Should we teach controversial and sensitive topics?

In other subject areas there is little disagreement, in theory, that teaching students how to deal with sensitive topics is an important part of schooling. As Claire and Holden (Reference Claire and Holden2007) say:

The study of classical subjects should be no different. Indeed, nearly 40 years ago the classics educationalist John Sharwood Smith was advocating that ‘any serious educator – that is, a teacher who is not content to teach merely what is in the syllabus for the reason that it is in the syllabus – will want to teach his pupils how to learn how to live’ (Sharwood Smith, Reference Sharwood Smith1977, p. 4). His belief that the best Classics teacher would seek to achieve ‘education through Classics’ as well as ‘education in Classics’ (Sharwood Smith, Reference Sharwood Smith1977, p. 9) summarises the point: knowledge about the ancient world is interesting and worthwhile for a student to have in the 21^st century, but it is what students do with their knowledge of the classical world which makes the study of it pertinent to their own lives and all the more worthwhile doing. Educationalists specialising in Classics, such as Bolgar (Reference Bolgar1963, p. 17), Gay (Reference Gay and Morwood2003, p. 33), Gruber-Miller (Reference Gruber-Miller and Gruber-Miller2006, pp. 14-15), Lister (Reference Lister2007, p. 10) and Pring (Reference Pring2016) seem to agree: they have all asserted in their turn that by reading original texts and commenting on material culture students are able to learn something significant about the ancient world through the words and actions of the people themselves, to be able to draw comparisons between humans long ago and in modern times, and to become more reflective about themselves and contemporary society. This concept of ‘critical distance’ (Hardwick, Reference Hardwick and Hardwick2003, p. 9) has been well-documented as a successful pedagogical approach. The University of Exeter's Sex and History Project (Langlands & Fisher, Reference Langlands and Fisher2016) was specifically designed to encourage student reflections about modern attitudes to sex and relationships through discussion focusing on ancient objects. Most frequently, however, encounters with the ancient world in the classroom take place when students read original texts. These encounters with the ‘parallel universe’ (Hall, Reference Hall2016) of the ancient world can be said to provide students with an opportunity to take an ‘essential step closer to an understanding of otherness outside ourselves’ (Settis, Reference Settis2006, p. 107), while the subject matter can act as ‘the great conversation openers’ and the study of Classics itself can be a tool which is ‘good to think with as well as about’ (Cartledge, Reference Cartledge, Too and Livingstone1998, p. 28). Hardwick, discussing the power of ancient myth to achieve these ends, explains:

The metaphor of a conduit is apposite. It is clear that such a conduit has the potential to flow and refresh in every classroom with every single glimpse of text or material culture – provided that the teacher allows it or seeks a means to achieve it.

In summary, then, the teacher can address the sensitive topic in three ways of what one might describe as increasing sophistication: as a straightforward investigation into a matter of socio-historical significance; as an opportunity to provide further reflection on more modern and contemporary events and circumstances; and as a way to develop the methodologies of critical enquiry and engagement which can be transferred to other occasions – classical or otherwise.

