Surprise, surprise! The study of classics at Oxford is dominated by the privately educated. The latest figures from the university show that just 41.9 per cent of those studying Latin and ancient Greek are state-educated. Meanwhile, psychology is the Oxford subject most dominated by comprehensive school pupils. Of the students admitted to these degrees, 84.8 per cent were from the state sector.
The classics numbers are sad – but inevitable. Greek and Latin A-Level have almost entirely disappeared from comprehensives. Grammar schools – cruelly cut by Conservative and Labour governments – are the last redoubt of state classical education. Even there, though, the subjects are in their death throes. Last year, 989 pupils sat A-Level Latin while just 206 sat A-Level Greek – and they were largely from private schools.
And so, the old, depressing accusations of classics being elitist will increase. Those claims have been around for centuries, and some classicists even revel in the elitism. The fact that it’s a ‘useless’ subject implies that only a supreme, leisurely class with time to fritter away on non-vocational subjects should study it.
That is entirely wrong. Latin and Greek weren’t posh subjects when the Romans and Greeks spoke them. They were the languages people swore in, wrote gloriously pornographic graffiti in, bet on Ben Hur at the Circus Maximus in…
Classics certainly isn’t useless. When the late John Paul Getty I, the oil billionaire, was asked why he only employed classicists in senior positions, he barked: ‘Because they sell more oil.’
He was right. At the highest level, studying classics is difficult – and takes many years to master. It is proof of a good mind that it can conquer this difficulty: a mind that will, along the way, understand history, comedy, tragedy, etymology, politics and the roots of European literature, inter alia. A pretty good range of subjects. Certainly broader than psychology, for all its virtues.
An education system that promotes psychology over ancient Greek is a utilitarian, vocational system. When you’re young, that’s the time to study subjects for their own sake – unless you’re one of the happy few who have decided on a profession at 18. For the rest of us, there’s plenty of time to find suitable employment upon leaving university. But, while you’re there, that’s the time to stock the mind with the great intellectual treasures off which you can feed for the rest of your life.
It’s terrific that classical civilisation is doing well as a subject. And classical culture is still admired on a grand, popular scale, as the excited build-up to Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey next month proves
The great universities have to act like sticking plasters, papering over this void
But classics study at its acme requires the ability to read Greek and Latin. And, while there are still plenty of older people who can read it, we are entering a world where that handful of A-Level pupils will be among the dwindling generations of those who can understand Greek and Latin properly.
Oxford has been admirable in adapting its classics courses to those who haven’t studied Greek or Latin before matriculating. Some optimistic dons say undergraduates can catch up at university. But that isn’t true – unless you’re a genius. By the time I got to Oxford to study classics in 1989, I’d done Latin for eight years and Greek for nine. That was intense tuition, with many hours of lessons a week over 12-week school terms. How could anyone studying classics for a mere four years, with only three eight-week terms a year, hope to catch up? The same goes for music. Mozart started to play music at three. Could anyone starting at 18 ever hope to catch up with him?
For years, governments have expected universities to cover up the tragedy of declining classics studies at comprehensives. The great universities have to act like sticking plasters, papering over this void. One of those plasters is equating degrees in full-fat classics (that is, for those who’ve studied it before) with the watered-down versions. So you get well-educated undergraduates getting a 2.1 in the harder course – and classics newbies getting firsts in classics-lite. To the outside world, the less educated finalist is considered more intelligent. Meanwhile, you end up with a world of general classicists with a sub-optimal education – and only a small, privately educated cadre who understand it at its highest level.
Very unfair. But a classic case of the law of reverse consequences. Dumbing down the subject to increase access leads to decreased access to classics at its most sublime.
The ideal answer is the most difficult: restore Latin and Greek to comprehensives to avoid the need for universities to bridge the divide later on. It won’t happen. O tempora, o mores…
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