‘They see it is living’: Durham professor’s mission to get more pupils into classics
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Arlene Holmes-Henderson wants all children in UK to have equal access to classical education. “My business school colleagues tell me that it’s not called levelling up any more, it’s rebalancing,” says Arlene Holmes-Henderson, a Durham University professor. “I think it’s just doing the right thing.”.
Holmes-Henderson is discussing her mission to help fix a problem many people don’t know or think about, though she thinks they should. She wants people to care about the classics, and for all children in the UK to have equal access to classical education, whether that’s the gladiators of Rome, or knowing your kháos from your chiasmus.
To that end, last month Holmes-Henderson opened the world’s firstdepartment dedicated to researching classics learning and teaching at Durham University. Last year, she was instrumental in setting up an all-party parliamentary group of MPs and peers exploring all things classics, chaired by Peter Swallow, the new Labour MP for Bracknell and a former Durham classics research fellow.
Great strides have been made but it can’t be right, Holmes-Henderson argues, that pupils at private schools in the UK – 7% of the total – get good access to the classics curriculum while for the rest it is patchy. “It is certainly the case that there are fantastic state-maintained schools that have a vibrant classics curriculum. But it is a postcode lottery and that is not fair,” she says.
