6 . Can you explain the importance of highlighting diversity in Classical spaces ? What effect does it yield ?
This is a huge question , which I am going to fail to do justice by trying to answer ( relatively ) quickly . For a longer consideration of these issues , please do have a look at a blog post I wrote a few years ago . In a nutshell , it is of the same importance with the same effects as in any other area . Classics can sometimes set itself apart and overlook the fact that we are subject to the same forces which are at play in wider society . Much work has been done to show the importance of representation , so I won ’ t go into it too deeply here , but simply put it allows people to feel that they might belong within a community or group while also challenging problematic views or systemic issues . At the end of the day , I ’ m a teacher : anything which encourages more students to explore and learn , is always going to be important to me .
There are some effects , however , which are specific to Classics and Classics education . The history of the discipline is tightly bound up with ideas of class and colonialism . The Caribbean poet Derek Walcott writes poignantly about his conflicted feelings regarding his Classical education ; it may have been part of a programme of cultural imperialism , and only available to some children growing up in the Caribbean , but he still found intellectual enrichment in the material and carried these influences into his own work . He describes how “ the reference that one has made is a carryover from a previous culture whose echoes are carried over into the Caribbean … these back of the head echoes , are what we try to describe in the New World , not as it was in the Old World , but something associative of the Old World that is there in the New .” Classics was part of the colonial project and it is also part of its legacy .