Last week I sat down with Federica, a Classics graduate from Calabria (in the toe) who is studying at UCL on the Erasmus programme. After reviewing Andrea Marcolongo’s The Ingenious Language – with its titbits about the Liceo Classico system – I was curious to find out how Federica found learning Latin / Greek at school and what it’s like to study Classics at Bologna, a leading Italian university.
What is a Liceo Classico?
It’s a state secondary school which offers a narrower, more traditional curriculum including compulsory Latin and Greek from start to finish – from the age of 14 to 19. In 2019, 6.7% of Italian students enrolled, which is a small proportion of the 55% who attend a liceo. The others go to a different kind of liceo and there are six types in total. Some non-classici offer Latin but they are few, and it’s optional. Although so few attend the liceo classico proportionately, the centrality of Latin to the curriculum means that Italy has c. 200,000 students taking Latin to the age of 19, and >25,000 finishing with Greek too. Compare that to the UK, where c. 1000 students take A-Level and c.250 Greek.
How do you get a place at one?
You just apply! They are non-selective and rarely over-subscribed. Often, and certainly in the past, children will enrol if their parents themselves attended a liceo classico. At their inception in 1859 (and when reformed in 1923), they largely served affluent families because textbooks and study-time were both luxuries in a country which was largely illiterate, agrarian and still recovering from the First World War.
Nowadays the pupil roll doesn’t represent class distinctions and it’s simply a question of who is prepared to commit to the classical liberal education on offer. Compulsory Latin and Greek turns plenty of people off applying and of those who do attend, many still see Latin and Greek as a necessary evil…
What is their reputation?
Because of their elitist origins (until 1969 only graduates from the classico could apply to Italian universities), they still carry some political baggage and they face criticism for being antiquated institutions offering subjects which are pointless and/ or too hard for your average 21st century teenager. They are, I infer, slightly embattled as flagships for an even more embattled subject. At the same time, they are funded at considerable scale by the government and part of this is due to Italian pride in their Roman heritage.
Of those who attend liceo classico, most enjoy the experience and value how it teaches you to think – something really important at university. Classics undergrads at university often have to defend their course choice though! The three reactions you get when you say you’re studying Classics are:
- Wow, that’s interesting!
- What’s the point of studying that?
- What exactly is that?
Federica estimates that >1000 Italian students are doing a BA in Classics at any one time. Bear in mind that in Italy, almost everyone goes to university – it is cheap and not very competitive as places aren’t dependent on high-stakes end of school exams like in the UK. It’s hard to find reliable numbers for BA Classicists, but in 2018 there were 681 students entering Bologna – the second largest university – for Lettere which includes students of other literatures too, mainly Italian, French and English. Of those 681, 100 or fewer were studying Classics.
What is the reputation of a typical liceo Classics teacher?
Two stereotypes here: either a fearsome, hawkish taskmaster or an eccentric oddball. Many, of course, are fantastic: passionate, approachable, good at explaining complex language points.
What characterises the curriculum for Latin and Greek?
For the first two years they hammer the grammar and syntax, using textbooks (for Latin Sistema Latino; for Greek Greco: Grammatica Descrittiva) along with anthologies of passages for translation, keyed to the textbooks. One anthology even includes passages from Harrius Potter. There is lots of oral testing e.g. conjugating verb forms in front of the class.
In fact, being tested out loud in front of peers is the most common form of assessment. This was, for me, probably the most striking feature of the Italian system – especially when it comes to literature (see below).
Language is typically tested every three weeks or so by translation of an unseen passage, about 12 lines of prose. Unseen verse translation doesn’t really figure at school level.
Remarkably, vocab tests aren’t common in a liceo classico classroom. All unseen translation is done with a dictionary to hand and the only vocab they need to memorise is that which occurs in prescribed literature passages. The translation task will be marked and returned but the feedback loop is notoriously slow (sometimes a month later!) and there is more emphasis on the product – what they should have got – than the process – how they got what they did.
How is literature taught?
This sounds like quite a passive experience, at least for the first couple of years. They get through a lot of lines – perhaps >60 in a week, which is a pair of two-hour lessons per language. However, this is largely led from the front by the teacher who will walk the class through the language in a lecture-like way. Assessment is oral. If the class have covered, say, 60 lines of Virgil then a further 40 or so will be set for independent preparation and then this prep will be assessed ‘interview-style’. A couple of pupils will be called up to the front, with their peers watching on, and they will be quizzed on their lines publicly. An example question might be ‘How sincere is Cicero in these lines?’
Teachers like to extract the personality and voice of the author they’re teaching.
I asked whether this model of public scrutiny could create an inhibiting atmosphere. Not really, was the answer, because people want to do well and have usually put in sufficient effort. The Italian education system is also, it seems, much more relaxed about examinations. About 80% of all school assessment is of an oral kind – even for more technical subjects which would lend themselves to a written exam.
In the Italian system at large, teachers (and professors at university) wield a lot of say in a pupil’s final school grade – a little like Jessi described in her recent post on the American system. Clearly it must be an issue that the state of a pupil’s relationship with their teacher or professor can hold huge sway over their academic attainment.
Who are the most read authors?
Virgil and Homer above all. Followed by Tacitus and Catullus on the Latin side, Herodotus and Thucydides on the Greek. Ovid, surprisingly, isn’t so ubiquitous and nor is Greek tragedy – although each teacher and school enjoys full freedom when it comes to choosing texts, a big difference from our A-Level situation.