Learning for Life with Latin

I am concerned more specifically in this article with the study of Latin in UK secondary schools. Latin in this environment nearly always comprises the study of the literature and society of the Romans, as well as the Latin language. Most students of Latin therefore come into contact with sensitive topics almost every time they open their course books. The majority of UK Latin teachers have adopted reading-approach course books and the majority of them use the Cambridge Latin Course which has perhaps 90% of the Latin course book market share (Cambridge School Classics Project, 2015). The Latin stories in the CLC (like those in the other reading courses ecce Romani, The Oxford Latin Course and Imperium) form a continuous narrative which deliberately incorporates many important socio-cultural topics. The sensitive topics of sex and sexuality, death, violence and ethical topics such as slavery and the treatment of women, are thus part and parcel of the majority of the teaching of Latin in UK secondary schools today. Just by way of example, while studying Book One of the Cambridge Latin Course students typically aged 11 or 12 years old are exposed to Roman attitudes towards slavery (Stages 3 and 6: the slave-market and manumission), towards women (Stages 1, 3 and 9: the role of the materfamilias Metella and the slave girl Melissa), towards foreigners (Stages 3 and 10: the Syrian slave-dealer Syphax and the Greek teacher Theodorus), towards religious minorities (Stage 8: Christians), towards death (Stage 7: funeral rituals and beliefs in the afterlife), and towards extreme violence (Stage 8: gladiatorial combat and the riot in Pompeii in AD 59). In Stage 12 of the course book, Vesuvius erupts and destroys nearly all of the main characters, including a fairly graphic portrayal of the death of the main character Caecilius, the loss of Metella his wife (missing, presumed dead), and countless other people in the ashes of Pompeii. For good measure the book ends with a photo-montage of plaster casts of the Pompeian dead. Even Cerberus the family dog dies (and often seems to cause more consternation in the classroom than the deaths of the humans). For those who continue with Latin after their first year, further sensitive topics of increasing sophistication arise in the continuous narrative which comprises the next four books: the unfair blame, torture and execution of slaves by Salvius; further fractious interactions between slaves, freedmen and citizens (the near family breakdown of Salvius and Rufilla, the standoff between the Mafia boss Eutychus and Clemens, and the riot between Egyptians, Greeks and Romans in Alexandria); the amorous exploits of the soldiers Modestus and Strythio; the burning of Celtic villages and the slaughter and enslavement of the Britons by the Roman occupiers - to name but a few. While the CLC does not explicitly draw attention to sensitive topics, they are there if the teacher wants to draw them out:

These sensitive cultural topics therefore arise naturally out of the teaching of the language and literature which form the components of Latin teaching. This is not a new approach. In 1988 the Department of Education published a discussion paper Curriculum Matters 12, Classics from 5 to 16, about the school Classics curriculum. Reporting on the classical languages the paper warned that ‘if the [study of Latin or Greek] is divorced from its wider context it is likely to become arid and mechanical’ (Department of Education, 1988, p. 20). Instead it advised:

More generally, classical studies could provide students with ‘…valuable points of entry into some central questions of human life’ (Department of Education, 1988, p. 8). The paper continued,

Such arguments for the study of classical subjects are very powerful and are ones to which most Classics teachers would willingly subscribe. The construction of knowledge about the subject matter – both linguistic and socio-historical – which students experience through their reading of these texts is a huge strength of all reading courses. But while such courses provide outstanding resources for discussion, there has been little guidance as to how such a discussion might be carried out. For the CLC, the Teacher's Handbook (Cambridge School Classics Project, 1999) offers good general advice about lesson planning and gives additional factual information about the socio-historical events which are referred to in the students' book. However, it offers rather less advice about teaching the sorts of sensitive topics which might arise out of the texts themselves. My own book (Hunt, Reference Hunt2016) also offers suggestions on how to bring out some of the socio-cultural topics raised while reading course texts, but stops short (for reasons of space) of exploring the particular difficulties associated with teaching them. The Classics subject associations do not offer advice either. This article is written partly in response to these lacunae.

Subversive texts?

In the vacuum of official government or subject-association guidance, the media seem to offer their own unhelpful, sometimes contradictory and often just plain wrong commentary on the teaching of Classical subjects in schools. This reached a peak in Summer 2013 when, tipped off by a disgruntled parent, the politically and socially conservative Times (2013a) and Daily Mail (2013) newspapers complained vociferously about what they saw as the inappropriateness of some of the questions on Ovid's Amores in that year's AS Latin Literature examination (see Ancona (Reference Ancona2014) for further details). And yet barely a month later the Times (2013b) had changed its tone, favourably reporting a teacher's success in bringing Latin to students in London's deprived E17 district, including in its story the following dialogue between one of the students and their teacher:

These mixed messages about what is and what is not acceptable subject matter for discussion in the secondary school Classics classroom inevitably lead to anxiety among teachers confronted by sensitive topics in class.

