no reason why every child in Scotland should not have access to classical studies.
Bill is absolutely right. The problem lies with the lack of supply of qualified teachers, with registration, with the general teaching council of Scotland.
So until we have an investment at strategic level in the training of teachers in order
to roll out the supply of teachers to teach Latin and classical studies in Scotland,
we are not going to be able to fulfil that policy ambition and the withdrawal of classical Greek by the Scottish
Qualifications Authority,
means that it is simply impossible for young people in Scotland to sit qualifications in classical Greek with SQA and they,
maybe have to sit the English classical Greek qualification.
And that obviously is a really sad set of circumstances.
It is indeed. But what about at the primary level? Well, this is where there's actually some good news to report.
We have been working hard with the Classical Association of Scotland and the Scottish National Centre for
Languages (SILT) to ways access to Latin using Scotland's one plus two languages policy,
which allows for the teaching of Latin as the third language in Scottish primary schools.
Scottish pupils as their first language will have either English or Gaelic as their second language.
They have the opportunity to learn any other modern language, and they will also study before they go to high school.
A third language, which could be any other modern language, or they have the option of studying an ancient language.
And we've had a lot of success in widening access to the study of Latin, particularly in certain local authorities.
And I would say that Glasgow City Council has been a real pioneer in this regard.
They were one of the first local authorities to work with the Classical Association of Scotland to roll out the teaching of
Latin in primary schools in areas that previously didn't offer Latin as a language to pupils in those schools.
And we've seen really positive feedback from pupils and from parents, from teachers,
from school leavers who are delighted that young people have the opportunity to study an ancient language that their parents
and their teachers didn't have that opportunity to study when they were at school in Glasgow or in other parts of Scotland.
So, you know, we've talked about some of the disappointing aspects in terms of access to classics in Scottish schools today.
But I think that things are changing at the primary level.
And so there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon thanks to the one plus two languages policy at the primary level.
Fantastic. I'm interested in what led the three of you then to choose to come to English universities.
I mean, in Scotland, obviously, there is the difference in the funding situation.
So perhaps there had to be greater external reasons for you to come to study in England and then later to teach and work there.
What were those journeys like for the three of you? So in terms of, I guess, the reasons I wanted to apply to Oxford,
I think it was quite intuitive to me once I knew that I really wanted to study
classics and I did know I really wanted to study classics by fifth year.
I think I just kind of fell in love with the subject. And I think as someone who wasn't sure entirely what they wanted to do after university,
it was kind of this perfect mash up of of my interests of literature and history and almost politics in a way as well,
except that's quite a long time ago. And then in terms of my process of applying to Oxford,
I was really lucky in that my Latin teacher was really supportive and kind of gave me a practise interview, which was really helpful.
My family were really excited for me to apply. So again, like all of these things that helped with the process.
And I think the other thing which propelled me was I think I was I think I was lucky to apply to St Hugh's as well at the time,
just insofar as I found the interview, I think Hugh's is used to having people who maybe perform.
This is not true of all Scottish people. But for me, as I was coming, my Latin was less strong than my essay subjects.
And I think St Hugh's was very interested to have someone who might not necessarily have the highest mark at Mods, which turned out to be true,
but was was maybe going to benefit from the four year structure, which they had actually spoken to me a little bit about.
At an open day, I was lucky enough to go the tutors and tell me about that.
And then I guess I actually can definitely understand your point of view.
When I studied classics at Oxford, I was in a very similar position where I much preferred the history and the archaeology than other aspects.
And and it was taking that long term view over the. That's the benefit really of the four year course.
I know, Bill, originally you said that you were the first person in your family to go to university.
Can you talk a bit more about how your background influenced your Classics journey
at that point and what people's perceptions were about the study of classics,
especially if it wasn't something that was hugely mainstream? Yeah, I mean, my mum, so I grew up in a single parent family.
So it's me and my mum and my brother.
And my uncles and aunties, nobody's been to university and nobody knew what Classics was so later on when I became a classicist and I became an academic,
people might bump into my mom in the street, say, how's William? How's his French coming along? from my mom, you know, Latin, Greek.
