DEVELOPING MULTILITERACIES
THROUGH CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
IN BRITISH CLASSROOMS
1. Introduction
This chapter examines ways in which the study of classical mythology can boost the development of multiliteracies in British classrooms. Classical mythology does not feature as a compulsory element in national curricu- la in Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, many young people recount excitedly tales of their exposure to Greek and Roman myths and legends both within and beyond the classroom. I provide here two case studies which exemplify opportunities to embed the study of clas- sical mythology in British classrooms in creative and innovative ways. I also demonstrate how classical mythology can act as a medium through which to enhance literacy. One case study focuses on primary school children aged seven to eleven, the other on secondary school pupils aged eleven to twelve.1
2. An Overview of British National Curricula
Education is a devolved power in the UK, which means that the govern- ment in Whitehall, London, has jurisdiction only in England. This government sets the agenda for education in English schools and has oversight of curric- ulum and assessment through its Department for Education and the Office
1 The author wishes to thank Susie Wilson from Astrea Academy Trust (primary school input) and Matthew Pinkett and Maria Vogler from Kings College Guildford (secondary school input) for their contributions to this chapter.
of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual). Some schools in Eng- land are exempt from teaching the national curriculum (for example, fee-pay- ing schools, free schools, and academies) which means that there is no coher- ent picture of exactly what is taught, to whom, when, and where in England.
The Scottish government sets the curriculum taught in almost all Scottish schools. In the last decade, Scotland has introduced a new curriculum for young people aged three to eighteen called Curriculum for Excellence, which offers teachers flexibility in choosing content to help learners cultivate key skills and attributes of success. The Northern Ireland Assembly oversees ed- ucation in Northern Ireland, and the curriculum is devised by the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment. In Wales, the Welsh govern- ment is currently undertaking a large-scale review of the curriculum and plans to design a new Curriculum for Wales for use in Welsh schools from 2022.
The result of this fragmented approach to curriculum design and imple- mentation is that children educated at schools in each of the four nations of the UK enjoy a range of educational experiences that are difficult to doc- ument and describe with any accuracy. What are, perhaps, easier to identify are the cross-curricular priorities that are common in the curriculum policies of all four nations: literacy, numeracy, global citizenship, and health and well-being. It is for the enhancement of literacy that I consider the study of classical mythology to be particularly instructive.
3. Literacy, Multiliteracies, Pluriliteracies, and More
Proficiency in reading and writing is essential for educational success. Pres- ident Bill Clinton highlighted the importance of literacy in his speech on International Literacy Day in 1994:
Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.2
It is no surprise, then, that governments around the world have fo- cused on teaching and learning interventions that aim to improve literacy.
2 For the full text of this speech, see William J. Clinton, “Statement on the Observance of In- ternational Literacy Day”, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/
index.php?pid=49016 (accessed 2 April 2020).
“Literacy”, though, is a contested term in educational research as it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I provide here four possible sub-sets of liter- acy, which illuminate the types of skills which teachers in British classrooms might cultivate in their students with respect to literacy. I also outline what is meant by multiliteracies and pluriliteracies, as these terms appear with increasing frequency in British educational policy and practice:
1. “Functional literacy” can be understood as “the level of skill in reading and writing that any individual needs in order to cope with adult life”.3 It covers basic skills of reading, writing, spelling, and the oral language required to complete everyday linguistic tasks within society.
2. “Information literacy” concerns the ability to learn to “recognise rele- vant and valid information, interpret it, and evaluate it in terms of its usefulness and reliability”.4 This is a more advanced skill than functional literacy as deeper interpretive skills are required to extract and evaluate information from a text.
3. “Cultural literacy” is often associated with a body of “core knowledge”
that learners need to know to allow them to function as fully-rounded citizens. The term was propounded by Professor of English E.D. Hirsch in the US in the 1980s, and he concluded that, as some students were not exposed to this knowledge at home, they needed to be taught it at school. Hirsch created long lists of facts, words, and phrases whose significance every American child should know:5 for example, the Adi- rondack Mountains, the Alamo, Alaska, the Founding Fathers. The work of Hirsch attracted some attention and admiration in the UK, with Edu- cation Secretary Michael Gove citing him in a 2009 speech to the Royal Society of Arts:
A society in which there is a widespread understanding of the nation’s past, a shared appreciation of cultural reference points, a common stock of knowledge on which all can draw, and trade, is a society in which we all understand each other better.6
3 Denis Lawton and Peter Gordon, Dictionary of Education, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, 108.
4 Ministry of Education, Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8, Wellington: Learning Media, 2006, 151.
5 Eric Donald Hirsch, What Every American Needs to Know, New York, NY: Random House, 1983.
6 For the full text of Gove’s speech, see “What Is Education For?”, Royal Society of Arts, https://
www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/blogs/gove-speech-to-rsa.pdf (accessed 26 June 2020).