Looking for advice elsewhere

There has recently been some discussion in the UK at university level about how to handle disclosure occasioned by discussion of sensitive topics such as rape and abuse (Deacy & McHardy, Reference Deacy and McHardy2012) and about how to ensure that discussion of sensitive topics should be guarded by rules about the individual's self-respect and respect towards others (Wardrop, Reference Wardrop2012). Rabinowitz and McHardy's book From Abortion to Pederasty: Teaching Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom (Reference Rabinowitz and McHardy2014) addresses the rationale for and the practice of the teaching of several types of sensitive topic in the university classroom. Several authors emphasise the importance of teacher preparation before discussion takes place. Thakur (Reference Thakur, Rabinowitz and McHardy2014) recommends that the teacher would need to be comfortable themselves to facilitate the discussion. James (Reference James2014) suggests that the teacher should adequately prepare themselves on both scholarship about the ancient text as well as researching modern reports on the current legalistic framework surrounding similar topics. James also suggests that it is the responsibility of the teacher to make time for a proper discussion of the topic: ‘It's not possible to buzz through…Even if students don't speak up and out, or don't voice objections and alarm, the instructor must raise the subject’ (James, Reference James2014, p. 177). With this statement, James builds on her previous argument that students today are more politicised before they arrive on campus and become more so due to the socialisation process which occurs through contact with others in and out of the class. The classroom becomes a forum for more open, wide-ranging and ultimately more radical discussions than are usual even in academic writing:

In the university, where a course unit forms one of many components of a larger course in the study of the ancient world, constructing knowledge and understanding of the sensitive topic itself may be the learning objective (Liveley, Reference Liveley, Rabinowitz and McHardy2014). The topic itself may have been chosen by the lecturer specifically in order to provoke discussion or even to make the students feel uncomfortable about the subject matter and thereby promote more purposeful reflection on it (DuBois, Reference DuBois, Rainowitz and McHardy2014). It is more often the case in the school, however, that the sensitive topic is incidental to the primary enterprise of reading the text for comprehension of the socio-cultural background, and for the linguistic phenomena and stylistic devices which are being employed by the author. Nevertheless, there are a number of guidelines in the university classroom which would still be similar to those in the school: the lecturer or teacher follows faculty or school guidelines about what is permissible to discuss or show; the lecturer or teacher ensures that the classroom environment is a comfortable and ‘safe’ place to hold such discussions; there should be a ‘content warning’; the students should be provided with alternative resources if they wish to withdraw; the students should not be forced to discuss topics about which they may be uncomfortable; and provision should be made to direct distressed students to counsellors or other external authorities if required (Rabinowitz & McHardy, Reference Rabinowitz and McHardy2014). While such lively pedagogical discussion is taking place in universities, it is worth noting that it does not yet seem to be as much of a ‘hot topic’ in schools. Instead I can find only a very small number of examples where educators have written about approaches to teaching sensitive classical topics at school level. Sawyer (Reference Sawyer2016) has written about how important it is for the teacher to show their students – many of whom come from very diverse backgrounds themselves – quite how diverse the Roman world was as well. Even if the course book which the class is using does not make this obvious, or seems to ‘gloss over’ the issue of diversity, she recommends even to use the lack of representation of diversity in the textbook as a ‘teachable moment’ (Sawyer, Reference Sawyer2016, p. 36). But this article is very much the exception. On the whole articles have touched on three main concerns: gender stereotyping, sexually-explicit texts and the teaching of political ideas. While these do not always describe pedagogical practices per se, they sometimes allude to them or make some recommendations. The ones which are mentioned are described below to provide a snapshot of current thoughts and practices in the classroom when dealing with sensitive topics and a starting place from which to consider some approaches.

