Emma Williams – Page 2 – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

Should somehow the fates allow

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Carl Jung

“What does he mean by ‘the Fates’ … ?” a student asked me this week. It was while I was helping her to learn the opening of this year’s Virgil set text, which contains the line with which I have titled this blog post.

It was quite the question, and I fear that the explanation I gave at the time was somewhat inadequate. The concept of fate occupied a central place in the intellectual, religious and cultural life of the Romans and the Greeks, so it’s pretty difficult to sum it up in a few words.

To the ancient Greeks, fate was an inexorable power, both mysterious and inevitable and superior even over the will of Zeus himself. For the Romans, who inherited and transformed much of Greek thought, fate was deeply connected to the popular Stoic vision of a rational, ordered cosmos; they also saw it more as synonymous with the will of Jupiter (the Roman counterpart of Zeus). In both civilisations, fate also represented the tension between divine or natural necessity and human free will, raising the perennial and still-relevant question of the extent to which humans have individual agency.

Greek mythology presents fate as a divine force, which governs both gods and mortals, personified as the Moirai. One of the Moirai, named Clotho, spins the thread of life; Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts it, ending a life at its appointed time. The Moirai possess these powers beyond the will of Zeus, who may alter much but cannot contravene what has already been “spun” by the Fates. In Homer’s Iliad, Zeus wishes to save his son Sarpedon from death, but his wife Hera reminds him that to do so would be to disrupt the cosmic order by going against the Fates. Zeus reluctantly yields to fate and allows Sarpedon to die, thereby preserving the balance of the universe. The Moirai represent a worldview in which destiny is fixed, human freedom is constrained and even divine will has its limits. Similar beliefs are expressed by the writers of Dr. Who. In the episode entitled “The Fires of Pompeii” (2008), the 10th Doctor explains to his companion that some points in time are fixed (meaning that he is not allowed to change them), while others are in flux (these are events he is allowed to alter). He cites the destruction of Pompeii as a fixed point that cannot be interfered with, contrasting it with other events in which he is allowed to intervene. When his companion asks him how he knows which events are fixed and which are not, he replies, “Because that’s how I see the universe. Every waking second, I can see what is, what was, what could be, what must not … That’s the burden of the Timelord.” This, according to the Greeks, was also how Zeus and the other Olympian gods understood the universe.

The Homeric epics are saturated with such references to fate. In the Iliad, heroes such as Achilles and Hector know that their deaths are inevitable and even foretold, yet the glory they attain depends on how they respond to this certainty. Achilles was told that he could choose between a short, glorious life or a long, obscure one — yet even this choice existed within the framework of a predetermined destiny: would a man such as Achilles ever make a choice other than the one that he did? Was he even capable of doing anything differently? In 2012, the popular atheist thinker Sam Harris wrote a book entitled Free Will. He doesn’t believe that free will exists, and his argument is based on the fact that we act according to our nature and life experiences, both of which are beyond our control.

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex was the quintessential exploration of fate in Greek thought and I have written about it before. The play dramatises the life of Oedipus, King of Thebes, who attempts to escape a prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. In his efforts to avoid his fate, Oedipus unwittingly fulfills it, thereby bringing plague and ruin to his city. The tragedy lies not simply in the events but in their inevitability. From the beginning, the audience knows the prophecy and it understands that Oedipus’ attempts at escape will be futile: the entire point of the play is to underscore the futility man’s attempts to resist fate.

Oedipus Rex shows how human intelligence, agency and hubris all in fact drive our destiny. The play also raises profound questions about knowledge and ignorance. Oedipus is a solver of riddles — he famously defeated the Sphinx by answering its riddle — but he cannot solve the riddle of his own life. His relentless pursuit of the truth, motivated by noble intent, leads him to self-destruction. This suggests that fate operates not only through external events but also through the very character and choices of individuals. Oedipus’ determination to know ensures the fulfillment of his destiny. Thus, fate is not an external imposition but an immanent necessity, woven into the fabric of human identity and action. Just as Achilles by his very nature cannot choose anything other than his glorious, short life.

Early Greek philosophy began to transfer the mythological sense of fate into a subject for rational inquiry. Early thinkers such as Heraclitus (for whom we have only fragmentary evidence) reportedly spoke of a universal logos, a rational principle that orders the cosmos, suggesting that he viewed fate as a kind of cosmic law. The Presocratic philosopher Anaximander, likewise known to us only in fragments, saw existence as governed by a principle of necessity, whereby beings pay “penalty and retribution” for their existence in accordance with a cosmic order. The early philosophers thus sought to reconcile human agency with the necessity of fate, a notion that modern philosophers are still wrestling with.

Plato presented a cosmos governed by necessity, but also shaped by the rational will of the divine craftsman. In the Myth of Er at the end of the Republic, souls choose their next lives, but only within the framework of a cosmic order in which the Fates play a central role. Human responsibility remains, but choice occurs within the constraints determined by destiny. Aristotle emphasised causality and the principle of necessity: every event follows from prior causes. He allowed room for contingency and human deliberation, particularly in ethics, where rational choice plays a central role; but even so, Aristotle’s universe is governed by what he calls the Unmoved Mover, and necessity prevails.

The Romans inherited the Greek concept of fate but adapted it to their own religious and political culture. For them, fatum literally meant “what has been spoken,” reflecting its origin in divine speech or decree. Fate was not only the domain of the Parcae, the Roman equivalents of the Moirai, but was also closely tied to Jupiter, the supreme god. Unlike the Greek Zeus, who often appears to be constrained by fate, Jupiter was more frequently depicted as the very source and guarantor of fate in Roman literature. He embodied the sovereignty of divine order, and fate was his will, which was expressed in the unfolding of history. When Jupiter nods his head, stuff happens.

The close link between Jupiter and fate is perhaps as a result of the Roman mindset. The Romans viewed themselves as destined to rule the world. Virgil’s Aeneid, Rome’s great epic of self-definition and indeed the origin of my client’s question, presents the destiny of Rome as the ruling nation as ordained by Jupiter. Aeneas, the dutiful hero, is guided not by personal desire but by obligation to his fated mission, which was to found the Roman race, the future governors of the world. Whenever Aeneas hesitates, wavers from or questions his path, Jupiter and the gods remind him of his destiny, which cannot be avoided. Thus, Roman self-definition entwined the concept of fate with their own historical power, giving it a collective and political dimension absent from the primarily individual focus of fate as viewed by the Greeks. One can only imagine what it must have been like to be a Roman reading Virgil, being told that you are quite literally destined to rule the world.

The Stoics, the Greek philosophers most popular among Roman intelligentsia, gave the most systematic philosophical account of fate in antiquity, one that deeply influenced Roman intellectual life. Fate for the Stoics was synonymous with the rational order of the cosmos, governed by divine reason (logos). Everything that happens is determined by an unbreakable chain of cause and effect, which is itself the expression of divine providence. Fate, then, is not blind necessity but rational order. Chrysippus defined fate as “a rational principle of the things that happen in the world, or the chainlike connection of causes”: nothing occurs by chance; all events follow from prior causes, and the entire universe unfolds according to divine reason. Perhaps strangely, this did not imply fatalism in the sense of resignation; for the Stoics, freedom consisted in aligning one’s will with fate, embracing what happens as necessary and good because it proceeds from divine reason. The Stoics believed that individuals could not control fate but they also argued that individuals had free will. So an individual person is like a dog tied to the back of a wagon. Whatever the dog’s actions, the wagon will go on its way. So how does the dog have free will? Well, he can resist the wagon and be dragged along, impeding the wagon’s progress and damaging himself along the way. Alternatively, he can trot along like a good dog and help the wagon to proceed smoothly. Or, as Sam Harris puts it in his 21st century book on free will that I mentioned earlier, “a puppet is free, as long as he loves his strings.”

Roman Stoics like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius elaborated on the vision of the dog tied to the wagon. Seneca famously wrote, “Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.” The wise person accepts fate willingly, finding peace in conformity with necessity. Epictetus, a former slave (let’s think about that for a moment, in the context of free will!), emphasised that while external events are determined by fate, individuals retain freedom in their judgments, attitudes and responses. Thus, freedom exists within fate: we cannot change events, but we can choose how to face them. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, repeatedly counsels acceptance of the order of nature, viewing fate as part of a benevolent cosmic plan. For him, to rebel against fate is to rebel against the universe itself. This approach to life has had a profund influence that resonates to this day and is used by psychologists when working with clients to help them understand what is and is not within their control. It is also expressed rather beautifully in the serenity prayer still used by Christians today and also used by the addiction support group, Alcoholics Anonymous: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can change, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Invention and the Shoulders of Giants

Exploring derivatives is a useful tool when learning vocabulary. Yet the connection between the meaning of modern English and the Latin root-word is not always obvious, not least because the usage and commonplace meaning of words can change – sometimes dramatically – over time. Take the example of the Latin adjective clarus, -a, -um, from which we get words like “clarity” and “clarification”. The Latin word did indeed mean “clear” or “bright”, but students are often puzzled by its (if anything more common) meaning of “famous”. But when you think about it, something which is “clear” or “bright” is something which is “easily seen” or “very visible” – hence the word also came to mean “famous”. I find it useful to remind students of English words which carry both a literal and metaphorical meaning: for example, the word “heavy” has the most obvious meaning of an item weighing a great deal, but it can also mean “serious” as in “this is a bit of a heavy subject to be discussing at the dinner table.” It’s useful then to point out that the Latin adjective gravis, -is, -e (from which we get the word “grave”) had this same double meaning, thus it can be translated as “heavy” or “serious”.

My husband and I spent this weekend with a friend who lives in Bristol, and what a fine city it is. If you have any interest in engineering, it’s a bit of a pilgrimage site. Isambard Kingdom Brunel is profoundly connected to the city through his ground-breaking engineering, the work of which left an indelible mark on Bristol’s landscape and infrastructure. Perhaps most visually striking is the Clifton suspension bridge, but he also designed and built Bristol Temple Meads railway station and the SS Great Britain, a steamship which is now preserved in the city’s harbour. Finally, and perhaps most significantly in terms of the city’s outreach, Brunel led the construction of the Great Western Railway, which linked Bristol to London and thus shaped the city’s relationship with the rest of the UK.

Yet Bristol’s engineering feats do not begin and end with Brunel. Bristol has a long and prestigious history as a centre for aircraft design and manufacturing. Perhaps most excitingly of all, the city was instrumental in the design of Concorde, and all ten British-built Concordes were manufactured and assembled at the Filton site in the north of the city. The first British prototype made its maiden flight from Filton and her last journey also ended at Filton, where the aircraft is now displayed at the Bristol Aerospace museum. We visited her in her very own hangar and were thrilled to discover that one can climb inside the fuselage and peer into the cockpit, a rare privilege indeed.

Being prone to labyrinthine thinking when my mind is full of new experiences, I found myself pondering what one might consider to be man’s greatest inventions. My husband would argue, without a shadow of a doubt, that man’s greatest feat of engineering is Concorde. To have designed an aircraft that can travel at a height and speed achieved hitherto only by fighter jets, in which the pilots wear oxygen masks and pressure-suits, and to make that aircraft comfortable enough and the ride smooth enough that the wealthy passengers who swan on board the flight will not spill a drop of their champagne, is a truly mind-blowing achievement. It was wonderful to read the accounts of the pilots who flew this magnificent machine, and one of them sticks in my mind in particular. He said various things about what an extraordinary experience it was to fly the Concorde, but he finished with: “the novelty never wears off.” I love the idea of a pilot simply loving the experience of flying this phenomenal jet, every single time he did so.

Despite my genuine love of Concorde and the engineering innovation and brilliance it signifies, my own candidates for the greatest inventions by man tend to be more prosaic. In this I am influenced by my father, himself an engineer, who used to torture interview candidates with this question. While they floundered in their attempts to come up with the most exciting modern leaps of nano-technology, my father would push them to consider man’s earliest achievements, the ones that defined us as a species different from all others, for better or for worse. The invention of the bow and arrow; the discovery that cooking food with fire not only made it more palatable but released more nutrients; the building of the rafts that enabled us to leave the land mass of Africa, Asia and Europe; the innovations of the ramp, the lever and the wheel, which enabled us to harness unimaginable power and move objects many times our own size and weight; the building of bridges, with which we find ourselves back with Brunel. As I wandered around Bristol, I found myself pondering all of these things, as we blundered in and out of the city’s quite bewildering array of coffee shops and hipster bars.

My brain then looped back around to the very meaning of the word “invention” and thus we are back to etymology. Students are often puzzled as to why the main derivative of the Latin word invenire, which they are taught means “to find”, is “invention”, when an invention is surely an innovation, not a discovery. The Latin verb primarily meant “to discover”, “to find” or “to come upon” but also “to invent” or “to devise”. It is created out of the preposition “in” and the verb “come” so it literally meant “to come into”. I am no philologist, but I have found myself pondering whether this comes down to the ancient beliefs about knowledge and discovery. For a civilisation that pioneered so many ideas and inventions which we now take for granted, the ancient thinkers didn’t actually set much store by innovation and originality. Plato believed that every single human is born with all the scientific and mathematical knowledge that exists in the universe, they simply need to have it uncovered for them via the Socratic method. Likewise, in the arts, novelty and innovation was not particularly valued in the way that it is today. People wanted to see imitation and mimicry: the artistry was in re-telling good stories with great effect, not in making up new ones.

All of this means that, in the ancient world, even those who made the most remarkable leaps of invention, merely saw themselves as uncovering already-existing truths. There is a humility to this that I believe we should cherish. Newton famously said, “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. He believed that his scientific discoveries were made possible by the knowledge and work of his predecessors, those very pioneers in the ancient world. I think there is something rather beautiful about the fact that those giants would have said the same thing about themselves.

Clifton suspension bridge during a balloon launch. Photo by Nathan Riley on Unsplash

Fit for Purpose

It’s now been several weeks since I decided to start running again and I am thrilled to report that I remain pain-free. Now confident that I am no less capable of running than anybody else, I have started to settle into a routine. With my anxieties behind me, what I’m left with is the long, slow road towards progress and my individual end goal, which is to be able to run to the next village and back. As a result of focusing on this, I have concluded that the app I have been using – my curriculum for running, if you like – is not quite fit for purpose.

Curriculum design is notoriously challenging and I’ll confess to being pretty depressed at how little thought and energy many Classics departments are apparently putting into it. I have countless clients in schools who are still blindly following the Cambridge Latin Course, right down to the detail. They make their students learn the vocabulary listed at the end of each chapter, presumably out of an inertia that prevents them from producing a more useful set of lists for students to learn. Some schools make an effort to remove words that are irrelevant to the GCSE examination, but they are in the minority. I have students who have been taught the gerundive of obligation purely because it appears in chapter 26 and despite the fact that it has not been on the GCSE syllabus since prior to 2018; I’d love to say that this is because their teacher believes it is exactly the right thing to teach them at that point, but the reality is of course that they are merely following the text book. It really is pretty depressing.

Since the last paradigm shift in the criteria used by HMI to inspect state schools, most departments have undergone a major curriculum review. Inspectors are looking for a clear and coherent narrative in a school’s curricula, one that can be articulated and justified by each Head of Department and by all relevant teaching staff. To me, this makes a huge amount of sense and indeed it’s somewhat alarming that the entire philosophy took so long to crystalise in the minds of our inspectors. Luckily for me, it was a process I had already embarked upon. I had long realised that courses such as the CLC were failing dismally in the task of preparing students for the GCSE examinations, and I had torn up the Scheme of Work I had that was based upon this course. I had the privilege of being the sole teacher of my subject from ab initio to GCSE, a powerful position indeed. I was therefore able to start from first principles: what do students need to know and what skills do they need to have acquired by the end of Year 11? Working backwards from that, I re-wrote the entire curriculum from the ground up.

Likewise, I have recently been reflecting upon my end goal when it comes to running. The Couch to 5K programme has as many detractors as it has fans and while I can see that it is terrific in many ways, it isn’t working for me. First of all, I am finding its attempt to provide coaching is totally missing the mark. The final straw was during the third week, when I found myself doubled over as I tried to catch my breath, listening to the voice of Steve Cram saying “you might find things are getting a little easier now.” Actually, Steve, they weren’t at that particular moment! He followed it up with “if you’re not finding it any easier, that’s ok too,” but frankly I was already furious. The very suggestion that I should be finding things easier had been voiced at one of my low points, and believe you me it’s not what you want to hear when you’re gasping for oxygen like a fish out of water. It’s also somewhat annoying that while you’re encouraged to repeat runs as often as you need to, doing so means you have to listen to the voice saying that you’re done with that week and ready to move onto the next one. All in all, there’s an obvious limit to how successfully one can listen to a coach who is not there in person, not witnessing the realities of your own individual progress.

So, I have ditched the app and instead I am using music as my companion. On a friend’s advice, I have made use of a quite remarkably geeky website which martials various tunes into beats per minute and have found a few familiar tracks that match my running pace exactly. At the moment, I have reached the point where I am running for the whole of one track, then walking for another. This means that I am now able to run for around three and a half minutes at a time, which is already a massive improvement on the position I was in a few weeks ago. I am also going to make proactive use of the route that I run to progress to the next stage. My goal is to be able to run along the canal to the next village and back, a distance of around three and a half kilometres; once I’m able to do this, I can then set myself the goal of gradually decreasing the amount of time that it takes me. The route is slightly uphill on the way out and downhill on the way home, so my plan is to attempt the whole distance on the home run first – the psychological benefit of being on the way home plus the fact that it’s downhill should make it much more manageable than attempting to complete the whole thing on the way out: I’m quite stunned at how much a brief incline can slow me down at the moment! But the run home is within my sights as the next viable target.

So far I am enjoying going it alone, without the smug voice of Steve Cram telling me I might be finding things easier. The process has been a reminder of many things: how tough it is to start something new but how rewarding it is to observe tangible progress in a short space of time, however hard the process still seems to be. It is a reminder that it can be easy to forget the progress one is indeed making: as I am panting for air at the end of three and a half minutes, I have to remind myself that I was doing so after 60 seconds just two or three weeks ago. The difficult thing about progress is that it is always challenging: if you’re not slightly out of your comfort zone then you’re not achieving much, so it sometimes feels like it isn’t getting easier. The truth is usually that you’ve improved beyond all measure: you just keep shifting the goalposts.

Results and Expectations

As GCSE results roll in today, I’ve been thinking about expectations and how they shape our response to students’ results. It’s a painful and undeniable fact that there are some students every year who will not only be disappointed but will have to deal with the disappointment of their own parents. In my experience, this usually happens with relatively high-achieving students, some of whom have families that expect nothing but the best. This can transfigure into the genuinely distressing situation in which a line of excellent grades will be met with disinterest.

I sometimes wonder whether this is a very modern phenomenon. I recall a family friend, whose daughter was a year or two older than I was and who therefore sat her GCSEs before I did. She achieved straight As and I remember my father (a man of excellent academic ability himself) being genuinely agog. He simply couldn’t believe that anyone could achieve the top grade in every single subject. I remember thinking the same. This, of course, was long before the existence of the A* and the starred grade was indeed brought in as an attempt to recognise the absolute top of the top – an elite class of those who achieved the A-grade and not originally envisaged as something that would be achieved in multiple subjects. Likewise, the current grade 9. As many of us predicted at the time, this philosophy was completely lost on everyone, and failed with immediate effect: the A* and the grade 9 became simply the top grade as far as everyone was concerned and as a result, we now have families who report “disappointment” with an A-grade at A level or a grade 8 at GCSE.

While I’ve never been one to shy away from setting high standards, I really do have to wonder what’s gone wrong for a person who isn’t happy with their child achieving an A-grade or an 8. What do they think the problem is? Exam results are undeniably important, but they do not define you as an academic. Want to know my GCSE grades? Okay. I sat nine GCSEs in 1990, relatively few by modern standards, but that’s how it was in those days. Some students sat nine, some sat only seven or eight. I achieved six grade As, one grade B and two grade Cs. To this day I swear they mixed up my biology paper with somebody else’s, as I was expecting a C grade (along with the C grades I did achieve in maths and chemistry) but that subject came out at a grade B. I was probably more knocked out by that grade than by any of my others, which overall were much better than I was expecting.

My line-up of grades would probably be considered pretty mediocre by some of the families I have worked with. They will perhaps be rather surprised (possibly even alarmed!) to learn that I did not achieve straight As in everything. But here’s the thing. Not only did I go on to achieve a 1st class honours degree, I achieved the highest degree mark in my whole year group (the Head of Department told me). After that, I achieved a Masters with Distinction and then went on to complete a PhD. My perfectly decent but perhaps unremarkable GCSE grades were no barrier to this, and while I don’t want to sound like Jeremy Clarkson rolling out his tedious yearly claim to a champagne-fuelled, Lamborghini-driving lifestyle on the back of two Us in his A levels, I would definitely suggest that everyone should keep their exam grades in perspective.

There are numerous reasons why I wasn’t one of the absolute top-performers at school. I wasn’t very good at studying when I was younger and it took me a while to learn the methods that worked best for me (there was no decent research or advice in that area in those days). As an adult, I am fascinated by the psychology of effective study, and it is a real focus in my tuition sessions. If you want to consult a genuine expert in the field, look up Dr. Paul Penn, who is a psychologist and researcher who specialises in how to study. You can visit his website here and he has a great YouTube channel. I interviewed him for Teachers Talk Radio in 2022, and you can listen to that episode here.

Other reasons for my relatively unremarkable performance in my GCSEs? Well, I didn’t enjoy school very much and if I’m brutally frank I found a lot of my teachers tiresome and dull. That’s no excuse for anything of course, but it may have been a factor in my distinctly average peformance in some subjects. Finally — and this one’s the killer — I know that a lot of teachers believed me to be significantly cleverer than I actually was. That might sound odd for someone who ended up with PhD, but quite honestly a doctorate is no indicator of brilliance. You wouldn’t believe the number of mediocre academics who manage to scrape together enough to qualify for that title. Making it through a PhD is actually a case of whether you can hack the process and apply the required amount of discipline rather than an indicator of genuine excellence. As I once heard someone say of the difference between those who make it in elite weight-lifting and those who do not, the main deciding factor is whether or not you have the tolerance to endure the sheer, unrelenting tedium of repeated effort.

So why did my teachers believe that I was so clever? I think it’s because I was very articulate and good at writing. As I came to realise when I read The Language Instinct by Steve Pinker, while this is not necessarily an indicator of high intelligence, it is assumed to be so by most people, even those who are supposed to be experts in the field of education. Thus, as a result of my linguistic fluency, all of my teachers laboured under the impression that I was seriously smart. My genuinely poor performance in mathematics and the sciences was put down to laziness, bloody-mindedness, wilful ignorance or just about any other character flaw you could imagine. (God forbid it could be down to their poor teaching). I tried many times to tell my maths and science teachers that I was genuinely struggling and needed help with basic concepts, but I was ignored. The only reason I passed maths was because they eventually realised that I was in serious danger of failing (due, in their view, to my sheer wilfulness) and — in a panic about their pass-rate — they made the correct call to enter me for the intermediate paper, which is designed to help candidates get over the threshold to achieve a C grade. The only reason I passed chemistry was because in Year 11 we gained a new teacher who was not particularly likeable but was actually rather good — a rarity indeed, for most of our teachers were truly terrible, as they could be in the 1980s. After a few weeks of observing my wild guesswork when it came to balancing chemical equations, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “you don’t even know what the valency table is, do you?” I enlightened him as to the fact that not only was this true, but I didn’t actually understand what the periodic table was either. Or indeed … anything. He nodded. He gave me some basic remedial help plus a few bluffing techniques and I made it through the exam thanks to him. As for biology, like I say … Lord knows. I swear to this day that it was an error and I wasn’t going to tell them that.

So, as results are announced today, I find myself thinking of those students and their families across the country who will be disappointed with excellent grades. How very sad that sounds. My grades were a source of celebration in my household and I recall not only that I was delighted with them but that my parents were too. While we all want to set high standards for ourselves and our children, let us not forget that a string of top grades in everything are not the be-all and end-all for a happy and successful life. Even Einstein didn’t get top grades in all of his subjects.

Rites and Rituals

As thousands of students receive their A level, T level, BTEC and VTQ results today, I find myself pondering the fact that the ritual of receiving such results is very different from how it used to be. The enduring image published in all the newspapers of students leaping into the air and waving an opened envelope had become a virtual meme it was such a hackneyed joke; yet students these days are much more likely to be alone in their bedroom when they receive the information about their next steps.

While many schools still present results to students in person in the traditional way, most students will already have received confirmation of whether or not they have secured their preferred college place via an online portal first thing in the morning: the colleges and universities know their results before they do, and these days such information can be communicated instantly. This very modern take on a traditional rite of passage can feel like a bit of a let-down for those of us who went through the system some time ago, and it has made me think about the assumptions we make when it comes to life’s milestones and the rituals that accompany them.

This week I started watching a drama on Netflix. It seems to be one of the multiple television productions that has passed me by over the years, as apparently it was first aired on ITV several years ago. Finding Alice stars the wonderful Keeley Hawes as a woman whose life is upended when her husband dies after falling down the stairs of their newly-built home. The series explores the secrets that Harry left behind and the impact on his family. Episode 2 centres around Alice’s unconventional decision to hold Harry’s funeral (and burial!) on their own property, and one is expected to make some serious stretches of the imagination in terms of how she gets around the legal ramifications of such a process. This didn’t particularly bother me, as obviously a drawn-out exploration of the administrative nightmare that would be triggered in real life would not make for gripping drama.

What I did find myself irritated by, however, was the portrayal of Alice’s selected Celebrant for the funeral. It was made clear in the drama that the deceased was not religious and that there should therefore be no religious elements to his send-off. As if we were in a drama from decades ago, the Celebrant appeared bemused and perturbed by the notion that there would be no references to the Christian religion whatsoever. On the day itself, she even — and by this point I was shouting at the television — started to perform the sign of the cross in front of the gathering before she “remembered” that there was to be no religion involved and managed to stop herself mid-blessing.

Now, depending on what community you hail from, it may be the case that you have not had the opportunity to attend a non-religious funeral. Let me assure you that they are commonplace and uncontroversial. There are a plethora of Celebrants who lead such ceremonies and many of them will point blank refuse to include any religious references, never mind trying to sneak them in. Some take a more eclectic approach (one which my mother, who trained as a Celebrant for Humanists UK, used to call the “Pick ‘n’ Mix” option) and will throw in a prayer or a hymn if you want one. It was genuinely mind-boggling to think that a drama written as recently as 2021 would choose to imply not only that non-religious funerals are unusual and extraordinary, but that even those who provide such services find them so! With almost 40% of the UK population identifying themselves as “no religion” in the 2021 census, it really does beggar belief that non-religious ceremonies are still being portrayed on our television screens as a bizarre and unusual turn of events worthy of quirky comedy value.

As a person of no religion myself, I have a wide variety of friends with a range of beliefs. I have attended religious ceremonies, but I have also attended many funerals entirely without religion. Sometimes they have been held in a traditional crematorium, sometimes in a woodland burial ground. When the Celebrant has been a member of Humanists UK, the ceremonies have been strictly non-religious, but others have woven in a small nod to faith at the behest of some family members. I have even attended a baby naming ceremony run by someone who described themselves as “an inter-faith minister” and that one was possibly the weirdest. If there’s one thing I find myself agreeing with the deeply religious on, it’s that you surely can’t just pick the bits that happen appeal to you from a variety of religions, like some kind of spiritual smorgasbord.

Unlike the celebrant in Finding Alice, I do not believe in doing things the way they’ve always been done out of a misplaced attachment to ritual. Hopefully, the students receiving their results today will only benefit from the smoothness, immediacy and efficiency afforded to us by our new gods of technology. It is all too easy to be misty-eyed about traditional rites of passage, when in fact the modern way of doing things is far better and frankly less agonising than the way things used to be. These days, decisions are made immediately and the clearing process is a thousand times better and more efficient than it was in my day. You can even clear up as well as down! Everyone benefits from this. I have no doubt that plenty of students will still be leaping into the air when they receive their results, whether the Daily Mail is there to photograph them or not.

Make No Assumptions

“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in while, or the light won’t come in.”

Alan Alda, American actor

One of the biggest luxuries of one-to-one tutoring compared to classroom teaching is the opportunity it gives you to make no assumptions. In the classroom, hauling large cohorts of students through a curriculum means that you have to make assumptions sometimes: you can explore responsive teaching and effective questioning all you like, but fundamentally the class has to move on. Without (or even with) some quite remarkably skilled classroom practice, a few may still be left behind. In an ideal world they wouldn’t be, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

In its best and most effective form, one-to-one tutoring is an opportunity for the tutor to make no assumptions and — as a result — for the student to gain understanding at a level that they may never have experienced before. This applies no matter what level they are working at. Those who appear to be thriving can be challenged and have their understanding tested. Such examination can really shore up their mastery by picking holes in any misconceptions that they may be harbouring, misapprehensions which may trip them up at a later date. Whenever I have a student who is performing at a high-grade level, I remind myself of the number of students I have worked with who are working at a low grade and who report high performance in their first two years of the subject. Never. Make. Assumptions. Just because someone appears to be thriving does not mean that their understanding is perfect or complete, nor does it mean that they will not struggle at a later date.

Here’s another assumption for you. When working with high-performing students, many teachers and tutors assume that “stretch and challenge” must mean new material, going beyond the curriculum. This absolutely has its place and may well be warranted in some cases. But in my experience, those cases are phenomenally rare in Latin. In this highly-inflected language, a subject in which the greatest gift you can offer a student to guarantee future excellence is a cast-iron grasp of the basics, I have yet to meet a student that does not benefit from being challenged to justify and unpick their understanding of the work that’s already in front of them; this applies especially to students who claim to find such work “too easy”. There are times when a high-performing student can translate a GCSE-level passage with relative ease and it would be tempting to nod along and congratulate them. But making assumptions based upon their apparently confident performance is letting them down. Asking them a range of pertinent, incisive questions and challenging them to explain and justify their translation usually reveals a myriad of tiny holes in their presumed comprehension. This is by no means a disaster, it is rather something to be celebrated. Through this process, a student working at a high level can improve the quality and depth of their understanding and that can make all the difference to their ability to thrive at the next level in the future.

Many students come to me with their own assumptions. A common belief that some students hold is that it is only the difficult material that they are struggling with. They base this supposition on the fact that they started to experience problems as the material became more challenging. But with rare exceptions, it is seldom the case that the so-called “difficult” material is the problem. I could take a student’s assessment of their problem at face value, and start tackling their knowledge of the indirect statement, the ablative absolute or the uses of the subjunctive. But I have learnt that this is a false assumption. Instead, I start by showing them a basic table of noun endings and ask them how familiar they are with that material. I then ask them whether they can name all the noun cases in the correct order and tell me exactly how those cases are used and translated. In all my years of tutoring, it has been an extremely rare occurrence that a student can do so without mistakes or hesitation: it’s happened maybe once or twice. This is because such students will have been taught the basics a very long time ago and then their teacher has assumed that these basics have been retained ad infinitum. If I could advise classroom teachers of one crucial tweak to their classroom practice, it would be this: get properly informed about memory and retrieval practice and use it proactively to revisit the basics. It will be a better use of classroom time than anything else you are doing at the higher level. For example, as a starter task, ask your Year 11 (or even Year 12 or Year 13) students to write down the cases in order and also give a rough summary of how each case is used. You will be amazed at how many of them cannot do it.

Students also have assumptions about themselves or their own abilities, all of which require challenge. Presumptions such as “I’m no good at this” or “I can’t do it” are obviously damaging, but perhaps even more so are postulations such as “I know the basics”, indeed these blithe suppositions can actually be more difficult to overcome. Students who are convinced of their own weaknesses can be easy to work with, as all you need to do is use the power of one-to-one support to show them that they absolutely can do it: the revelation is so exciting and inspiring for most of them that they tend to be an easy convert to the tutoring process. A harder sell can be persuading those who are convinced that their early progress in the subject is not to be questioned and who thus request a focus on the most complicated constructions. It can be something of an unpleasant shock for them when small fissures are revealed in what they were convinced were solid foundations and it is these students who actually require the most reassurance. Students who have found the subject difficult from Day 1 are used to the struggle; it is those who hit problems later down the line that can falter at the very suggestion that they might need to revisit the subject at a rudimentary level.

Photo by Kyle Gregory Devaras on Unsplash

Trying again

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”

Stephen McCranie, artist and author

Currently, I am making a second attempt at something I have previously failed at. The process is challenging for multiple reasons, but most especially the fear that I may fail again. Failing is disheartening and painful, and this particular failure was painful in a very literal sense last time I tried.

As regular readers will know, I am a recent convert to fitness-related activity. What readers may not know is that my first foray into this world took place several years ago, when I decided to make an attempt to complete the NHS Couch to 5K programme, a running app that aims to take non-runners from zero to 5 kilometres in just 9 weeks. The programme has its detractors and I will say from the outset that I believe that it is way too intensive: I would not recommend attempting to complete the process in 9 weeks. But the principle of the app is good, as it consists of a course of activity in which running is broken up into very short bursts of ever-increasing length. There are other criticisms of the programme, which I will touch upon as I explain why I have decided to try it again.

When I first attempted the programme, I had done no reading whatsoever about the importance of strength and balance training (or rather I had managed to filter out any advice in this area and banish it from my consciousness). I was ignorantly convinced that I was as fit as any normal person should expect to be and that running was therefore well within my grasp. I thought that all I had to do was to build up my cardio-vascular endurance by actually doing the running. So, I bought myself some running shoes and a strap for my phone and off I went. It may be pertinent to point out at this juncture that a second major criticism fitness experts and physiotherapists have of the Couch to 5K programme is that it gives no advice on strength training prior to and during the process.

During the very first run, I was getting painful twinges in my spine. Serious ones. I suffer from scoliosis (curvature of the spine) and my back was giving me some very clear warning signals that all was not well. Convinced of my fitness, I loftily ignored them. Twinges are normal, I told myself, I just need to get used to the process. Well, by the end of the third run I found myself screaming in agony. Genuinely. I have never experienced pain like it (admittedly, I have not experienced childbirth!) I was alone in the house on my return and quite seriously considered calling for help. The pain was severe enough to make me afraid that something was terribly, dreadfully wrong. Eventually, it subsided and I was left with the rather bleak realisation that my body had let me down. I was devastated, perhaps more so than I have ever shared with anyone, including my husband. While there are a thousand things that my scoliosis has theoretically prevented me from doing, none of these things were something that I wanted to do. I don’t want to be a ballerina, a gymnast or indeed a performance artist of any kind. This failed attempt at running was the first time I had embarked upon and failed at something that I wanted to achieve and had assumed myself to be capable of. I dealt with it pretty badly. Friends and osteopaths had multiple suggestions for activities that would bring similar health benefits to running without the high impact, but none of it cheered me. I wanted to run and I had believed that I would be capable of it. I engaged Sulk Mode.

After a few weeks, I got over myself. Running was not for me and that was fine. The only trouble was, when I started researching into why I might have struggled so much, I drew a blank. Nothing I could find gave any indication that scoliosis should be a complete barrier to running, indeed there appeared to be a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary. What was I to think? It was puzzling. One thing that’s true is that the definition of scoliosis is pretty broad and generic and it is quite difficult to zero in on research that relates to what might be going on for a particular individual. So, I ended up concluding that, for whatever reason, my particular spine configuration simply didn’t tolerate the high impact of running and that was that. Plenty of health experts acknowledge that running is not for everyone and I accepted that I was one of those people, albeit reluctantly.

This summer, for reasons I am still unsure of, I had a bit of an epiphany. It suddenly occurred to me that the last time I had tried running was prior to all of my other efforts to improve my fitness. Before I started the work that is necessary to build muscle and improve balance, I was genuinely useless. Weak as a kitten. My core was hopelessly feeble, hence why I strained my back on a regular basis: since working on the muscles in my core, I have not had any back strains, I suddenly reminded myself. Similarly and equally relevant, I have swapped legs that were as wobbly and useless as pair of pipe cleaners for some genuinely respectable trunks of muscle. They are visibly, tangibly different, indeed I feel like I’ve got somebody else’s legs! While I have always been able to walk long distances, I can now do so without feeling like I have done so. In previous years, a 10-mile walk was certainly possible for me, but I would have felt it the next day: now, it just feels like I’ve been for a stroll around the shops. So, it suddenly occured to me, is it actually possible that the problem with running was not the shape of my spine but the simple fact that the muscles in my core and my legs weren’t up to the job? It seemed plausible. And once I’d thought of it, I couldn’t let it drop.

I gave myself some thinking time and pondered the situation. Then I made myself a deal. I would try it again on one condition: the first twinge, the very first whiff of a warning sign from my vertebrae and I would stop. Any nascent pains in my back must be accepted as a chequered flag. Last time, I ignored them and I paid for it. I must not let that happen again because nothing is worth the pain I experienced as a result of that negligence. So, armed with my new promise to myself and my new and improved musculature, I started again. I am now past the point when the agony set in last time and the only thing even relating to a twinge I have experienced is what our friends across the Atlantic hilariously call “runner’s butt”, but which is technically known as gluteus medius syndrome. Basically, it’s a mild ache in one butt-cheek after running (not during). Interestingly, this is the one and only issue I have read about which is recognised as a potential problem that can arise from running with scoliosis: it can arise for all sorts of other reasons too, but scoliosis is undeniably on the list. I shall monitor it and see how it goes, but my glutes are very strong, and so far stretching them out is managing the problem. If it fails to do so in the future, I may have to stop. So be it.

All in all, I am currently enjoying the challenge and it feels really emancipating to try again at something, in the full knowledge and acceptance that I may fail. My current plan is to repeat every single week of the programme, thus doubling the length of time that it takes to complete. This is recommended by some physiotherapists, who have seen way too much fall-out from people who have attempted to complete the programme in the ridicuously short allotted time of 9 weeks. If that turns out to be too quick, I will slow down even more. I will continue to listen to my body and I will obey its commands: the consequences of not doing so are not to be sniffed at. But, for whatever reason, I am simply not willing to accept the fact that running is not for me without a fight. I’ll keep you posted.

Friendships old and new

This weekend, my husband and I travelled to Suffolk for a close friend’s wedding. I was honoured to be a witness to the marriage, and it was a genuine tonic for the soul to watch a good friend declare her marriage vows, radiant and happy.

The weekend has caused me to think about friendship in general: how some friends come and go while others last the course. The groom had two Best Men, two close friends that he has been tightly bonded to since primary school. Seeing the lasting friendship between them was genuinely moving and there is something undeniably special about friends who have known us since childhood, for they have a perspective on us that nobody else can have. Those two friends not only remember the groom’s mother, who died long before he met and married my friend: they knew her well and spent endless time with her, as you do during childhood friendships. The same is true for me and my oldest friend’s mother, who died 20 years ago, long before my friend met many of the people who are a part of her life now. She reminded me of this fact when we were out together for dinner recently, and we both shed tears at the memory of her. There is immense value in hanging on to at least one or two people that have known you and your family for decades.

The friend who married her husband at the weekend is not someone I have known very long in the grand scheme of life, indeed we first met online during the pandemic when — like so many people — I flirted briefly with some online clubs. As so often in my case, the club proved to be too much of a commitment for me, but the friendship did not. I clocked her from day one as a genuinely interesting and intelligent individual, whom I made every effort to befriend long after I had dispensed with the hassle of the book club. I’ve never been much of a joiner, but friends are desperately important to me.

While our society places huge importance on romantic relationships — whether or not you have found “the one” — I would argue that it consistently undervalues the importance of lasting friendship. Elizabeth Day explored this in her book, Friendaholic, which I read in the hope of finding a kindred spirit, although it actually turned out to be an exploration of one woman’s neurosis rather than a legitimate exploration of friendship itself. For reflections on the value of friendship, one can find much better material in the writings of various ancient thinkers.

Aristotle argued that friendship was a crucial component of a fulfilling life. Ever the fan of definitions and categorisation, he divided friendships into three types: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure and friendships of virtue. I think we can all relate to what he means in the first two categories: some friends you need in your life for practical reasons — perhaps your children play together, or you work closely with that person. Some friends are of value because you share a common interest and/or enjoy a particular activity: perhaps you’ve joined a golf club or a running group. According to Aristotle, the highest form of friendship, and the most enduring, is the friendship of virtue. This type of friendship is based on mutual respect, admiration and a shared commitment to “the good life” (the philosophical ideal of living well, which meant living according to your ethical code). Aristotle argued that such friends grow together and seek each other’s well-being because of their shared pursuit of excellence. I am quite certain that Aristotle — genius as he was — would also acknowledge that a friendship might start in one category and develop into another. You might form a friendship out of utlity that evolves into something much more fundamental. For example, many women meet friends through the NCT that become genuine soulmates over the years.

Aristotle’s talk of the pursuit of excellence and virtue through friendship might sound rather highbrow and off-putting, but it is actually not a million miles away from the things that are said in the modern world about romantic relationships. How often have we heard the mantra “you make me a better person” or “you bring out the best in me”? This is what Aristotle argued was at the heart of a good friendship. He emphasised the role of friendship in personal development and moral growth and suggested that through friendship, an individual can learn to cultivate virtues such as generosity, honesty, and courage. Good friends, he argued, challenge each other: both morally and intellectually.

All of the above is unquestionably true of the friendship I have with the person who got married this weekend. She is someone who has challenged my views on a range of topics and (unlike many) is not hesitant to disagree with me, a characteristic I value enormously. This is the friend who got me into weight training, as I first wrote about all the way back in November 2023, and which I am still doing twice a week, every week. I think it is fair to say that no other friend has had such a concrete and indeed revolutionary effect on my life and my fitness. She has quite literally changed my life for the better. This is by no means the only influence she has had on my life and is just one of many things which we share and talk about on a regular basis, but it remains perhaps the most revelatory for me as an individual. As someone who has eschewed all forms of sport and exercise throughout most of my life, it has been life-changing to find someone who has managed to shift my perspective on something so fundamental.

The Epicureans argued that genuine friendships are essential for achieving ataraxia or peace of mind, which is the ultimate goal of Epicurean philosophy. By surrounding oneself with trustworthy friends, ones who share similar values and interests, Epicurus believed that individuals could create a supportive environment that enhanced their well-being and guarded against the uncertainties of life. For the Epicureans, true friendship is characterised by the absence of strife and the presence of mutual trust and companionship. It is often assumed that the Epicurean approach was seismically different from Aristotle’s emphasis on virtue, but in reality it was not. The only thing that was radical about the Epicureans was their argument that a tranquil and pleasurable life was the ultimate moral goal: friendship was thus a part of their moral attainment, just as it was for Aristotle. Friendship, for the ancients, was not merely a social convention or a means to an end but a fundamental aspect of the good life.