Hirsch links issues with reading with lack of knowledge:
We need to see the reading comprehension problem for what it primarily is – a knowledge problem. There is no way around the need for children to gain broad general knowledge in order to gain broad general proficiency in reading.7
This view is based on the premise that “knowledge builds on knowledge”
and that the most important educational objectives – reading compre- hension, critical thinking, and problem-solving – are functions of the breadth and depth of students’ knowledge. Cultural literacy remains a highly contested term.
4. “Critical literacy” involves deconstructing communication (written or spoken) in order to identify its dominant ideologies. It requires apply- ing information literacy to identify key information, but expects a more advanced skill in critically evaluating ways in which the communication may have been framed to manipulate emotions or perpetuate inequal- ities. The critically literate learner will then explore responses to these inequalities and take action to remedy them.
5. “Multiliteracies” – in 1996, the New London Group coined the term “mul- tiliteracies”, which views literacy as “continual, supplemental, and en- hancing or modifying established literacy teaching and learning rather than replacing traditional practices”.8 The multiliteracies approach rec- ognizes both the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in globalized society and the new variety of text forms from multiple communicative technologies.
6. “Pluriliteracies” – a pluriliteracies approach puts subject literacy de- velopment in more than one language at the core of learning. This approach is particularly beneficial in education systems where bilin- gualism is a goal, for example, English/Cymraeg in Wales and English/
Gàidhlig in Scotland. The concept of pluriliteracies encompasses not just functional literacy in more than one language, but the raft of additional sub-skills associated with literacy development.
7 Cambridge Assessment, What Is Literacy? An Investigation into Definitions of English as a Sub- ject and the Relationship between English, Literacy and “Being Literate”, Cambridge: Cambridge Assessment, 2013, 12, https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/130433-what-is-liter- acy-an-investigation-into-definitions-of-english-as-a-subject-and-the-relationship-between-eng- lish-literacy-and-being-literate-.pdf (accessed 9 May 2020).
8 Jennifer Rowsell, Claire Kosnik, and Clive Beck, “Fostering Multiliteracies Pedagogy through Preservice Teacher Education”, Teaching Education 19.2 (2008), 109–122.
4. What Role Can Classical Mythology Play?
Classical mythology includes many of the greatest stories of all time, includ- ing: tales of transformation, explanations for the workings of the natural world, descriptions of monsters and beasts, the interplay between gods and mortals, and much more besides. Mythology offers a wealth of quali- ty literature through which to enthuse and engage young minds. Classical mythology (the myths originating from, or pertaining to, Ancient Greece and Rome are the most commonly taught, but some schools also include Egyptian and Norse examples) has especial value for children in British classrooms – it helps cultivate a sense of global awareness as well as sup- porting the development of historicity by enriching the study of the Greeks and Romans as history topics. Global awareness is an aim of the curriculum in England – teachers are tasked with helping their pupils to develop positive attitudes towards diversity and cultural difference, as well as foreground- ing community heritage, interdependence, and exploring issues of identity.
Many classical myths touch on exactly these themes and provide a rich bank of literature through which to explore complex issues, grounded in fictional narratives.
Currently, the Greeks and Romans appear as national curriculum history topics for children aged seven to eleven in England. Scottish pupils aged eleven to thirteen study the impact and legacy of historical peoples who visited and settled in Scotland. This means that the historical study of the Greeks and Romans already forms part of the curriculum in many British schools. The study of classical mythology is a valuable literary complement to these historical studies.
Classical mythology offers a multitude of benefits to busy classroom teachers. In the primary sector, teachers have responsibility for teaching the entire curriculum from mathematics to geography to dance to modern languages. Teachers search for ways to link curricular areas into mean- ingful learning experiences. Classical mythology can be combined with language learning to improve pupils’ critical literacy and engagement with learning. One successful way in which this can be done is outlined in Case Study 1.
5. Case Study 1: Astrea Academy Trust, South Yorkshire
The Astrea Academy Trust is a family of twenty-seven schools around Eng- land. The majority of these schools are primary schools in the north of England, located in ex-industrial South Yorkshire towns, such as Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley, and Rotherham. The demographic intake of these schools is varied, but the number of children who receive the Pupil Premium (formerly known as Free School Meals) owing to socio-economic deprivation is significantly above the national average, as is the number of pupils who speak English as a second (or third) language.