Gender

The representation of female characters in standard Latin course books has attracted perhaps most comment. Garrett (Reference Garrett2015), Churchill (Reference Churchill and Gruber-Miller2006), Hunt (Reference Hunt2013) and Upchurch (Reference Upchurch2014) have each been concerned about the lack of positive role models, which they feel have reinforced modern stereotypical views of women as pursuing lives of dull domesticity, subservience or lack of aspiration. Even the vocabulary used in practice exercises has come under attack for the predominance of sentences suggestive of masculine activity and feminine passivity (Harwood, Reference Harwood1992). Each article has made suggestions for improvements in either the Latin course books themselves or in the pedagogical approaches employed with them. Garrett (Reference Garrett2015) offers advice to course book authors to make female characters centre-stage with male. Churchill (Reference Churchill and Gruber-Miller2006) singles out the CLC for particular censure and suggests the full rewriting of course books, or, as a minimal alternative, designing classroom activities which seek to re-assess the representation of women in them through discussion and research. In answer to such criticism Story, one of the original editors, was surprised by such criticism when she was training teachers in the US in the use of the CLC, suggesting that with hindsight a better gender balance in the original writing team might have led to a better gender balance in the characters in the course book. With her statement ‘I always have to remember that the course was written by men!’ (quoted in Hales (Reference Hales, Hales and Paul2013, p. 366)), she seems to have been taken aback by the criticism. In some way as an attempt to move towards answering this, the authors of the US CLC fifth edition have written in two more significant female characters – Quintus' sister Lucia, and a female artist to replace the painter Celer. The changes seem to have met with equal measures of approval and disappointment, however, and the remaining Units 2-4 of the course are not due to undergo any changes due to the prohibitive costs of updating not just the text books, but also all the ancillary and digital materials. The alternative, of course, to wishing for a rewrite of the whole CLC is for the teacher to problematise the topic for themselves. This route is considered by Hunt (Reference Hunt2013) and Upchurch (Reference Upchurch2014). Hunt (Reference Hunt2013) suggests that students could interrogate the accuracy of the representation of women and women's lives in their course book in the light of other resources (in this case, a museum visit) and to make it their business to try to do so wherever possible. Upchurch rejects this approach as unlikely to occur: ‘I do not believe that many teachers will be assiduous enough to target these topics at a low level throughout the year’ (Upchurch, Reference Upchurch2014, p. 32); however, she does not here suggest an alternative. I tend to disagree with her proposition, arguing that a good teacher would want to encourage students to interrogate as many aspects of the course book text as they could spare the time for. The teacher must find space to become the alternative voice (James, Reference James2014) and to problematise the topic as a matter of course (Sawyer, Reference Sawyer2016).

Sex

Another example of how to deal with a sensitive topic at the school level is Ancona's (Reference Ancona2014) account of decisions made while she was editing a Latin reader to be used in US school and university classrooms. While preparing the book she carried out a brief investigation of 35 college and high school teachers to assess the likelihood of its adoption if it contained certain sexually explicit poems. College professors were much more likely to use the reader than the high school teachers, who cited anxieties about the explicit vocabulary and sexual references. A small number said that they feared for their job security if it was reported back to parents or the school principal – reflecting a similar unease to that underlining the UK newspaper headlines about the Ovid examination mentioned above. Ancona's (Reference Ancona2014) compromise was to publish the more sexually-explicit poems as a separate supplement to the general reader so that teachers could choose whether to restrict students' exposure to some of the more sexually-explicit texts, while not being denied the opportunity to read some of Catullus' other works. Ancona's article opens up a discussion about self-censorship and how much it takes place to protect the students from being exposed to potentially disturbing materials or to protect the teacher from being exposed to censure.

Politics

Less sensational than either of the above, but still a potential source of controversy in the classroom, is the subject of politics. A brief note by Copson (Reference Copson2006) and a more extensive guide by the Cambridge School Classics Project (2016) have discussed ways in which teachers might raise awareness of the political dimensions of the ancient and modern worlds. It is in Watson (Reference Watson2011), however, in his article about teaching modern values of citizenship through CLC Stage 11, where the experience of teaching political understanding through the ancient world is most richly described. Anxious about the political naivety of his students and the potential dullness of the material and the potential for damaging argument based on strongly-held viewpoints, Watson used ancient political material and ideas which naturally arose from reading the passages as the basis for discussion to develop students' knowledge and understanding about both ancient and modern political behaviour. He was himself impressed by how the class led at least one of the students to a kind of modern political ‘awakening’.