It was a language.
So as far as she knew, she told people that I was a professor of French because that was basically the only language she could remember.
And so people would say, oh, you still teaching French at Cambridge? Yeah, kind of.
Yeah, sort of. So I mean, the plus side of not having any pressure from your family to go to university is that
you go there because you want to go there and you think it's going to be interesting.
And there was no pressure on me to study a particular subject or to go to university or anything like that.
And as I said, I owe everything to my teachers who spotted something in me as a 12, 13 year old and encouraged me.
And yeah, I hadn't been out of Fife. I think I'd been to Blackpool on holiday once when I was 11.
But otherwise, you know, we didn't have a car. I never went out of Fife.
And for me the distant metropolis was Edinburgh. And I wanted to, it didn't occur to me that I would study anywhere else.
So I put one university on my UCAS form, Edinburgh,
and got in luckily and and then I think everybody in Edinburgh department had been to Balliol at some point
because there's a very strong connection between Glasgow and Edinburgh and St Andrews and Balliol over the years.
And so they'd all studied as undergraduates or graduates there by by chance.
And so when I said to them, I'm thinking of becoming an academic, they all said, no, don't do it.
It will ruin your life, become an advocate, which is a Scottish equivalent of a barrister.
And I said, well, maybe I'll try that, but I'll try, try and do a PhD, because in Oxford,
the biggest, most famous department in the world, I knew that by then.
I didn't know that when I was 17. And so I disregarded that advice and I went to Balliol and did a PhD and then eventually ended up here.
I always wanted to be a teacher. I was a high school teacher between finishing my PhD and coming back into academia, which I loved.
Had I not got back into the kind of rat race of academia at that stage, I would have been very happy as a high school teacher in classics.
Yeah.
So that's I didn't have any there was no pressure to go to university or and certainly no pressure to do classics because nobody knew what it was.
But it was purely I enjoyed languages.
I seemed to be quite good at them and particularly Greek literature as soon as I read the Iliad and Odyssey, I was hooked and just took it from there.
That's interesting that both you and Arlene are now academics, but I've also had that time being schoolteachers.
How Arlene first perhaps how was that influenced the way that you've then kind of come back to academia?
Has it given you a different perspective on the study of classics? Yeah, I think it has.
It's giving me a reality check because I know what life is like being the person at the front of the room enacting educational policy.
I know what it's like to have to enthuse thirty people about ancient literature and to
have to do the marking and the parents evenings and deal with staffroom politics.
And the life of a teacher is incredibly challenging.
It is not a part time job the way that it's sometimes portrayed in the media.
So I think the time that I spent as a classroom teacher, I was in schools for more than a decade with the teacher and in leadership positions.
And I think that has been incredibly useful for me as an academic, working and researching classics education,
because the conversations that I have with academic colleagues and now with policymakers
are all the more credible and authentic from the point of view of knowledge exchange.
And I know in your research that you focussed quite a lot on on ancient rhetoric,
which must be something that you employ in the classroom itself, in that very oral style of communication and teaching,
that obviously is one thing that we do gain from the ancient world,
certainly is our use of language and probably something that is very much practiced within the Oxford degree.
What are some of those other sort of skills that are developed by the study of classics and and how have you both experienced them
as far as whether it be the student desk or is somebody kind of on the other side of that tutorial system or academic relationship?
I think, again, I've mentioned this before, but I really like the kind of I think it's like interdisciplinary nature of the Oxford course.
So if you've got an interest, you probably have it developed over the first year and a half of the Oxford course.
You do modules in almost pure literature, like when you're looking at the Iliad, for example.
But then you also have this module called texts and contexts,
which I really enjoyed because it took a period of time in classical history that I didn't know much about at all.
So that's the kind of classical Athens. And you're looking at a text which maybe you're looking at Athenians playwrights,
but at the same time you're having to consider the cultural setting of that.
You're looking at any archaeological evidence you have that would intersect with it.
So in terms of the skills that comes from that, I think it gives you a really interesting way of looking at the world, I think.