The Trust’s National Director for English, Susie Wilson, led a project in 2017 to introduce the teaching of Latin and Classics in five primary schools with the aim of boosting cultural and critical literacy. Wilson had previously taught Latin and Classical Civilization in a London secondary school, so could offer subject-specialist support and advice to her colleagues. With funding from the national charity Classics for All, Wilson recruited a team of twelve primary teachers from within the Trust, who completed two days of training to equip them with the knowledge and skills to begin to teach Latin and Classics as part of the mainstream languages curriculum for children aged six to eleven. I delivered this teacher training and have enjoyed guiding the teachers’ professional development and classroom practice.
A number of textbooks are aimed at primary learners of Latin. The one which seemed most appropriate for pupils in Astrea schools was Minimus Book 1: Starting out in Latin9 because it focuses on Latin grammar and vocabulary in a structured way and because each of its twelve chapters in- cludes a section on mythology. It is how the teachers used the sections on mythology that forms the basis of the description henceforth.
Minimus Book 1 features twelve myths, which appear as short texts in English towards the end of each chapter. These are: Perseus and Medu- sa, Daedalus and Icarus, Pandora, Echo and Narcissus, the Druid and the Fisherman (a Celtic myth), Actaeon and Diana, Odysseus and the Trojan horse, Odysseus and the Cyclops, Procrustes, Midas, Pyramus and Thisbe, and the adventures of Mercury. The myths have been adapted to be suitable
9 Barbara Bell, Minimus Book 1: Starting out in Latin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
for use with young children. Teachers, during training, were briefed about the pedagogical dangers of mythology.10
Teachers in Astrea primary schools devised a method of using the myths to enrich and extend English literacy. First, they read the myth with the chil- dren. Then, they selected new items of vocabulary and asked the children to guess what they might mean, as part of a language analysis activity.
Next, they asked the children to explore what they had learned about the characters in the myth, and the extent to which the success of the story depended on characterization. The next step involved the children reading alternative versions of the same myth in a variety of media (for example, published resources aimed at younger children in diary form, comics, picture books, collected mythographies, or graphic novels). Given a structured grid to complete, pupils were tasked with evaluating the alternative versions of the myths, focusing on extracting key information and making infer- ences between the versions. In some cases, this reading activity was used as a stimulus for creative writing. This is a model of good practice, supported by evidence from New Zealand:
When readers take apart a text they have read, examine it from their own viewpoint, and put it back together again, they make it their own. When they compare different texts, drawing out similarities and differences and deciding on the reasons for these, they create a new web of knowledge.
Analysing and synthesising is a creative process that can enable readers to take ownership of the texts they read and the ideas and information in them.11
Teachers in South Yorkshire have been using Minimus in their class- rooms for a year. They have found that Latin helps their pupils develop functional literacy, but it is classical mythology that provides a catalyst for the development of information literacy, cultural literacy, and critical literacy.
The children are able to make much faster and more significant progress when they embark on the analysis of comparative mythological texts in Eng- lish than in Latin (as one would expect, given that their Latin language skills are at beginners’ level). The teachers report high levels of engagement from
10 Eliana Dockterman, “Columbia Undergrads Say Greek Mythology Needs a ‘Trigger Warning’ ”, TIME, 15 May 2015, https://time.com/3860187/columbia-trigger-warning-greek-mythology-meta- morphoses/ (accessed 22 February 2021).
11 Ministry of Education, Effective Literacy Practice, 150.
all children and requests for further training from staff. They want to extend the project to additional schools in the Trust.
6. Case Study 2: Kings College Guildford, Surrey
Kings College on the Park Bark estate in Guildford does not enjoy the same socio-economic prosperity of the surrounding council wards in Surrey, in the south-east of England. Of the 206 council wards in Surrey, the borough of Westborough (where the school is situated) is ranked number 1 on the Child Poverty Index. Of the school’s intake, 43% qualifies for the Pupil Pre- mium allowance, a figure that is significantly higher than the English national average (15.4%).
When English teacher Matthew Pinkett joined the school in September of 2016, two things were immediately clear. Firstly, students at Kings have a strong desire to learn and succeed. Secondly, certain elements of the cur- riculum needed to be adapted to accommodate the students’ love for chal- lenge. Pinkett thought that Classics was an obvious choice. Usually regarded as the preserve of the privately educated, introducing Classics to the Year 7 curriculum (pupils aged eleven to twelve) at Kings was not only a statement of intent – “At Kings, we’re aiming high” – but a statement of belief too:
“Boys and girls, we believe you can do this”.
