As a classicist from a family of 5+ generations of steelworkers, lancet makers, and furnace men, I felt a pang of joy as I saw the above piece for the first time (thank you to Edith Hall for bringing this to my attention through the marvellous ‘People’s History of Classics’ series). The artist was Godfrey Sykes, commissioned by Sheffield Mechanics Institute to create a Parthenon-inspired frieze featuring labourers with their tools. As well as the initial joy, I also noted feelings of surprise upon seeing this engraving.
Why did this collaboration of working class and classical imagery seem so incongruent? Why does this representation feel so alien?
Anyone remotely familiar with the study of classics will be acutely aware of its reputation as a subject often claimed by the elite and associated with a particular social class. Talking to my friends from back home in Hillsborough about my subject I am often met with “Ooh, fancy!”, or perhaps more often, “What’s that?”. Connotations of private schools, pomp and the establishment are sadly deeply ingrained in classics. Whether through tangible fact such as the scarcity of state schools offering classics, or politicians like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson proudly reciting passages of the Iliad, it could not be more evident: classics has a class problem.
My own experience speaks to this. Having attended an underfunded and poorly performing state academy, like many of my friends I had no idea what classics was until I was sixteen. After having seen the A level in Classical Civilisation advertised on UCAS I became strangely infatuated with this alien subject I had never before heard of. I was incredibly lucky to receive a full scholarship to the only sixth form in my area offering A level Classics, which perhaps unsurprisingly was a private school. I know that I would never have immersed myself in this subject if it weren’t for my luck that day. I lament for my secondary schools friends, some now excellent writers and historians, who would have excelled in the study of classics but were never allowed the opportunity. For a long time and sometimes still, I feel as though I infiltrated a system to which I never belonged, by some fluke slipping through the net and into the study of classics.
And it is indeed picture across the country, but exacerbated in the north, that classics has been a dying subject in British state schools. Amongst other factors, this can be attributed to dwindling funds for state schools and the government’s eagerness to prioritise ‘core’ subjects like English, Maths, and Sciences. A Yorkshire school recently ceased teaching Latin after 600 years due to ‘funding restrictions’, and the state of classics in Scottish schools has been described as ‘near-extinct’.
But classics hasn’t always been this way, largely reserved for the lucky few and shrouded by connotations of elitism, and with some truly outstanding outreach and widening participation schemes taking place, I hope it won’t be for much longer. I cannot recommend enough Edith Hall’s aforementioned ‘People’s History of Classics’ series (and book) for a thorough and illustrious history of the working class in classics. Organisations such as Classics for All and ACE classics are doing a phenomenal job at advocating for better classics access by providing funding for state schools to teach classics. Shining a light on this issue and supporting organisations like CFA and ACE undoubtedly has a tangibly positive effect in dismantling the problem of class in classics. But until state schools receive the funding they desperately need and until subjects like classics are awarded the same importance as their English baccalaureate counterparts, I fear it will be an uphill battle.