And then and then the skills that you kind of want to develop more as you move into your third and fourth year,
you kind of get to pick from something like 80 modules, I think it is now.
And so I really I really like writing arguments, building literature analysis.
So I'm doing a lot of literature and history modules.
Some people are much more interested in linguistics, so maybe that's the kind of skills that they're building.
Yeah, fantastic. What are your thoughts on that Arlene? So reflecting both on my own time as an undergraduate and now as a member of faculty.
I think one of the key skills that the study of classics helps cultivate is communication.
We are able to communicate both in written form and also orally.
And we know from a number of surveys that what employers are looking for is people who are able to communicate effectively and are
able to evidence their arguments and are able to show that they can communicate with a number of diversely position stakeholders.
And that is something which we can be really proud of as graduates of classics.
I think it's something that we are not particularly good at promoting and talking about.
So, yes, obviously, as somebody who researches rhetoric is something which I'm deeply embedded in.
But I think the communication skills that come from studying classics are something that we could do better to talk about.
Going back though Arlene to when you came to Saint Hilda's to do classics as an undergraduate,
I'm interested in how you felt that your Scottish background
And your lived experience to that point influenced both your experience as an undergraduate
and then also the parts of classics that appeal to you and the things that you enjoyed.
So I think my Scottish background contributed to a number of giggles initially.
I guess the elephant in the room that we perhaps haven't got so far is accents,
we can't get away from the fact that as Scots we come to Oxford and sound different.
And this was definitely something that I experienced very quickly when I came
as an undergraduate to Oxford and with friends initially in Freshers Week.
It was just funny, I would say, you know, I need to find where Boots is.
And they would be like, Oh, that's a funny. She says, bits, bits, bits.
And they would all kind of repeat it. And it was OK. Like I didn't find it.
I didn't think of upsetting because I'm somebody who is quite proud of my Scottish accent.
So it was just funny. And I was very proud because when I went to my first MILC class.
So that's the kind of morning language class the classicists have.
James Morwood at the time and a great teacher complimented me on the way that I read Greek.
like he thought that the Glaswegian pronunciation of Greek vowels was really very beautiful.
So that really made me feel happy about my Glaswegian accent and made me feel proud of it.
But I hadn't realised that a lot of the words that I was using were Scots words.
I didn't I just hadn't realised that these weren't English words.
So I used the word fankle and I got something in a fankle and I didn't realise that, like English people didn't know what the fine for me.
So for people who are listening, if you get something, in a fankle it's all twisted and knotted up and you need to untie it.
And I say something was shuggely and they were like, what does shuggely mean?
And it means it's kind of like unsteady.
And I said, this dessert that was served at Hilda's dining room one day was sleggery, I really don't like sleggery food.
What does sleggery mean? It means it's slimy. Hust to clarify, the chocolate mousse is very delicious.
The food at St Hilda's it is actually delicious. I had a very happy time. It's just that my personal preference is not for that style of dessert.
And my English friends were just like, oh my goodness, she's speaking a different language.
We're learning Latin, we're learning Greek and now we're learning Scots!
So I think my my Scottish background really did come with me to Oxford and maybe maybe I did add a certain sprinkle of something to my time at Hilda's.
And Bill when you came to Balliol and then later to Univ, how do you think your heritage has influenced you?
Yeah, I mean, come on, as a graduate students was a wee bit different because you know, so much more international.
I mean, no, Balliol also had this huge graduate community just outside the the main college site.
And so, you know, you're meeting people from not just over, probably not probably about 60 percent of the people are overseas students.
And there were other Scots there, mainly from Glasgow University, because of the Snell scholarship that exists between Glasgow and Balliol.
And yeah, so, you know, I wasn't as conscious.
I'm sure I'd have been an undergraduate. I would have been much more conscious about that than I was as a graduate student.
But what Arlene said reminds me, there's a great podcast by Val McDermid who was also in Hilda's.
She's a great Scottish writer. You might know her books.
She's dear to my heart, not just cos she's a great writer but because she sponsors Raith Rovers football team.
You've got Val McDermid dot com on their on their shirts.
My local team. I mean there's a wonderful podcast on the Oxford University website of McDermid's experiences as a
as a as a Fife student coming to become a Hildebeast as they were called then back in the US.
No Bill, we're the Hildababes. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, she she describes herself as in those terms back and back in the day.
I mean, I think the other elephant in the room, to use the expression that we used on this topic is, is fees.
I mean, if you're getting like I can comment on this better than I can, but I mean, coming from a background like mine where there is no money,
but you've got the chance to go to university because, you know, you're bright enough and people teachers encourage you, would you?
OK, the Oxford tutorial system is unique. And, you know,
you're getting a bit of value added there so that you're not getting maybe if you're going to Durham, Bristol or other English universities,
but if you. My position, is it worth nine grand a year, would it occur to you to go to university outside Scotland if you can go for free in Scotland?
That's a huge issue. Individual pupils and their parents you know have got to discuss and think about
because if you're getting the added prestige and kudos of the Oxford degree, but there are costs as well as benefits for Scottish students specifically.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that a few people from my school had said at the time.
I was applying the sense of there are so many great universities in Scotland why are you
going to pay for something which you can have subsidised by staying within the country.
I think I think I was lucky to not think of the debt insofar as the student loan service (SAS) can cover your fees.
They also can offer a maintenance loan, which sort of covers as much as that would be for my college system.
It's almost exactly the same, which means that the only thing you're self funding is,
is food and anything doing out with that so you can have immediate cost.
Was it something which I was I was lucky enough not to have to worry about too much with both of those combined.
I know of Scottish people from my college who are in a similar position.
who benefited from one of the college bursaries.
So I think these things can sort of ease the dilemma to a certain extent.
And I think for me, at point I had the offer from Oxford, I would find it very difficult to give up just because, like you say,
or maybe maybe partly as well, because of the prestige and the kudos as well as the fact that I was keen to do the tutorial system.
But yes, it's only my third year graduate next year.
So the fact that the loans do have to be paid back at some point has started to occur to me, which it hadn't done at all,
because then I tried to think of them in my head is almost sort of like a tax for going to university insofar
as they will get paid back and hopefully quite small instalments and only once you are earning a certain wealth threshold.
So, yeah, that's how I kind of try to think about them in my head. And that was the Trade-Off I made to come here.
And I think it may be worth at this point saying that there are also a couple of initiatives which are being run by the university,
which interested perspective Scottish applicants could have a look at.
One is Oxford for Scotland. So this is the university, the Central Universities Outreach Initiative,
where prospective applicants can go on the Oxford for Scotland website and see how the university is supporting Scottish applicants.
I am on that webpage because I'm one of the co-founders of that project and actually
Jessica's head of house Dame Elish Angiolini is also a driving force behind that initiative.
The other is the Clydeside Project, which features a number of current Scottish undergraduates who have got profiles featured on that website,
talking about their motivations for applying for a range of subjects at Oxford
and saying that they are happy to be contacted by prospective applicants.
And they will provide support and assistance and mentoring to prospective applicants who are interested in applying to Oxford and Cambridge.
So they are two websites which we will link to together with this podcast.
Indeed we will. And do you feel that there are any other ways in which not just Oxford classics,
but classicists more generally can try and help make the ancient world a bit more accessible to people from all
over and particularly from Scotland or any other other ways that these barriers can be broken down.
Do you think? I mentor with the Clydeside project and it's definitely something which is worth signing up to
I think it's a really good way for if you're under 18, especially if you aren't used to having small class sizes, I think it's good.
We just can get used to speaking about maybe your passion for classics,
which is something which is really helpful when it comes to any potential interviews.
And I also last year I worked with Oxford Classics Society, and one of the things which we did, which we found had quite a lot of interest,
was just making the talks that we were doing because they were all in so many
ways available for the school students as well as all university members,
which is such a I mean, it's the zero cost thing to do. And we did find that there was lots of interest to people who were 15, 16,
and just wanted to find out a bit more about classics and see if it was something that they were engaged about to listen in.
So we had positive responses for that. So I think just kind of sharing resources a bit is helpful because there are people who want to take them up.