Pinkett believes that even a foundation knowledge of the Classics goes some way to developing students’ multiliteracies:
[C]lassical texts provide students with access to a range of characters and stories regularly alluded to in the mainstream press, and in intelligent conversations of the sort we want them to be having as they mature and develop. Whether it is a Trojan horse, a Herculean effort, or a Sisyphean task, classical allusions are everywhere. The more “Classics-savvy” a stu- dent is, the more culturally literate they are.12
At Kings, teachers wanted the students to share in this learning experience.
Maria Vogler, an English teacher and one of the leaders in implementing the Classics unit at Kings, explains how students liked what she terms “the flash- factor” studying Classics provided:
12 Comments from Matthew Pinkett and Maria Vogler came via personal communication re- ceived on 2 February 2018.
My class spent time discussing the fact that Classics is not often taught in state schools. They took pride in talking to others about how they were studying Classics – I promised them it might come in handy at a dinner party in later years.
For Pinkett and Vogler, the biggest motivator behind the decision to in- troduce a classical text to the start of the Year 7 curriculum was the fact that the Greeks knew how to tell a rollicking good story. Love, hate, jealousy, passion, violence: the stories of Homer, Ovid, and Virgil far exceed Quentin Tarantino in their ability to incite excitement, disbelief, and disgust. They offer a masterclass in storytelling.
They feel that there is too much focus on exams in the early years of secondary school:
[S]tudents in Years 7, 8, and 9 should not be practising GCSE exam ques- tions. They should be revelling in stories told by masters. Masters who imbue every word, every setting, every character with a magic that is best felt, not necessarily by picking apart the verbs from the adjectives, or the metaphors from the similes (although of course, there is value in this), but from simply listening, enjoying, and discussing a good story.
Not all students at Kings have access to quality literature outside of the school environment. This void of cultural capital, it was hoped, could start to be filled by exposure to classical mythology.
Members of the English department at Kings College decided to use the Cambridge School Classics Project’s War with Troy unit of work with the new Year 7 students.13 Based on Homer’s Iliad, War with Troy details Achilles’ journey from childhood to his death at Troy. The story is told using audio clips that students listen to in class. As the teacher’s guide explains, War with Troy
is an oral production. The story is performed by two of Britain’s leading storytellers. Both work in the original, oral tradition. In this tradition a sto- ry is planned and told before being written down. The end result is not
13 Cambridge School Classics Project, War with Troy: The Story of Achilles, Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2006.
a “reading” of a script, but a live telling drawn from memory. This gives the language […] a unique clarity and quality […].14
The stories are beautifully told, employing many of the images and de- vices from Homer’s original poems. Pinkett did not want a “dumbed down”
version of the Iliad. He wanted a beautiful and challenging narrative that would excite. Supplementary resources for teachers are plentiful, which makes it easy for teachers without a Classics background to use the unit in their teaching. Having the story broken down into sections was particular- ly useful, as it ensured regular checkpoints for student understanding, and the questions provided by the creators of the unit were useful in reinforcing the oral content. Often teachers used the questions to inspire a written task.
In the context of the teacher workload crisis, introducing War with Troy had an additional professional advantage: teacher planning and preparation time was reduced as a result of having these learning and teaching activities readily available. Vogler explains the students’ reaction to the unit:
I feel the War with Troy unit went really well. Students found it challenging but engaging, and it was a new experience for most to listen to a story.
The audio clips were expressive, which was helpful when getting students to understand some of the language. Many of the pupils had a good un- derstanding of Greek mythology as they studied it at primary school, so it was useful to get students recapping their prior knowledge and it also supported their understanding of the text.
The fact that many pupils had a basic knowledge of the Greek gods and heroes was a huge plus. It meant that many students could begin secondary school with the feeling of “being smart” and “getting it right” from the start.
And yet, at the same time, the intricacies of the plot, along with the depth and development of the characters in War with Troy, meant that students were able to feel that now, at secondary, they were “going deeper” than they had previously done. However, as with any unit of work, Vogler concedes that there were difficulties:
In terms of the storyline, students did struggle with understanding it straight away – particularly as there are so many characters to remem- ber. However, by recapping and rereading sections in more depth and
14 Ibidem, 5.
using the transcripts of the audio, I feel students benefitted from the level of challenge it provided. It developed their skills in resilience and it demon- strated how breaking down texts and analysing them into chunks will be a useful skill throughout their learning of English.