The alternative to any of the above ideas – to avoid mention of any sensitive topics – would mean an approach to teaching Latin which focused exclusively on texts chosen purely for their linguistic interest and because the subject matter was anodyne. To return to that would rule out pretty much any text of interest and worth studying – and would agitate against the very things which attract students to learn about the classical world and teachers to teach it in the first place.

Research sequence

I investigated the opinions of a number of secondary school teachers of Classics to identify how they themselves dealt with the topic of teaching controversial or sensitive topics to students in their classes and also what suggestions they would make for beginning teachers on how to deal with them. In 2013 I surveyed 30 Classics teachers in two cohorts from a Joint Association of Classical Teachers In-Service Training Day on Classical Civilisation teaching in Oxford and from a group of teacher-training mentors who work with the PGCE Classics course in Cambridge. Both groups had several years of experience of teaching secondary students Classical Civilisation and / or Latin. The selection of teachers was opportunistic, gathered at two events four months apart, from schools across the UK. I felt that their experiences together would be representative of a range of the experiences Classics teachers have in general. Of the 30 respondents, eight were men and 23 women. The schools in which they taught reflected the different sorts of schools in which classical subjects are offered in the UK, with 12 from the state sector and 18 from the independent, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. | School sector in which respondents taught.

The teachers' length of service ranged from one year to over 26 years (see Table 2).

Table 2. | Length of service of respondents.

There seemed to be no correlation between the type of school, gender of the teacher, or the length of service and the degree of willingness to hold discussions of various types with students.

There were two parts to the survey: a quantitative and a qualitative part. The first (quantitative) part was deigned to generate an overview of practice in order to assess any trends or characteristics. The second (qualitative) part was designed to allow teachers to generate more personal, nuanced and rich data about their own practices and to make recommendations. The respondents have been anonymised.

In the first part of the survey teachers were asked to complete a set of tick-boxes for five areas which might be considered to be sensitive and which might arise in the course of their normal teaching of Classics. These areas were (1) Cultural Topics, (2) Violence, (3) Death, (4) Religion and (5) Sex and Sexuality. The teachers were asked to indicate the manner in which they would treat each topic on a five-point scale of increasing depth and sophistication, as follows:

1. (a) Teacher avoids drawing attention to the topic.

2. (b) Teacher does all the talking and does not allow any student contribution.

3. (c) Teacher initiates a limited discussion in class.

4. (d) Teacher uses the topic as an opportunity to discuss what seems to be an important topic in ancient times.

5. (e) Teacher uses the topic as an opportunity to discuss what seems to be an important topic in ancient times to compare and contrast with modern times

The respondents were asked to complete this for each of the topics at each of the three different key stages: Key Stage 3 (for 11-14 year olds), Key Stage 4 (for 15-16 year olds, usually in preparation for the GCSE examinations), and Key Stage 5 (for 17-18 year olds, usually in preparation for AS and A Level examinations). I hypothesised that, as students matured, their teachers would allow more discussion on points (d) and (e) to take place. On the whole, this hypothesis seems to have been borne out, although the degree to which teachers allowed freedom of discussion varied between topics. In the second part of the survey teachers were asked to comment about their own practice or their recommendations for practice in a free text box for each topic. The data have been grouped as far as possible by theme.

Findings from the survey

Regarding cultural topics, and the topics of death and religion, the responses were broadly similar, as Figure 1 shows. (Note that not every one of the 30 respondents taught every Key Stage, so the total numbers do not necessarily add up to 30.)

Figure 1. | Responses to discussions about cultural issues.