So a myth I would like to dispel is about who outreach events are for and potential applicants sitting in Scotland.
who might just have completed national qualifications.
National 4, or national five, may be sitting browsing university websites and see that this event or talk about this event is aimed at.
students in year 12 or year 13 or people who are sitting GCSE and A-levels
and having been one of those students reading those outreach websites,
I can absolutely see that it is challenging to understand what that means and whether that means, well, does that include me?
I'm Scottish. I haven't done GCSEs, I'm not in year 12, am I allowed to attend this event?
And what I want to say is absolutely. This includes you.
I'm sorry if there are still parts of the university, either Oxford or other English universities, who aren't using Scottish terminology,
who aren't talking about nationals or Highers or advanced highers or S4, S5, S6, we absolutely should be.
Scottish students are one hundred percent welcome at outreach events and one hundred percent welcome to apply to Oxford.
If you have any doubt whatsoever about whether year 12 matches up with S5 or what this terminology means, please just email and ask.
And as somebody who's been through the Scottish system, if anybody is listening to this, who works in outreach and feels like, oh,
they don't fully understand this system and how this translates into how they can advertise their events,
I'm really happy to help them do that translation process. Onto a slightly more general question.
Now, I think about the nature. We've talked briefly about how interdisciplinary Classics is and how it is very definitely multifaceted.
And we've all got different research interests within it. But I'd like to ask the three of you, what does Classics mean to you?
And that might mean in terms of the word itself or it might be a more kind of personal
Your reflections on what Classics has meant to you so far, so far - a steady salary!
I mean, I think if you're in humanities or social sciences, the main reason to do the subjects is, because it's fun.
I mean, that's true of every subject.
As an undergraduate, you choose to go to university to do classics because that's your favourite subject and you enjoy it.
As we mentioned earlier, we have the luxury in Britain, unlike in some countries where if you do Latin or Greek at university,
you're kind of funnelled into Latin and Greek teaching at schools or university.
In Britain, we've got the luxury that if you've got a good two, one or above degree in classics from any British university,
because they're all excellent universities, you can do basically anything, you know.
And that's reflected in my undergraduate that at Uni on the average year, 1/3 will go into
law conversion, a third go into the city and finance and various descriptions,
and the other third will do all the other interesting jobs in the world from being
theatre directors or writers or classics teachers or professional rugby players.
I mean, you name it, they do everything. So it should never be a barrier.
You are listening to this and your parents are saying you'll never get a job.
Just say no. Actually, I will. The statistics show, you know, all these things online about save the humanities, save English.
You know, the people at the top of so many companies, including tech companies, computer computer programming companies, Google,
the people at the top did humanities subjects, 80 percent of them, they did French and Music University, and then they moved into that field.
So I think we're very lucky in Britain that if you've got a passion for classics,
you can pursue it at university without it narrowing down your career options in any way.
But for me, classics is fun. I mean, I do it. I do because I enjoy teaching.
I happen to be pretty good at Latin and Greek. I enjoy it and I'm very happy.
But the main reason to do it is it's fun as well as, you know, the grand intellectual reasons of plumbing
the depths of the human condition, which classics obviously does as well.
How about you Jess? Yeah, I think exactly.
It's just incredibly fun and it's something so exciting as well and quite special to be.
I mean, my age and to know nothing at all.
And then to go back to two thousand years and be reading some love poetry or whatever it is that your main interest is,
would be like, oh, well, these people, knew nothing as well, or they knew lots.
I find it really exciting to be reading something from someone so long ago and going, oh, well, I can feel that same way.
So you get this really engaging mix of kind of big questions, but also individual connections.
And yeah, I think I think I think that's something which is quite special.
I'm sure everyone who does the humanities thinks that the subject helps them connect to, you know, these big cultural questions in the best way.
But I do think that's true for classics.
And I think it's having such a popular resurgence that you kind of know that this is something quite universal.
So not everyone's going to decide that their passion for classics means that they want to study for years,
for years here, but we've seen kind of like a resurgence in Madeline Miller Song of Achilles
So I got into roman history because of the Robert Harris Cicero books
So, yeah, I think it's really nice to study this thing, which I do think everyone everyone wants to know about the ancient world to some extent.
And certainly. And Arlene, what does it mean to you? I'm very much like Bill and Jess,
I think Classics is a really exciting subject.
I mean, at the moment I'm doing a lot of work with policymakers and classics doesn't really mean an awful lot to them,
because as far as they're concerned, they work with the terminology of qualifications.
So in Scotland we have Latin and we have classical studies.
That's what classics means in Scotland and in England, it's Latin, classical Greek, ancient history and classical civilisation.
So that's what we're working with at the moment. As you know, there is a lot of discussion,
some of it heated at the moment about what Classics means and whether that term is helpful or actually unhelpful.
And those conversations, I imagine, are going to run on for quite some time.
Twitter is a place where those conversations are happening in a very public way.
So anyone who's interested in this classic Twitter is the place to go to be part of those conversations.
How has though the ancient past and I suppose maybe Bill come to you first, informed your understanding of the world today?
So not just it obviously is your job and it's your career and it's something that you take a lot of enjoyment from.
But are there any aspects that you think maybe historically, politically that feed into your understanding of the world in twenty twenty one?
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, I've been doing classics for many years and one thing I've learnt from my extensive study of the past is that the past was largely rubbish.
And I'm really, really happy that I'm alive today when people don't die willy nilly in childbirth or because they've got a toothache.
So I'm a firm believer in human progress.
Nevertheless, there are certain things in the human condition that remain big questions that remain fundamentally the same.
And although they are addressed in different ways, in different cultures, are pretty pancultural issues to do with morality,
life and death and love and all the big issues that make life worth living.
And, you know, to read Sappho on love or to read Aeschylus on Justice or to read Cicero on Cicero is a great fun.
It's a cliche, but like many cliches, it's true that you see history repeat itself and you can see things that you've read about in
Thucydides or Herodotus or Suetonius literally happening on the front pages of your newspaper.
And it's interesting to compare and contrast different cultures'
responses to them as well with all the stuff that we already alluded to about transferable
skills and what classics that sets you up for the real world beyond college university.
But it is true that having that awareness of historical events and especially when you read them in textual forms,
you've understood not just the kind of the facts as far as we know, but also you can read that bias.
And you've kind of seen it through a lens of a contemporary author at the time
does give you such a perspective on modern modern politics around the world.
Arlene and Jess, are there any other ways as well that you feel that the ancient world informed your understanding of modern life?
One of the most exciting ways I've interacted with classics was by seeing a production from the Trojan Women Project, which they they were recently based in Glasgow.
And it was and this is a group of Syrian refugees who are now living in Glasgow, rebuilding their lives,
there who put on a performance of the Trojan women which is this kind of very ancient anti war play and listening to interviews from the cast members,
they kind of speak about finding that voice to process this horrible trauma.
But with the framework of a really ancient play and I think it's very, very powerful to watch,
because you understand that these are people who can understand this classical play in a way that you never will, never will.
But I think it really did show a sort of enduring power to the script, amongst many other things.
I would say the exhibition at the Hunterian museum in Glasgow of the Romans in Scotland was something that I really enjoyed visiting.
So they have this permanent display called The Last Frontier.
And as somebody who had grown up in the west of Scotland and somebody who had studied the higher and advanced Latin course,
I only visited this exhibition a few years ago and couldn't believe that actually
there were a number of pieces of material culture on display in the west of Scotland,
which brought to life the legacy of the Romans and the west of Scotland,
which had come from places near where I had grown up and where I had gone to school.
And yet I had at no point in my school career known anything about them, didn't know that they exist and hadn't gone to see them.
So I think that there are ways of entwining the ancient past with learning about the ancient past and museums that are a great place to do that.
And a project I'm working on now with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research
Council is trying to do some of the joining of the dots between museums and schools.
It's called improving access to classical studies in museums and schools.
And I think that bringing the ancient world to life for young people by connecting
museum curators and school teachers is something that can be really very powerful.