Resilience was not the only skill cultivated by the students. One male student explained his realization that the story of Achilles had taught him that it “takes a lot of courage for a man to cry”. Another explained that he liked learning the “history of other countries”. War with Troy is not just a les- son in good storytelling. It is a lesson in multiliteracies, history, geography, and, for some students, personal discovery.
Most striking, after the unit had been completed, was the students’ love for the character of Achilles. Perhaps because they could identify with his emotional complexities? Despite their individual weaknesses, students will have to overcome multiple adversities if they are to attain academic glory.
Provided there are no poisonous arrows flying around, their English teachers are confident that glory is what they will achieve.
7. Conclusion
Teachers who introduced Latin at Astrea Academy Trust commented on how useful Latin has been in supporting and developing their teaching of func- tional literacy. They identify Latin’s positive contribution to spelling, word awareness, and linguistic understanding. Teaching literacy through Latin helps students develop pluriliteracies where they become more confident users of more than one language.
Teachers from both case studies have identified the contribution of clas- sical mythology to the development of multiliteracies: information litera- cy, cultural literacy, and, when used expertly, critical literacy. Minimus and War with Troy are resources which have been used successfully by British teachers with whom I have worked recently, but there are hundreds of ad- ditional published resources that can help teachers achieve similar results.
In many ways, the individual myths themselves should not be the focus, but rather the ways in which mythological texts can be successfully used in the classroom to help learners explore and develop their literacy competency, whether in reading, writing, speaking, or listening.
While classical mythology does not exist in any discrete sense on Brit- ish school curricula, it can certainly be accommodated within the teaching of English, history, or languages. Primary teachers regularly teach a range of subjects and are generally open to “upskilling” in new topics. Secondary teachers can sometimes be reluctant to move beyond their subject special- ism, but when they do, the results are usually positive for both staff and pu- pils. Results to date regarding the introduction of classical mythology in both primary and secondary classrooms are promising, but we need to do more to raise the profile and benefits of classical mythology in British classrooms if we are to be successful in persuading school leaders to make space within an already crowded curriculum.
In the UK, support is available from a number of sources including Clas- sics for All (CfA),15 Advocating Classics Education (ACE),16 and the Classical Association (CA).17 CfA is a national charity that provides funding to non-fee- paying schools to introduce the study of Classics (either linguistic or non- linguistic) at any level, both on- and off-timetable. Astrea Academy Trust and Kings College Guildford were the recipients of grants from CfA. Grants can be used to cover costs associated with project planning, teacher training, and other forms of professional development. Grant funding has made the introduction of Classics possible to around 55,000 children in around 800 schools since 2011.
ACE is a national project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and based at King’s College London, which seeks to raise the profile, status, and currency of Classics in British secondary education. It focuses specifically on the study of the classical world in English and seeks to pro- mote the study of classical civilization and ancient history to students aged fourteen to eighteen. Co-directed by Prof. Edith Hall and myself, this project has sixteen partner universities around the UK, each of which is working closely with local schools and colleges to introduce Classics. Classical my- thology has been featured by a number of these partner institutions as being particularly valuable to both teachers and learners.
The CA is the national subject association for Classics in England, with responsibility for Classics education in schools, colleges, and universities.
15 For more information, see Classics for All, www.classicsforall.org.uk (accessed 2 April 2020).
16 For more information, see Advocating Classics Education, www.aceclassics.org.uk (accessed 2 April 2020).
17 For more information, see The Classical Association, www.classicalassociation.org (accessed 2 April 2020).
The CA offers full bursaries for teachers to attend its annual conference and can provide grants to schools that want to enrich their Classics curriculum with special project days or new collaborative activities. Regional branches of the CA also hold free events, competitions, and activity days that offer a route into Classics for those whose schools do not offer any form of Clas- sics provision. These events might include reading competitions (in English, Latin, and Greek) with prizes, storytelling days, craft workshops, and public lectures. It is hoped that the impact of these various initiatives is threefold:
1. Public perceptions of Classics (and classical mythology in particular) move away from “irrelevant, elitist, and exclusionary” to “enjoyable, inclusive, and useful”.
2. School leaders and classroom teachers value the contribution of Classics and apportion dedicated time in the school curriculum.
3. More children in British classrooms are given the opportunity to study Classics in some form, with classical mythology seeming a sensible place to start.
The onus is on classicists to communicate more clearly the benefits of our discipline. The reality is that most school leaders and classroom teach- ers practising today have not had much exposure to the study of Classics in their own education. Therefore, it is vital that we articulate the contribu- tion classical mythology can make to the development of a curricular priority area: literacy. It is hoped that this chapter goes some way in doing so.