Is there much prose composition?
Yes, and even some verse composition if the teacher chooses. The bulk of translation into Latin is using Cicero, together with Sallust and Livy.
What are the end-of-school exams like?
At the end of secondary school there are three days of written examinations:
Day 1: The General Essay without a word limit (or markscheme!). There are usually 5-6 questions and they could deal with social/ political/ environmental issues (last year one of the questions was about the death of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who was killed by the mafia in 1982), literature (e.g. analyse this Italian poem), contemporary problems/ discussions (e.g. the relationship between sport and history).
Day 2: The Thematic Paper: for students in Liceo Classico it is a translation from a Greek or Latin passage. You don’t know the passage in advance, but you know if you’re going to translate from Greek or Latin some months before. For students in other schools this exam may vary, whereas the General essay is sat by every student in Italy), e.g. in liceo scientifico there will be either Maths or Physics, in liceo linguistico there will be one of the languages studied.
Day 3: Terza Prova – literally Third Examination. This is a written exam with five subjects (for Federica these were History, Physics, Art, Biology, PE) and the questions were chosen by her own teachers (3 questions per subject).
At the end of these three days, you get a grade for your written exams (45 is the maximum, 15 for each exam) and you progress to the final oral exam. The panel of assessors comprises an external chief interrogator (a teacher/ headmaster coming from a different town), three of your teachers and three external teachers. They can ask you questions about the programme you have studied for the last three years – my own Italian teacher asked me questions about Dante’s Inferno which we’d studied in the 3rd year. You’re also allowed to give a presentation about an interdisciplinary topic you have prepared in advance, which will in theory encompass many of your school subjects.
At the end of all this you get your final grade, out of a maximum 100. The best students are awarded 100 cum laude.
How is the subject perceived by the average Italian?
Italy’s economy is not in a great place, with unemployment high, and so school-leavers and parents tend to value vocational courses or more obviously bankable degrees like economics. Studying literature and philosophy is often dismissed as a waste of time and, unlike in the UK, the perception is not that they are especially difficult. Subjects with higher market-value, being a bit more competitive (especially for the elite private universities in northern Italy), are considered naturally more difficult. A degree’s reputation in Italy is more to do with the content of that degree than the institution where it is studied. In the UK, my impression is that a degree from e.g. Bristol will be respected regardless of the subject, because Bristol is a top university.
It is quite revealing that no private universities in Italy offer Classics, except Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. There you have to study theology too and there are entry exams. Most universities, like elsewhere on the continent and in the UK, are publicly subsidised.
How is Classics taught at Bologna, the oldest university in the world?
Lots of language! The 1st year deals with the basics and pushes language skills beyond school level. Classics professors at Bologna are very concerned with the study of the historical grammar: you need to know how a word has reached its final status and what kind of linguistic development caused this. In particular, two texts are considered almost as scripture: Propedeutica al Latino Universitario for Latin, and Grammatica Storica della Lingua Greca (very similar to Morphologie Historique du Grec which I love!).
Almost all exams are oral and pretty challenging: you need to translate a great number of verse or prose passages. For example, for the Greek language exam in 1st year, Federica prepared the whole of Plato’s Protagoras and Iliad 22, along with the philological content and notes taken in classes, plus some secondary readings – and this wasn’t the biggest one: Greek literature in the 3rd year is the most notorious.
On the other hand, one of the most daunting things for people studying Classics at Bologna is the stringency of the examiners. To give you an example, you can fail an exam if you make a mistake while reading a hexameter.
The BA in Classics at Bologna is aimed at giving you ‘new’ strong basics in Greek and Latin language and literature too. Although the exams start with thousands of questions about any teeny-tiny element of grammar belonging to the text you’re reading, the professors demand decent preparation in history and literature as well.
What has struck you most about studying the MA Classics at UCL?
First and foremost: all the assessment is written! After almost 19 years of oral testing and exams, this is quite a shock! What’s more, I had the impression that language and grammar are not a big deal at university (I hope to be wrong). I’ve already finished three modules and I’m about to finish the last two, but only one of them (Greek Drama) gave me the possibility to focus on the language and translate. Nevertheless, writing essays for each module is still what I find most distinctive about the UK Masters. It’s fascinating because in Italy I could only create a title and research a topic for my dissertation, as opposed to taking the initiative in every module as happens here. This part of the UK system clearly helps students to become critical and develop arguments just like a professional academic. That said, it can be challenging when you need to write in a language that is not yours! Last but not least, I really appreciate the relationship between professors and students here. It looks like a big community of people deeply fond of what they’re studying. In Italy, most of the students choose to do a MA because the job market requires it. Here however, students seem to do the Classics MA because they want to! That brings a different atmosphere to the faculty.
How engaged are Italian universities with newer fields like Classical Reception?
Not very much it seems. Federica suspects that the famous Italian pride has kept courses quite traditional. The importance of the language and the texts will always take priority over any Reception study. This exists, yes, but there are no specific courses at universities and, in addition, it is often studied by different students. For example a student might study Italian Literature but then do a dissertation on the reception of Greek tragedy in modern Italy. So Classical Reception does exist, but old-school Philology is still king.
Very many thanks to Federica for these eye-opening insights. If you or anyone you know has studied Classics in a non-UK system and would like to share their memories, just get in touch!