And I would love to see more young people in Scottish schools learning about the legacy of the Romans and Scotland through material culture.
And that's a fantastic way to start to bring our episode to a close.
So before I do that, I want to just ask if there's anything that any of you would like to talk about or mention or highlight,
and if not, then the final question. Any myths or barriers that you feel that we haven't quite covered or that you would like to dispel?
I mean, I think we've I think we've successfully busted most myths today.
So we busted the myth that we're not studying a subject that's relevant to the modern world.
We've busted the myth. The classics is a dead end career wise.
I mean, as far as Oxford is concerned, then the main myth is busting .
The myth, that classics, per se is the subject is elitist, which is absurd.
I mean, as a subject, it's no more elitist per se than physics or chemistry or English.
It's structural things that lead to elitism.
And the best way of breaking them down is obviously we mentioned the return of PGDE at Moray House and hopefully Latin and classical studies,
if not Greek being more widely available in Scotland in the future.
I guess another myth you sometimes meet at outreach events is where people come in.
They say, oh, I don't have access to or I've only done classical civilisation.
Will I cope with the Oxford degree? Yes, of course you will.
Or I haven't done any classics will I cope with Oxford Degree. Is it going to be supportive of people from my background?
And the answer is yes.
I mean, the ab initio Latin and Greek have been running for for many decades now and are very well oiled machine and as I say,
the really bright students who are on it achieve excellent results.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes maybe applying to ab initio, at least, it could be quite helpful in some ways insofar as,
you know, you've got this really excellent sometimes one on one teaching from the get go.
But that's true, I think for most courses, but for classics, no matter what course you come on to,
one of the great things is that as much as school, even more than school,
there's help, which is not true everywhere you go,
it's very easy to reach out to your senior tutor or someone who you have for your one on one or two and one tutorials.
So getting help, I think, getting support, something which is really possible.
And I think I agree that the big myth, I think for Oxford is, is that somewhere that I even want to go is a Scottish person.
And then I think it's something I want to study,
maybe compounds that question in terms of I think I think it does bear the burden of sounding like something very elitist.
And I know people from high school who are very clever and doing very well at university,
but who just thought, oh, well, why would I want to go to to Oxford, when I can apply X, Y and Z?
And I think that's a fair question. But I think there's not loads of people from Scotland who are in Oxford right now and it would be great for there to be more people.
I remember my first the kind of thinking, oh, I'm going to tell people in from Glasgow is more interesting than my village,
which is Kilmacolm, and I'll get away with that because there's not going to be Scots to meet.
And then in about the first two minutes, I met three Glaswegian boys.
who all told me I had to stop saying I was Glaswegian and that was from Kilmacolm, which is quite nice, actually.
And I think it's definitely a nice community to be friends.
So insofar as should I like it because it might be difficult, I think it's always going to be difficult to apply to university.
But if it's something that you do want to do, then there's definitely the support in terms of should I apply because well,
I actually enjoy it when I get, like, the answers. So.
So, yes, I've not really spoken to anyone who's going to come with the classics and just building on what Jess just said,
I would say from the faculty classics perspective, we are actively open and welcoming to applications from Scottish students.
We would love to see more applications from students who are going to school in Scotland.
So please, please,
if you are currently studying Latin or classical studies in Scotland or you're currently not studying Latin or classical studies in Scotland,
but you're interested in studying classics, course 1 or course 2 or any of the joint schools and classics in Oxford please do apply.
We would love to see an application from you. It is absolutely the case that the classics admissions tests require you to have learned vocabulary.
And it is also the case that when you do higher Latin, you are given a wordlist.
So my top tip is that over the summer after you have done your higher and before you do the test in November,
learn vocabulary because there is no exception made for Scottish students,
the expectation is that you will just learn enough vocabulary in order to do your best on the classic admissions test.
And I just want to say a huge thank you to all three of our panellists today for sharing their experiences and for capturing,
I think, as always, the joy that classics can bring and
The fun that can be had with it as a subject, especially here in Oxford.
Thank you very much, Arlene, Bill and Jessica, for your time today on this episode of Regional Classics.