No, thankfully not.
But what a Classics teacher can do is offer opportunities for aspirational pupils to find their own critical voice: to respond personally and sensitively in the face of unfamiliar texts, knotty problems or new sub-disciplines.
The best Oxbridge candidates aren’t born with flair: they don’t enter this world flexing a set of literary antennae. No, they are simply comfortable thinking for themselves and expressing themselves because they have had lots of practice in some form or other: formal or informal, conscious or casual, with peers or parents or online, to the point where they feel comfortable making sensible suggestions based on what’s in front of them. They are not afraid to stake a position.
Does that mean your pupils are consigned one way or the other by the start of Year 13? How much remedying is possible, if they’re not already dynamic and confident thinkers?
Well, we teachers can help hugely by providing airtime for Year 13 pupils to find their voice and practise literary trial and error. It’s not easy, though, for two reasons:
- Rich, discursive reading needs an unhurried environment and time is always short in and around lessons.
- Pupils’ confidence is often tied to their experience at GCSE. It might seem paradoxical, but many high-performing GCSE students can actually be inhibited by their achievements.
Does being defined as a ‘straight-9’ pupil make a teenager more or less likely to take risks? There is extensive evidence that extrinsic rewards – including public exam results – can reduce a pupil’s willingness to take risks. It also undermines their intrinsic motivation, a critical (if not the critical) factor in whether pupils take ownership of Oxbridge preparation, or indeed hard, independent work of any sort. Often I think what sets apart the high-calibre applicants is that they have ‘found their own momentum’.
Think of an Oxbridge Classics applicant you know. Was/is there intrinsic motivation, a genuine appetite for exploring their subject? Or were/are the drivers largely external: a sense of obligation to the school, their parents, or their past academic record?
I really believe that the process of harvesting GCSE grades, constrained as it is by course specs and mark schemes, can have a damaging effect on the average pupil’s capacity and willingness to think creatively and critically. The reward-cycle of e.g. dominating the GCSE vocab list or memorising every possible style point may in fact make pupils less prepared to question, probe and critique later down the line.
We schools need to maximise exam results, understandably, but that can create a risk-averse mindset in teachers which rubs off on pupils.
For Oxbridge candidates this can be a problem, because thoughtful and considered risk-taking is key when they are nudged out of their comfort zone. Especially for unseen literary criticism, a staple of the admissions interview. Classics dons know that it is an exercise highly effective at prising pupils out of their comfort zones. (And it also enables them to assess both lang and lit.)
Pupils who are maturing intellectually off their own steam – reading for pleasure, relishing dialogue, interrogating the ‘grey areas’ of texts and topics – they are, perhaps, a simpler proposition.
Such self-propelling candidates still need support, of course, but their energy and independence will emerge more readily at interview and in the reading/ writing/ thinking they’ve undertaken in the preceding months.
The majority of applicants (and the admissions tutors always confirm this) fall in the middle ground between the dead-certs and the unsuitables. It is these pupils – the ‘borderlines’ – who we can encourage a great deal in their first term of Year 13. That encouragement could take many forms, but will likely include some advice on the interview experience.
Below I’ve pulled together some advice I’ve heard and relayed to pupils heading off to interview.
1. Take your time and don’t fear the pause
A piece of advice I always give exam classes in May is ‘think slowly, write quickly’. For an interview, that might become ‘think slowly, choose your words carefully’ – less snappy, I know…
Pauses: they can be natural as well as awkward.
In this context, they’re key opportunities to formulate your point carefully with attention to the terms of the question and how you will couch your answer. Dons will happily repeat the question if you need to buy some time. You are also allowed to ask clarifying questions yourself.
By the same token, once you’ve expressed yourself fully, stop, welcome the pause and listen actively for the response.
Listening skills are vital but are rarely taught in schools explicitly, and they can be early casualties of a nerve-shredding situation. Bear in mind that the admissions tutor will be asking themselves ‘Is this candidate teachable?’ Good listening skills are part of that.
2. Don’t scorn to state the obvious
Able pupils, itching to impress, can want to second-guess the ‘right answer’ when thinking through a passage or problem they’re thrown. This striving for the right answer often produces hasty or ill-conceived guesswork because it mistakenly prioritises the outcome (the destination) over the thinking process (the journey). Admissions tutors want to hear sensible thoughts externalised and built out of close attention to detail. They care much more about the journey than the destination. Working outwards from what’s there in the text, or the image, will probably require articulation of the details, a describing process that to anxious candidates might feel just too basic. But good method, proper thinking, requires a secure grip on detail. So don’t scorn to state the obvious as you build up towards an intelligent bigger-picture evaluation.
Clarity and detail are your king and queen.
3. Ask yourself: so what?
Linked to this is the need to ask ‘So what?’ That’s what evaluation requires, and as you build from description to analysis to evaluation, keeping that question in mind is going to stimulate a personal response. This iterative mindset (why, why, why) can become absurd if you wish to play the sophist – and that might be an enlightening exercise in itself. But tenacious interrogation of a detail or a problem is part of being a good Classicist, or just a good student!
Why does Aeneas kill Turnus? Because he sees the baldric of Pallas.
Why can’t Aeneas control himself? Because it’s his furor.
Why hasn’t he sorted out his furor by Book 12? Because he’s still human and fallible.
So what?
Why does Virgil end the poem with his protagonist still fallible?
4. Know the entitlements of your knowledge
If you have read the Medea, know it inside out and relish the chance to share your thoughts.
But can you make general claims about Euripidean tragedy?
If you have read Tom Holland’s Dynasty, fantastic. You’ll have a feel for the Early Empire, and a good basic chronology.
But can you comment on Suetonius or Tacitus, Holland’s principal sources?
One challenge for Oxbridge candidates is that, in a short space of time and with little outside input (usually), they have to identify and research new ‘pet’ authors, texts, periods – whatever about the ancient world catches their interest. Compared to the rest of their class, they may feel like mini-experts on, say, late Republican coinage. That feeling of new awareness is precious and rewarding. It’s also affirming for them as they make a really big decision: how to spend the next three years.
Yet a little Socrates will go a long way, too. From the Apology:
… ἔοικα γοῦν τούτου γε σμικρῷ τινι αὐτῷ τούτῳ σοφώτερος εἶναι, ὅτι ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι…. (I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.)
When I first left university, like many graduates I thought not so much ‘Wow, I know a lot’ but rather ‘Wow, I know now how much there is still to know’. A good analogy for pupils is translating an unadapted text and not bothering to look up words that you recognise from a school vocab list, even if they’re used in quite an unusual way.
Have the humility to open the dictionary; have the humility to know the entitlements of your knowledge.
It’s a fine balance that needs striking, between asserting a clear argument on the one hand and on the other hand qualifying the extent of your knowledge base. But the effort to attempt that balance requires the sort of nuance and intellectual integrity that will carry candidates a long way, wherever they end up. What we can do as teachers is give them the opportunity to practise those attributes.
Please post below your thoughts, feelings, your own advice for applicants and anything else you feel pertains!
Thanks for reading!