Data in Figure 1 suggest that nearly all the teachers were happy to discuss cultural topics with all age groups, with the majority using the topics to broaden discussion about the ancient world to shed light on contemporary topics. More teachers took this as an opportunity to take with the KS4 and 5 students than with those at KS3, which may well reflect the subject matter rather than the sensitivity of topics taught at the different levels. A similar spread of responses is found in Figure 2.

Figure 2. | Responses to discussions about religion.

Data in Figure 2 suggest again that most teachers – indeed a slightly higher proportion than in Figure 1, including younger students – were happy to explore contemporary religious topics in the light of discussion about ancient religious practices.

Data in Figure 3 suggest a similar spread of responses about the topic of violence, at least among the older year groups of Key Stages 4 and 5 (14-18 year olds). However, the respondents indicated that they were more reticent to do so with this topic with younger age-group students.

Figure 3. | Responses to discussions about violence.

Data in Figure 4 suggest that respondents felt that it was possible to explore contemporary ideas about the topic of death with students of the older age-groups in Key Stages 4 and 5; there was a tendency to curtail discussion with younger students – some of the reasons for which are discussed later in this article when teacher respondents were allowed more of an opportunity to give their opinions.

Figure 4. | Responses to discussions about death.

Data in Figure 5 indicate that respondents seemed more reluctant than in any other topic area to engage with students in classroom discussion about sex and sexuality. This topic seemed to go against the trend – and reasons for this are explored below. Respondents seemed to offer little or even no discussion at all with the younger age-groups: at Key Stage 3 seven teachers – the highest recorded – said that they would avoid mention of discussions about sex and sexuality. Even with students in Key Stage 4 there still seemed to be reticence. It was only in the case of students in Key Stage 5 (but still not in every case) that respondents reported their willingness to use the topic of the ancient world as a means to reflect upon the modern. This is a topic which is, of course, of great concern to this article. Accordingly, the comments made by teacher respondents about it, recorded below, are of particular interest.

Figure 5. | Responses to discussions about sex and sexuality.

Teachers' own practice and recommendations

In the second part of the research sequence, teachers were asked to write down their own recommendations for beginning teachers faced with the teaching of sensitive topics in the course of their teaching of classical subjects in the secondary school.

Rationale for discussion

Respondents considered discussion of the topics as an important educational objective:

Several commented that the topics raised in discussions of Classics had relevance for the students' everyday lives and encouraged students to think beyond the confines of the curriculum:

The distance of time and space was considered to make Classical subjects a safe place for more objective discussion:

Planning for discussion

Respondents suggested that teachers should be aware of school protocols before attempting discussions with sensitive or controversial topics:

Teachers should also be aware of potential parental concerns:

Teacher preparedness

Respondents suggested that teachers should consider a number of aspects while thinking about preparing texts for teaching. Firstly, they should consider the importance of the topic in relation to the whole text:

Respondents suggested that there should be sufficient time to do the discussion justice:

Respondents recommended thorough preparation before the lesson rather than extemporisation within it:

Respondents suggested that teachers should prefabricate materials to aid discussion, especially where students’ extra-curricular subject knowledge might be expected to be weak:

Managing the discussion

Respondents noted that handling a discussion successfully rested on certain ground rules for themselves and for their students being made explicit and kept to. Much of the correspondence suggested that teachers needed to model how to hold a discussion and that they could build a positive disposition towards the discussion of the topic through their own personal actions.

Respondents suggested that the teacher should display a positive and comfortable disposition to the discussion:

Teachers mentioned the danger of modelling a negative disposition towards students:

Respondents suggested that teachers should adopt an impersonal and objective stance through their use of language:

Respondents suggested that teachers should avoid expressing their personal feelings:

Respondents did, however, suggest that a teacher's role could be to offer an alternative opinion to the generally accepted one in class:

Student engagement with discussion

Respondents reported that teachers could often make use of students’ prior awareness of contemporary topics and the way they could connect them with those of the ancient world:

Respondents suggested that it was beneficial if the students had a part in leading the discussion. They felt that the sense of ownership bred greater engagement with the subject matter: